China’s crypto prohibition is often described as a single ban from 2021, but in February 2026 it was formally updated and widened. On 6 February 2026, eight Chinese authorities, including the People’s Bank of China, the NDRC, the CSRC and the foreign-exchange regulator SAFE, issued a joint notice that superseded the 2021 circular. Understanding what it changed matters for anyone trying to read China’s real position.
What the new notice does
The core prohibition was reaffirmed: virtual currency trading and mining-related business activities remain banned on the mainland. But the 2026 notice went further in two directions. First, it expressly covered RMB-linked stablecoins, closing the argument that a yuan-pegged token issued offshore sat outside the rules. Second, it reached overseas tokenisation, restricting Chinese companies from issuing real-world-asset tokens abroad without authorisation. The message is that moving an activity offshore no longer moves it outside Beijing’s reach.
Why the rules tightened
- Coverage of the tightening pointed to consumer-protection disasters, including the June 2025 collapse of Xinkangjia DGCX, where around 2 million investors lost roughly 13 billion yuan, about $1.9 billion.
- Enforcement attention has focused heavily on cross-border foreign-exchange schemes using crypto to move money out of China.
- The expansion arrived alongside the promotion of the state alternative, the digital yuan.
The part of the story that refuses to die
Despite years of prohibition, China has not disappeared from crypto’s infrastructure. Data cited by mining analysts at Luxor still attributes over 14 percent of the global Bitcoin hashrate to China, ranking it third behind the United States and Russia. Mining at that scale, years after the ban, underlines the gap that can exist between rules on paper and activity on the ground, and why enforcement, not announcements, is the real story.
For readers outside China, the February notice mainly matters as a boundary marker: mainland China remains closed to private crypto business, full stop. Anyone marketing crypto services to mainland users, or structures designed to route around the rules, is operating against an explicit and recently refreshed prohibition, with serious legal risk attached.
