Beijing vs bitcoin: why China is cracking down on crypto

Beijing vs bitcoin: why China is cracking down on crypto

How to become a bitcoin millionaire” is a common theme of videos on TikTok, the app built by Beijing-based company ByteDance. In clip after clip, young influencers teach others how to follow in their footsteps, showing off lifestyles funded by crypto wealth.

Yet the experience when I open ByteDance’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, is a contrast. As I search for Bitebi (Chinese for bitcoin), the platform cues up negative videos for me to watch.

In the first, racks of whirring computers mining bitcoin are captioned with a note informing me that, annually, they consume more power than 100 countries. In another, the speaker ends a bitcoin monologue: “Why don’t we just play with a bunch of air instead? You buy mine and I’ll buy yours.”

Why are the two apps so different? It is not that young people in China are so different from their foreign peers. But Beijing controls what content they can see and ByteDance must censor its sites in line with the government’s priorities. Increasingly, that means closely monitoring content related to digital coins such as bitcoin. 

Last month, the People’s Bank of China and nine other agencies, including the public security bureau, made all cryptocurrency transactions illegal. Major exchanges where investors