A shakeup at China’s central bank has poured cold water on speculation that the nation may be about to loosen a ban on digital-asset trading.
Industry executives including Circle Internet Financial Ltd. Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire have seized on Beijing’s quiet backing of Hong Kong’s push to become a crypto hub to argue that the mainland may reverse its policy. They got a reminder about the risks of such extrapolations when Pan Gongsheng was named the top Communist Party official at the People’s Bank of China.
The move potentially puts Pan in the running for PBOC governor and was viewed as a signal of policy continuity at the institution, which in 2021 declared all crypto-related transactions illegal. The appointment Saturday also surfaced some historic but unusually colorful comments for a Chinese bureaucrat, which Pan made in the midst of an earlier clampdown on crypto.
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