The Chinese cryptocurrency sphere this past week has been bustling with noise and excitement as the market improved. Bitcoin bull hit financial news headlines with the topic viewed 100 million times on Weibo. The notorious Plustoken Ponzi scheme was taken down by Chinese police with 109 people arrested…

Bitcoin trends on Weibo as its price breaks $11,000

To the delight of hodlers, bitcoin price broke $11,000 for the first time in nearly a year late last Monday. The largest cryptocurrency then went viral on Weibo that day.

Weibo trends show that the hashtag #BitcoinBull# has been the fourth-most popular search terms on the country’s biggest social media platform, with viewership hitting over 100 million.

Industry watchers believe that it is a bullish signal and a good advertisement for the crypto market, and it indicates that the massive interest in bitcoin in the world’s second largest economy might help raise public awareness and bring in more crypto investors.

There was further excitement as Bitcoin surged even further to $12,000 over the weekend. However, the momentum did not last. Bitcoin later plunged by 13% within minutes, taking it as low as $10,550. Investors are wondering whether there will be larger pullback or further rally.

Chinese police arrests 109 people behind the $5.7 bln Plustoken scam

As many as 109 PlusToken team members have been arrested by police in China. Local police revealed that over two million participants were involved in the largest crypto Ponzi scheme with over 3,000 hierarchical layers.

The case, with a total value of digital currencies exceeding 40 billion yuan (roughly $5.74 billion), marks the first time Chinese police investigated a major international network pyramid scam using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as a funding channel, said the Ministry of Public Security on its website.

PlusToken was initially presented as a South Korea-based exchange offering high investor returns. The entire operation was exposed as a scam after several million participants found they were unable to withdraw their investment in July 2019.

As the Ponzi scheme comes to its end, victims in China are gathering to try to get their money back, while there’re still some deeply brainwashed investors believe Plustoken is wronged.

Bitcoin-related activities are not banned when it acts as a virtual commodity

China does not ban bitcoin-related activities when the cryptocurrency serves as a virtual commodity, according to an article published by the Beijing Arbitration Commission.

The article points out that China’s current regulatory attitude towards bitcoin mainly includes the following three aspects: 1. Bitcoin is not a fiat; 2. Bitcoin is a virtual commodity; 3. The country prohibits crypto trading platforms from engaging in fiat-to-crypto transactions and crypto-to-crypto exchange.

Major blockchain developments

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and its payment subsidiary Alipay, filing 1,457 blockchain patent petitions, have once again been the world’s most active patent filer pertaining to the blockchain technology in 2020. Behind it in second place is Chinese conglomerate Tencent with 872. Another prestigious IT brand – Inspur, which focuses on cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, comes to third with 274 applications.

According to an official announcement from Cypherium, an enterprise-level blockchain platform, the company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Suzhou City Municipality, which stipulates that Cypherium will be a key player in contributing to the technical development of blockchain infrastructure in the city.