WeChat bans all NFT and crypto activity

China’s leading social media platform in China, WeChat, has instated that accounts that provide access to crypto or NFT-related services are now banned from its platform in a recent policy update.

Under the new guidelines, accounts involved with the trading, issuance, and financing of crypto and NFTs will fall under the ‘illegal business’ category, restricted or outright banned from using Wechat’s services. 

Such policies also cover secondary NFT trading. WeChat states that ‘accounts that provide services or content related to the secondary transaction of digital collections shall also be dealt with in accordance with this article.’

The firm also gave a stern warning to potential rulebreakers, stating , ‘once such violations are discovered, the WeChat public platform will, according to the severity of the violations, order the violating official accounts to rectify within a time limit and restrict some functions of the account until the permanent account is banned.’ In other words, if the severity of the case is deemed large enough, the rulebreaker will be permanently banned from the platform.

Back in March, WeChat had already suspended a dozen NFT public accounts that market NFTs in an effort to clean up crypto speculation. The frozen accounts operated under the names - Huasheng Meta and Spirit Leap, which announced publicly that they were suspended after ‘being reported by others’. Their accounts can no longer be found in search results, and subscribers are greeted with a line that reads ‘no legal permit or licence to publish, disseminate, or engage in related business activities’ upon visiting the frozen accounts.

The policy update comes at a time when Chinese firms are seeking to comply with Beijing’s warnings against speculative activity in NFTs. The Chinese government has implemented a phased ban in the NFT sector between May and September 2021.

WhaleTalk, Ant-group owned platform for digital collectibles in China, is another such platform affected by the government’s negative stance on Blockchain technology. It has begun to distance themselves from the technology by eliminating or banning NFT services from their platforms.

Photo: Getty