The huge risk of coin speculation is spreading outward from the coin circle, accelerating the erosion of the financial credit of coin speculators, and even endangering normal life.
Since the beginning of this year, the domestic virtual currency supervision has become more and more stringent, the price of coins has frequently plummeted, and coin speculators have been deeply involved in losses and unable to extricate themselves. In addition to the disappearance of book wealth, some people's bank card deposits have been frozen, and others have been restricted from using WeChat Pay.
On the morning of May 21, coin speculator Chen Yong found that two bank cards had been frozen, one of which was a payroll card. Most of his funds are stored in this card, and if he can't withdraw it for a long time, even his daily life will be a problem.
Chen Yong has repeatedly sought to thaw, but he has never succeeded, and on the day of the dog's currency plunge, he even had the idea of going to Hengshan to worship the Buddha and burn incense.
Another coin speculator, Xiaomin, sold Dogecoin on a virtual currency exchange called "Sesame Open Door" on May 20, cashing out 50,000 yuan, and then bought Dogecoin on another exchange, Huobi.
Unexpectedly, the next day she found that her bank card could not be swiped. The bank's customer service informed Xiaomin that his bank card had been judicially frozen because of "abnormal flow".
Xiao Min had no idea that freezing bank cards would fall on his own head. There are tens of thousands of dollars of frozen money, and if she can't unfreeze for a long time, she will have to save money for a period of time. In addition, according to the relevant regulations, bank deposits may no longer generate interest during the freezing period, which is also a considerable loss.
In order to figure out the reason, Xiaomin carefully took stock of past transactions. She found that in a transaction, the cumulative flow of virtual currency buyers was too large, which may trigger the bank's risk control mechanism and eventually affect herself as a seller.
Xiaomin then included the above-mentioned sellers in the "blacklist of legal tender transactions" opened by Sesame. But the effectiveness of this blacklist is limited to the exchange and will not have more impact on the latter than preventing future transactions between the two parties.
In addition to the freezing of bank deposits, there are also coin speculators who are prohibited from using the WeChat collection function.
In April this year, Wang Meng spent 5,000 yuan on Huobi to buy a virtual currency called USDT. When using WeChat Pay to transfer money, WeChat prompted "the other party is suspected of fraud, please be cautious", but Wang Meng was eager to buy coins and ignored the warning to continue trading.
A month later, Wang Meng found that the WeChat collection function had been frozen on the grounds that it was "suspected of fraudulent transactions" and could not be restored until August this year. Wang Meng submitted four or five applications to the WeChat official, but has not yet been able to unblock.
Alphabet list (ID: wujicaijing) noted that at least since 2019, the domestic currency circle began to appear due to speculation led to the freezing of bank accounts. According to the current policy, cryptocurrency trading is not illegal; but in the black industrial chain such as online gambling, telecommunications fraud, ransomware, and "pig killing disks", it is often used for money laundering, and there are high-frequency and large abnormal capital flows in the bank accounts associated with it, which can easily trigger regulatory actions such as freezing and prohibiting transactions.
Recently, major currencies such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin have soared and plummeted, and the bookmakers have fought day and night, and the wealth "myth" seems to be staged at all times. The resulting series of chaos has aroused the high attention and intensive crackdown of domestic regulatory authorities, and the situation of coin speculators encountering bank or judicial freezes has increased significantly.
Under the strict supervision and control, there are many speculators like Chen Yong, Xiaomin, and Wang Meng whose bank accounts have been frozen. However, compared with the speculators who burst their positions, although their money cannot be withdrawn, at least it has not been lost, and most of the former have lost their money.
Zheng Qi, who calls himself the "old leek in the coin circle", suddenly received various burst text messages on the night of May 28, and the bitcoin bought at 200,000 yuan was reduced to 20,000 yuan, almost all of which were lost.
"I stopped the loss when Bitcoin was still at $38,500. As a result, on the morning of the 28th, I saw a group of speculators that said that the expiration of 1.8 billion options would rise, and I bought a long contract for a while, and as a result, the coins have been falling on the same day, and there are only 20,000 left in the position that night, and now the intestines are remorseful. Zheng Qi said.
A few weeks ago, Zheng Qi was still addicted to speculating in coins without the heart to work, and even fantasized about getting rich and not going to work, and now he no longer holds out hope, "When the warehouse is blown up, it is very desperate, and people really can't be too greedy."
When I first started speculating on coins, I tasted the sweetness, so I invested more and more money, but good luck could not always accompany it, and various black swan events led to the rise and fall of the price of the coin, losing more and more, but I was reluctant to clear the position, and it was difficult to get out - this is almost the common fate of the speculators.
A
On May 18, the China Internet Finance Association, the China Banking Association and the China Payment and Clearing Association jointly issued an announcement requiring relevant institutions not to carry out any business related to virtual currency, including services such as virtual currency registration, trading, clearing, and settlement, and using virtual currency as an investment target for trusts, funds, and other investments.
The bearish introduction, the virtual currency collapsed across the board. Less than a month after its establishment, the group name changed from "Dogecoin Player Exchange Group" to "Leek Garden Sharing Group".
Many friends said that there was a slight floating profit before, and the situation took a sharp turn for the worse after May 19. An Zhen had previously earned 10,000 yuan, and now she has lost all the principal. He described the current Dogecoin as "the big market fell and it fell sharply, and the big market rose and it didn't rise."
On the evening of May 25, someone counted the profit and loss in the group. Among the more than 30 speculators, only two earned 5,000 and 300 yuan respectively, and the others all lost money, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan.
As the leader of the group, Zhao Xiao is also very worried, "living in fear, every day when you open your eyes is to read all kinds of currency circle news, in case one day the supervision hits the group, as long as there is a little wind and grass, this group is not far from disbandment." ”
Transaction data from third-party platforms shows that on the night of May 19, the amount of virtual currency explosions on the whole network exceeded 40 billion yuan; and the decline in the market did not stop here, and continued to trigger blow-ups in the following days. At 15:00 on May 24-25, more than 140,000 people broke up their virtual currency leveraged trading positions, with an amount of more than 4.6 billion yuan.
But there are still people who are reluctant to quit the game. They are pinning their hopes on new virtual currencies in an attempt to turn around.
The C bit of the coin circle has changed again and again, and the original Bitcoin, Litecoin, and later various zoo coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have no longer been the main talking objects of speculators. New unfamiliar faces such as MAT, HTMOON, ONECC, etc. have become new favorites. Some people in the speculation group said, "If Dogecoin does not rise again, I will throw it all away to buy HTM."
The currency circle is sluggish, but the stock fund has ushered in a wave of rise.
On May 26, A shares broke through 3600 points. Some speculators laughed in the group and said, "The money earned in the stock market is all lost on the virtual currency, and it is a big deal to go back to the stock market to fight."
B
Nowadays, one after another people have withdrawn from the speculation group, and Sharp, who played the contract and was blown up, is one of them. He told alphabet lists that he had uninstalled all the coin-flipping software and would never play the contract again, "almost didn't lose his wife Ben."
But others choose to stay behind, even after police alerts to the risks.
On May 23, after Anzhen purchased MAT virtual coins on Huobi Online, she received three anti-fraud text messages from the local public security bureau within one day, reminding her to pay attention to the anti-fraud video number, install the anti-fraud APP, and operate cautiously.
This is not uncommon. Another coin speculator, Xiao Rong, also received a call from the local police station on the day of the transaction, which said that the system monitored the high risk and asked her if she had been cheated of money recently.
But An Zhen did not withdraw from the coin circle. He told alphabet that one of the reasons for speculating in coins is because virtual currency trading is closer to the free market than the stock market and real estate, and there is no complicated trading mode and operating procedures between retail investors and institutions, which is more friendly to novices.
However, with the introduction of a series of regulatory policies, the convenience of coin speculation is shrinking at an accelerated rate, liquidity is severely restricted, and the so-called "free market" is becoming an unrealistic illusion.
Three days after the promulgation of the "518 Announcement", the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council clearly stated that "the next step should be to take targeted measures to carry out centralized rectification activities for virtual currency mining and trading behavior." Subsequently, a number of virtual currency trading platforms and service platforms announced the withdrawal from China or the suspension of trading.
On May 23, Huobi announced that in order to cooperate with the latest regulatory policies, it will suspend the provision of mining machine and derivative services for users in Chinese mainland; suspend the provision of mining machine custody services for users who have purchased BTC mining machine products, and the machine will be removed from the shelves on the same day.
Another exchange, Bybit, announced that it will close all Chinese mobile phone number registration accounts from June 15 and restrict the login of all Chinese mobile phone number registration accounts. Prior to this, Bybit had restricted the login of all Chinese IP users in September 2020.
Among other smaller trading platforms, Mars Cloud Mine blocked ip access Chinese mainland on May 26; hashro bees announced the suspension of sales of Bitcoin and Ethereum-related products.
Under the changes in the exchange, speculators keep switching the main position.
Wang Meng is gradually transferring virtual currency assets to a certain platform. In his view, there are Blue Shield buyers with high credit on this platform, and transactions are not easy to be banned, "after all, Huobi and OKEX have had too many accidents recently."
"In short, we need to be more cautious." Chen Yong said to the alphabet list. He began to speculate in coins from the previous year, compared with previous years, he and his friends feel that this year's magic rise and fall in the currency circle has the most incidents and the strongest supervision.
"We, the small retail investors, are currently selling knee chops, waist chops are light. But in any case, it will not go up to do anything illegal. He said.
When discussing policy regulation, retail investors are extremely anxious. Some people began to claim that it was not safe to trade on Huobi, and some people attributed the reasons for freezing bank cards, being harassed by strange overseas phones, and receiving calls from police stations to platform problems.
At the same time, they try various methods to avoid risks. For example, reduce the amount of investment, multiple small transactions, so as not to be targeted by supervision, or first confirm the seller's turnover record before trading. One of the consensus is that "the kind of transaction that is all large orders is likely to involve money laundering".
C
The wealth of downstream speculators has shrunk, and the upstream virtual currency "mining" has also entered the cold winter.
On May 18, the building of Shenzhen Huaqiang North SEG Building shook. Because a large number of mining machine merchants gathered in the building, the outside world joked that a large number of mining machines operated at the same time caused resonance, causing the stairs to shake. Although it is only a joke, the high energy consumption and safety risks in the mining industry have once again become the focus of public opinion.
"Mining" virtual currency requires the use of a large number of special mining machines, 24/7 high-intensity calculations. This process requires a lot of electricity, which, in addition to increasing the load on the grid, runs counter to the national strategic goal of carbon neutrality. At the same time, the virtual currency produced by the mine will neither bring taxes to the region, nor can it create jobs on a large scale, only to be absorbed but not returned.
Regulatory policies for mining soon landed, and the first to be shot were inland provinces such as Inner Mongolia and Sichuan. Due to the low price of electricity, these areas have become the first choice for players in the currency circle to open "mines".
On May 25, the Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission issued a policy to crack down on virtual currency mining, and to reduce energy consumption budget indicators for industrial parks, data centers, captive power plants, etc., which provide sites and power support for virtual currency mining enterprises.
Two days later, the Sichuan Regulatory Office of the National Energy Administration issued a notice saying that in order to fully understand the situation related to virtual currency mining in Sichuan, it was decided to organize a research symposium on June 2.
"Old miner" Zheng Jiu once made money by mining. He told alphabet that under the strict state control situation, this year's Chinese cryptocurrency industry will have a high probability of all leaving overseas or going underground.
Mines going to sea are nothing new. In September 2017, seven ministries and commissions, including the Chinese Min min bank, issued the "Announcement on Preventing the Financing Risks of Token Issuance", and the virtual token market immediately went underground after a brief dive, and domestic mines were transferred overseas.
Today, under the unprecedented strict regulatory situation, domestic mining farms are accelerating their going overseas. In addition to policy factors, some countries with richer natural resources have lower electricity generation costs and relatively low electricity prices, making them the main destinations for this migration.
Operators of overseas mines say that the supply of overseas mines has been seriously outstripped recently: Russian mines are all full; kazakhstan's mines have been previously uninhabited, but in the past week, calls have been almost exploded, and electricity prices in some areas have risen by 40%.
But Zheng Jiu believes that "even if it is transferred overseas, the costs of electricity, operation and maintenance are there, it may not be a long-term solution, and the risk will continue unabated."
Under the general trend of strengthening supervision in countries around the world, the myth of virtual currency sudden wealth has been shattered. Speculators have cut meat and left, and those who stay behind only expect to lose less. Platforms and mines were forced out to sea, and the future was uncertain. Thirteen years after Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and ignited the wildfire of virtual currencies, the long show that began with technological innovation and finally beat the drum is slowly closing.