In a further crackdown on the crypto industry in China, CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, two popular cryptocurrency market data platforms, are now inaccessible for users in the world’s most populous country. TradingView, a website offering interactive charts for financial markets, can’t be accessed in China either.
Contrary to claims that CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap moved to block IP addresses from China, both websites appear to be blocked by China’s infamous Great Firewall–the DNS-based cordon the country’s government is building in an attempt to censor selected foreign websites, including Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
Seems like both @CoinMarketCap and @coingecko blocked IPs from China. pic.twitter.com/HPp7holwZq
— 8BTCnews (@btcinchina) September 28, 2021
“We did not block any Chinese IPs,” Bobby Ong, co-founder and COO at CoinGecko, told Decrypt.
According to test runs on Greatfire.org, both CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap are currently “100% blocked.” The same applies to TradingView, another popular tool among crypto traders.
“It appears that China is ramping up its crackdown on the crypto industry and this time round [sic], CoinGecko has been placed on the censor list, simply for providing crypto market information,” said Ong.
Decrypt has also reached out for comments to both CoinMarketCap and TradingView and will update the article accordingly.
Crypto pressure intensifies
China’s attempts to limit exposure to the crypto market data follow the government's notice last week that virtual currencies are not legal tender, and that any crypto-related activities, as well as cryptocurrency trading, are against the law.
Last Friday, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) released a list of prohibited crypto-related activities, including trading and token issuance, while also barring overseas exchanges from providing services to investors in mainland China.
Major crypto exchanges like Binance and Huobi Global were quick to react to the news, as they both halted new registrations for Chinese customers.
China’s intensified pressure on crypto also delivered another blow to the mining industry, which already suffered quite a battering earlier this year.
Hangzhou-based Sparkpool, until recently one of the world’s largest Ethereum mining pools, announced on Monday that as of September 30, “in an effort to be maximally compliant with regulatory requirements” it will discontinue both domestic and international services.
Meanwhile, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba caved in as well, announcing that starting from October 8 it’ll stop selling specialized mining equipment on its platform.