[2018-09-11] Chinese Cryptocurrency Traders Use Tether and VPNs to Bypass Ban

[ivanpoldark]

Cryptocurrency traders in China appear to have found numerous ways to circumvent the nationwide ban on trading with digital currencies. According to industry experts, as long as the transactions remain peer-to-peer and decentralized, regulators won’t be able to block them out completely. 

TETHER AND VPNS TO THE RESCUE

Quoting sources familiar to the matter, South China Morning Post reports that many retail investors, in addition to using illegal cryptocurrency exchanges, would convert their fiat into stablecoin Tether, and exchange between cryptocurrency wallets directly. All online actions are carried out through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in order to protect the anonymity of the trader and to circumvent the restrictions.

The government hasn’t taken any actions on blocking VPNs, even though a source close to the matter revealed that:

Chinese regulators definitely have the technical ability to shut down VPNs. […] However, traditionally it takes numerous conversations with different stakeholders to reach a consensus on configuring a firewall, which lengthens the process.

Some companies like Tencent have officially confirmed that they’d block transactions, or ban accounts, associated with cryptocurrency trading. How such accounts or transactions would be identified, though, is yet to be revealed.

Read more: https://bitcoinist.com/china-cryptocurrency-tether-vpn-bypass-ban/

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[Kemarit]

Oh, I thought tha the Chinese government is successful curbing out crypto trading? LOL

https://ethereumworldnews.com/china-crypto-ban-successful/

So it only means that crypto is really unstoppable. People is always smarter than the government and they will always finds way to go around trading bans or tight regulations. Just like what has been reported, using VPN's shifting one coins to another, P2P undergrounds etc. Perhaps the next step is to ban VPN's, but then again its not enough and even if they shutdown Internet, I think Chinese will continue to proceed with their tradings.

[vit05]

This is very interesting to know. There are several reports that p2p negotiations still occur naturally. If Bitcoin really proves like a currency that not even a dictatorship can stop, its future will be brilliant. Decentralization is the most important part of all cryptocurrencies.

[squatter]

The government hasn’t taken any actions on blocking VPNs

That's not really true. Beijing ordered state-owned ISPs to block individuals' use of VPNs by February 2018, ahead of an outright ban at the end of March. Some kid got sent to prison last year for selling VPN subscriptions.

I'm not sure if the ban is simply ineffective, if ISPs haven't moved to actually block use of VPNs, or some combination. It seems like it would be a game of whack-a-mole. It doesn't seem enforceable.

Some companies like Tencent have officially confirmed that they’d block transactions, or ban accounts, associated with cryptocurrency trading. How such accounts or transactions would be identified, though, is yet to be revealed.

It's not going to be effective if they can't stop people from using VPNs. People could also just start encrypting their communications.

[magneto]

Since bitcoin transactions and the network itself is decentralised, it essentially means that there is no means that a government can take to completely shut down the usage of bitcoin in a particular country.

China already has tried to ban ICOs (which may actually be positive given the state of the ICO market is in right now) and exchanges, as well as getting Wechat and Alipay to flag and suspend accounts. But none of this is going to be a completely foolproof way of stopping people that want to use bitcoin from using bitcoin. Bans can happen but the enforceability of such bans are going to be extremely low.

I guess that's the ultimate advantage of decentralisation in bitcoin, that governments cannot exert ultimate control over the entire system, and that the supply of the coin is hard coded so that again, governments cannot debase the coin.

[Samarkand]

...
TETHER AND VPNS TO THE RESCUE
...

This would imply that a lot of the money that ended up in the bank accounts of Tether
actually belongs to Chinese citizens and not to institutional investors as many people
initially claimed. If this is true, the effect of Asian buyers (China, Japan + South Korea) on
the 2017 bull run was even bigger than previously expected.

...
It's not going to be effective if they can't stop people from using VPNs.
...

I guess that they don´t really care about the few people, who bypass the bans by using a VPN.
90 % of people won´t bother with a VPN or are not tech-savvy enough to use one and therefore
the ban is actually working as intended for the majority of people. There will always be a few people
that are either criminal or creative enough to circumvent any kind of ban.

[figmentofmyass]

I guess that they don´t really care about the few people, who bypass the bans by using a VPN.
90 % of people won´t bother with a VPN or are not tech-savvy enough to use one and therefore
the ban is actually working as intended for the majority of people. There will always be a few people
that are either criminal or creative enough to circumvent any kind of ban.

i wouldn't say they don't care. after all, VPN users were the minority before the ban, so of course they're still the minority after. that doesn't really say whether the ban is working. i'm reading that most of the VPNs available in China before the ban are still available now, so they must not be enforcing it heavily. from an end user perspective, that's not much deterrent.

a survey earlier this year showed 14% of chinese internet users were using a VPN daily, or ~100 million users per day. i wonder what overall VPN usage looks like if that's just daily users. seems significant to me.

[timerland]

Cryptocurrency traders in China appear to have found numerous ways to circumvent the nationwide ban on trading with digital currencies. According to industry experts, as long as the transactions remain peer-to-peer and decentralized, regulators won’t be able to block them out completely. 

TETHER AND VPNS TO THE RESCUE

Quoting sources familiar to the matter, South China Morning Post reports that many retail investors, in addition to using illegal cryptocurrency exchanges, would convert their fiat into stablecoin Tether, and exchange between cryptocurrency wallets directly. All online actions are carried out through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in order to protect the anonymity of the trader and to circumvent the restrictions.

The government hasn’t taken any actions on blocking VPNs, even though a source close to the matter revealed that:

Chinese regulators definitely have the technical ability to shut down VPNs. […] However, traditionally it takes numerous conversations with different stakeholders to reach a consensus on configuring a firewall, which lengthens the process.

Some companies like Tencent have officially confirmed that they’d block transactions, or ban accounts, associated with cryptocurrency trading. How such accounts or transactions would be identified, though, is yet to be revealed.

Read more: https://bitcoinist.com/china-cryptocurrency-tether-vpn-bypass-ban/

Interesting piece.

I think it demonstrates the benefits of having a decentralized currency, which in a way, is extremely resilient to government bans and censorship. When China banned local exchanges, people would simply have moved to foreign exchanges like Binance. And when these were blocked as well, they simply moved onto another method, p2p trading or the use of VPNs and pegged cryptos as this article suggests. Bans on bitcoin can happen, but they are impossible to enforce on a national level, which is why bitcoin is so useful.

The thing is that there are also legitimate industries which require the use of a VPN, which makes the blocking of VPNs unfeasible. Also, I'm sure that even if they were blocked, soon there will be more loopholes that would open up to get out of the restrictions of the great firewall.