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Weihai, a port city in Shandong province of eastern China, has a stern warning for investors: make sure you are really investing in blockchain innovation and not cryptocurrency masquerading as blockchain.

The Weihai Local Financial Supervision and Administration said Friday investors should be more cautious because illegal crypto issuance and trading are on the rise, according to a statement from the authority.

https://www.coindesk.com/chinese-city-warns-investors-crypto-isnt-blockchain

that is not a new thing. The fact that so many times china has already repeated that announcement. it would not be a big surprise to see that china was creating another announcement about that. It seems like that the scammer has already destroyed the name of crypto.
China is only taking the system and try to create their own system and that's not something new.
But the decision will be back again to the investors whether they will decide to invest in the crypto or not.

This thing is making it harder for investors to decide now, and what I understand with the situation of china was their government is stopping them to be involve with cryptocurrency. If they wanted to create the new system, China's possibility of handling stand alone crypto will be out of blockchain, and will be separated with international blockchain which we are using worldwide.

The news is basically stating that China is anti-ICO/tokens and unregulated exchanges, and both are not "blockchain." I think I agree with the above view since none of these have a consensus mechanism.

Shaddy exchanges and ICOs/tokens prone to pump and dump schemes, Ponzi, scam, etc.

China has a large population that runs on trend and hypes. As the president Xi Jinping talked good about blockchain technology, most of them assumed he's talking about bitcoin and other cryptos so they just jumped into it predicting an easing environment to trade crypto in China. And now it's taking a great deal of effort for the authorities that Xi was talking about a home grown crypto centrally controlled by the CCP.

I think this is strange, the fact that blockchain stands for crypto itself, and there says Crypto is not from the blockchain part. Or indeed there boasted not to invest in crypto because anti or there is a want to be people there invest in the currency made by their own country.

Crypto Isn’t Blockchain is a wrong statement, bitcoin is created by blockchain and it is a cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency is the origin of blockchain. That title is very wrong and in general, it might mislead to a wrong interpretation. Yes, there are so many illegal ICOs and crypto exchanges, scam fraud projects. They should have said "illegal ICOs and crypto exchanges are not a blockchain". These ICO's with tokens are clearly not a blockchain they are just borrowing the service of this blockchain platform like ETH, EOS, NEO. It is very easy to create a token in these platforms.

What I've understood, they are educating their people to avoid scams. It's true that most of the exchanges or new projects are scams anyway. Though they don't condone the use of cryptocurrency but promote Blockchain. Investors could still invest in Bitcoin or the top cryptocurrencies if they want though, they just need to be creative.

Apparently, this announcement arose after the statement by the Chinese president that blockchain is a good technology and it needs to be fully implemented and supported. Since the Chinese government is generally against the spread of cryptocurrency, they are thus warning that people should not confuse cryptocurrency and blockchain.
This announcement is nothing new in the position of the Chinese government. They are now finalizing a national stable coin. We are waiting for its release to see how it will be perceived in China and generally in the world.

Blockchain is the technology cryptocurrency are just tokens or currencies for accessing various blockchain projects. To me though most cryptocurrency should not exist at the first place especially those utility tokens as projects can carry out their transactions using either Btc or Eth.

It's normal for them to think so. Because states perceive what they cannot control as a threat. So I wish they had mentioned which cryptocurrencies are more risky. Or why risky? They should have a more comprehensive and convincing explanation ...

Not shocked because its happening around the globe mostly Chinese bad actors are involved in big scams billions of dollars involve. Because of the easy issuance of tokens and coins criminals are taking advantage. Some might pretend as experts assuming they know what theyre doing but later on if they got what they want they disappear in thin air.  

I think the focus of the article is illegal crypto, including ico and trading. Opinions on the article just want to drop crypto. Indeed, there are many criteria that risk scam, but obviously there are also many that are useful as investment assets. I personally see this as very ordinary, dropping each other in search of prestige. But clearly crypto is a blockchain and a promising place for me personally.

And also with these illegal Crypto issuances and trading platforms are on the rise, there is also some method called Pump and Dump coins which will be trending investment in their country. they also need to be careful with this kind of coin. and there's some fake cloud mining that also circulating the internet, that's why they need to double-check whenever they want to engage on the crypto industry.

I wonder what china will call their coin when they release it? Cryptocurrencies coin or blockchain coin? Anyway good warning though we have too many scam acts in crypto space, fake new projects here and there

China is really on the mission to kill cryptocurrencies! We expect bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to keep growing but news from China is really affecting the market. My question is, wish coin are blockchain? Is it those that will be issued by the government? The same government that we the masses did not have confidence on.

Well, they are really just trying to take advantage of technology and not really interested in cryptocurrencies. It's said repeatedly on many media that they said people should distinguish crypto which is blockchain product and the blockchain itself. Kinda funny because I see Chinese people dominate in the market of Crypto.
Seeing them got involved in a project is not an uncommon thing but their government seem to just prohibit it.

Does this mean that China won't be launching it's own cryptocurrency again? Because if memory serves me right, I distinctly remember an announcement about the Chinese Government launching their own cryptocurrency sometime in early 2020 or is it only their own currency that would be recognised as a legit blockchain based cryptocurrency? The Chinese government should really make up their minds about what they want.

If we review in a caution it is indeed good, and in that warning it is mentioned that cryptocurrency is not a blockchain, meaning that the blockchain is good for everyone to use, unlike cryptocurrency.

This. They like gambling and get-rich-quick schemes more than other cultures, and probably thought their government had changed their minds and were legalising bitcoin and cryptocurrencies again.

Crypto isn't blockchain but its the entire brain of blockchain, i get, China should be warning its people about illegal crypto projects not the entire cryptocurrencies, bitmain is from China which is one of the larger asic miner builders

chinese communist party want to hold as much power as possible, we are entering a worldwide conflict it is similar with crypto and its inability to be egalitarian, those people controlling cryptocurrency media and cryptocurrency indexation defacto, dictate peoples life.

finance is always full of zero sum conflicts, arguments are useless, china might turn either nazi, or something else to maintain their power and financial sovereignty

I think indeed the blockchain and cryptocurrency are different entities. Blockchain is a technology used by the developer team to make cryptocurrency so I think blockchain can be used for anything, including business. Many industries have begun to look at blockchain technology for efficiency and I think this will affect people's views of cryptocurrency to be positive

China does not give a warning to the blockchain, they only give warnings to some cryptocurrency that are invalid and unfit for us to follow, so it is certainly very good for everyone, because with such a warning we can be more careful in following cryptocurrency .

Not really sure the difference because we call it crypto because its using blockchain just like the ethereum tokens uses eth chain. If they meant tokens that doesn't have its own blockchain then that must be something easy to understand but there are still lots of scams with coins that has its own blockchain.

My tiny brain can't distinguish the difference the fact that they also supported EOS, ETH, TRX which projects are using its blockchain. They are forcing people to be racist.

So what they are basically telling to their citizens is to refrain from investing in crypto currency and invest in shitty projects and tokens  ::). I am not following the Chinese drama but are they coming up with blockchain projects and whether they are inviting investments. The government can warn their citizens about fake projects and investments but do they listen to these call when it comes to bitcoin  :P.

Hopefully it will affect with positive response as well as it's outcome. Cryptocurrency is a broad and wide coverage for all people who has different views on finances. That why it's so important for the individuals to learn and grow more mature on cryptocurrency, in order to obtain a strong foundation for their assets.

Interesting warning.
The government should probably warn people not to invest in centralized projects masquerading as Blockchain.

People should simply avoid projects that are under centralized control but not regulated by governments. True decentralized and solid crypto projects are safer.

Blockchain is the brain of crypto and crypto is just merely a product, anyone could do whatever they want to the blockchain system whether modifying it entirely to create a new product and that's not wrong. But i really know that china government will impose this kind of warning considering how much pyramid scheme disguising as crypto trying to do harm and make a negative perception. but, this kind of ambigous warning could misled people into thinking negative of legit cryptos.

they always do it by calling "illegal cryptocurrency", but I don't read news about anything that is legal, this kind of thing will only increase curiosity because everything related to decentralization will always be clearly seen when searched on the internet.

the last thing I read was that they exposed the illegal ico case in China which has a server in Malaysia. A strong warning will not have a significant impact on investors, they must start publishing something legal in addition to the stable coins that the government will launch.

These news really bad for crypto curency because of China gorvernment seem not allow crypto, they just love to own blockchain tech. But i think we dont need to worry about this, China had use laws to ban bitcoin, crypto many time, so with this news i think crypto will grow stronger and stronger.  ;)

They basically just warning people (in a lot more wasteful words) that the blockchain is different from an erc20 token and since anyone can make erc20 token since the infrastructure is already there is easier to scam.
You can create your own blockchain but it is a lot harder to do and requires an investment. This eliminates a certain amount of the scammers since many scammers make erc20 tokens and don't have to invest anything other than the time they spend lying to their potential investors.

Every time China issues a ban, BTC and this market will increase strongly. I still remember 2017 China issued a ban on cryptocurrencies, shortly after a few months the price of BTC rose to 20k USD. At this point, China no longer banned cryptocurrencies, they gave positive news and caused the market to go down severely. I hope they can ban it again to the market could go up like 2017

They are 100% right, there are so many tokens nowadays that everyone invests with the hopes of making thousands of dollars in profit (and remember in china even 100 dollar profit is a lot) so gullible people invest in everything they can find with the hopes of one of them eventually might become something big.

Unfortunately, there are not that many coins that could give you that type of return, I have been involved with few very profitable ones for example but probably invested into hundreds of bad ones as well, did I made a profit? Barely or maybe not but I know that those few diamonds are very hard to find and people should focus on finding those diamonds and not invest on everything. There are many tokens/coins that owners create just to get the funds and leave.

I believe this is not the reality of the market. Over the past whenever there is positive news from any country there is some growth. The same has happened with China whenever some positive news rolls out and market used to crash on negative factors. Once Japan showed high level of support to cryptocurrency usage, by that time mass adoption happened. This got reflected on the market variation taking the price reach much high.

I think they have a right to do that. Because we cannot properly evaluate the freedom that crypto gives us, that is why we lose something in every wrong step. Since the Chinese government says it supports the blockchain, it does not want its citizens to face crypto games. This is a demonstration of how much the state cares about the people.

It is not strange at all, the blockchain is just one of the many innovations that satoshi created that made cryptocurrencies possible, it is very clear what the Chinese government is saying, they are saying that they are interested in investing and creating projects that use the blockchain but they are not interested in cryptocurrencies, which is nothing new really and nothing to be surprised about it because the Chinese government is never going to support a currency that they cannot control.

Though this information is not a new one but I just have to agree with China on this on. Most people are fond of mistaking cryptocurrency with blockchain technology most especially Bitcoin.
I guess the reason is because Bitcoin put the blockchain technology to the spot light. I think every investors should take their time and study this technology before investing in any digital currency.

China reminds investors that be careful in investing in a crypto that does not have a permit that will make people lose money and China does not agree with the ICO which is emerging at this time

The government warns its citizens beforehand, predicting that there may be those who misunderstand what they say. Indeed, the government maintains its own image. On the other hand, we know how ugly the crypto space can become, wherever we look scammers and pump-dump schemes. And in a way this means that the government also protects its citizens, either directly or indirectly.

It can be also understood like they don't know what they're talking about. There's no Bitcoin without blockchain and no blockchain without Bitcoin.

It's like they're trying to make people think that investing in bitcoin is wrong.

They are banning all crypto trading without trying to understand which of them are ponzis and which are not. This is a stupid and ignorant approach.

I am not surprised though. The new investors coming in, probably for the first time are the ones to be issued with such stern warming, but for someone who has been here for quite some time now is expected to have known and should live by it. Crypto and block chain technology are two different entities and I believe that with time, we will all get to know.

That makes the more FUD statement that comes from CHINA means nothing to the crypto and crypto looks so healthy right now because it is moving based on the development progress in the market and it's not caused by any crap statement that created by crap institution like the government.

Oops there are lots of new ICO like this. Saying they are a platform of blockchain but clearly only a platform that collect blockchain funds and using blockchain as storage but dont really used this tech as part of their project. This is a good discussion by the way, I wanted to know especially on restaurant and food industry if the projects are really connected into blockchain or just using it as as mascots to hide their true goal?

Even though that strategy isn't new, it must still be reported regularly whenever a crypto was found out to be not really using the blockchain technology. Truly, a lot of projects out there, especially in 2018, are masquerading ICOs that are created solely to accumulate funds then fail afterwards. Investors must be careful and diligent before jumping to anything in this industry.

Yeah, actually I couldn't find any "Bitcoin" word in the cited article. Thus, I assumed they weren't talking about Bitcoin.

Looking back to what they have done to Bitcoin, with mining ban, banking ban, etc., your argument seems to make sense.

However, China still the biggest hash provider with more than 65% of the global hash power. (https://www.coindesk.com/highest-in-2-years-65-of-bitcoin-hash-power-is-in-china-report-finds)

it is true, and incidents such as sending to illegal wallets are also often discussed, because it causes dumping. not only investors, everyone involved in the crypto world must also be more innovative in supporting or developing the blockchain.

They've made a decision before that resulted to the banning of crypto. It's a good reminder but they should be specific the way they talk.
It seems that they are pushing people away to invest to cryptocurrency.

what is their purpose of saying this to buy their coins, if yes their coins are crypto and not a blockchain, why do they say this, a little strange.
Alright let's see what Chinese citizens respond to this.
so bitcoin and alt are included in cryptocurrency or blockchain.
If like that so bitcoin and alt will be more forbidden in china, its a bad news :'(

When you say about the Blockchain system then you will not count Cryptocurrency in here, It's true that many people thing Cryptocurrency and Blockchain system is similar, So this is not any new thing regarding this issue. When a person wants to invest anywhere then he or she must gather proper information, So the Chinese government will certainly clarify to their people about this issue, I think this is nothing harmful to this platform, You need to get ensured where you are heading to and which thing you should choose, So for me, It's not a matter of surprising anymore.

China is playing a very big game here. One need to be very careful in this play and should not get lost. Better is to wait and watch this space for clarity. If USA start accepting crypto, then nobody can stop it.

Do not believe Chinese. They are trying to tarnish the name of the cryptocurrency and then they promote their digital yuan as the better solution. It is betetr? it is not, it only alows Chinese goverment to track every move which is made by the Chinese people. The spy state wants to keep everything under control.  ::)

Because in China, the cost to mine 1 bitcoin is very cheap, so most of the mining plants are located in China. China currently prohibits cryptocurrency and does not allow any Chinese projects to work, even new projects are banned from IEO or ICO. The government sees these as illegal activities and may be punished, they only support blockchain but not cryptocurrency

Actually they do not know about it and when they will learn then they will say that China will take every benefit from bitcoin. They will adopt bitcoin in the same way as they adopted blockchain after banning blockchain. In the previous year they banned everything related to crypto and blockcahain but when they realized and learned about blockchain they gave a statement that they will adopt it for their state. So wait a little more for them to learn about Bitcoin and its adoption by the Chinese state.

IMO.. There is nothing wrong with China warning to investors.  it is true that cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology are different, but the first who adopted Blockchain technology were cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin), cryptocurrencies cannot be separated from blockchain technology.  Blockchain is a technology, we can use Blockchain technology for transparency purposes such as elections, banking and budget transparency for a group, region or country. cmiiw

Totally agreed if the intentions are to safeguard the investors but if they say that all cryptocurrency doesn't involve blockchain then its a total lie. China created its own digital cryptocurrency so maybe this warning is to scare Chinese investor that into another cryptocurrency and just focus on using China's own crypto.

Governments have a tendency to make sweeping generalizations, they are not going to waste their time as investors do to try to find good investments and allow people to invest in those and then ban bad investments, if they did it that will be the equivalent of a government giving financial advice and that is never a good idea, and when you take into account that China doesn't really want to give their citizens any kind of freedom then you understand why they do not like cryptocurrencies.

Federalism type of government would really be always like that and its no surprise that China would really make things a mess.They've already ban out bitcoin/crypto
and now they do force out on having a warning that Crypto isnt Blockchain? I do somewhat believe that they do have some point but they shouldnt really
force to influence on what people should gonna do into their own money.

You can´t use blockchain without cryptocurrencies. Because how will you ensure the decentralization and validity of each transaction? You have to motivate people to verify transactions right?

I believe that this is the logic. Now, in principle, creating a cryptocurrency is not a problem. But whether it will be related to the development of blockchain technology is a completely different matter. All this is aimed at solving the problems associated with fraudsters in the crypto sphere. We ourselves know what crypto projects mean now, most of which are now initially scam, as they were created with the sole purpose of taking possession of investor money. Of course, you need to deal with this in all ways.