WeChat Outlaws All Crypto Activities, Offenders Risk Permanent Ban

WeChat, a Chinese instant messaging app, in recent terms of use update, proscribed all activities related to cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFT). Its rules of conduct highlighted four critical components of virtual currency activities that WeChat public accounts must shun.

Article 3.24.1 outlawed transactions and exchanges between virtual and real currency, virtual currency, and virtual currency. Meanwhile, Article 3.24.2 outlawed providing information intermediary and pricing services for virtual currency transactions. Finally, Article 3.24.3 outlawed token issuance financing and virtual currency derivatives trading.

To capture NFTs, they said accounts that provide services or content related to the secondary transaction of digital collections have similar implications as the preceding.

The WeChat team reiterated that once they can identify such violations, the WeChat public platform will order the violating account to rectify itself within a time limit before restricting some functions of the account until its permanent ban according to the severity of the violation.

WeChat is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent with over 1.1 billion daily active users in China. According to Wikipedia, it became the world’s largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users.

In other news, the cryptocurrency market is currently on a relief rally, recovering by almost 15% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin, the one number cryptocurrency, traded very close to the $21,000 price point today, having touched $17,800 during the weekend. Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), and other top coins are also regaining value alongside BTC.