China crypto crackdown is far from over — it wants to add Bitcoin mining to the list of ‘eliminated’ industries and over 20 companies have already moved out

• China’s top economic planning agency has added Bitcoin mining to the draft list of industries to be eliminated from the country’s economy.
• After the country’s detailed guidelines to get rid of all crypto-related businesses last month, over 20 companies have plans to move out.
• Many of these companies were founded in China and are now looking for a new home.

China doesn’t want anything to do with cryptocurrencies, unless it’s the digital yuan — a stance that it reiterated last month when ten government departments, including the central bank, issued a joint statement frowning upon all crypto-related services.

As a result, over 20 companies have chosen to withdraw from the Chinese market altogether, according to data cited by the China Securities Journal. This includes all businesses from crypto exchanges to software developers, and news publications.

Moreover, China's top economic planning agency — China National Development and Reform Commission — has added Bitcoin mining to the draft list of eliminated industries currently seeking public comment.

The renewed crackdown comes after mining companies were already shown the door in May. Within Sichuan province alone, over 26 companies were ordered to shut down under suspicion of being involved in crypto mining activities.

China’s crypto exchanges are looking for a new home

Chinese crypto exchange BitZ announced that it will be shutting down earlier today. It stopped new user registration for users from China on September 26 and will officially cease operations altogether on October 21. The company has promised that user assets will be returned and the platform’s native token, the DKKT cryptocurrency, will be bought back.

Earlier this month, KuCoin Exchange announced that all users from China will have to withdraw their funds and close their accounts by the end of the year. China’s biggest crypto exchange, Huobi, was also forced to accelerate its plans to leave its home market along with Binance. “Our strategy is all about going global now,” Huobi co-founder Du Jun told Bloomberg.

Even China’s oldest crypto exchange, BTCC, has confirmed the closure of its trading businesses after a decade of operating in the country. Others like BiKi, BHEX, CoinEx and Renrenbit are following suit.

Companies are looking to get ahead of any official ban

The statement issued by Chinese authorities stops one step short of calling cryptocurrency transactions ‘illegal’. But companies have taken the guidelines to mean that the Asian Dragon’s crackdown is far from over.

TokenPocket, a popular service provider of crypto wallets, has said that it will be terminating services to Chinese clients as it "actively embraces" regulation. OneKey, another crypto wallet provider, announced that it will terminate some of the functional services for users based out of China, on September 30.

Spark Pool, the largest Ethereum mining pool, will also no longer be working with Chinese users. NBMINER — the company that produces software for mining machines — is also distancing itself from the market.

Even companies that aren’t directly involved in the crypto market are backing away. The biggest example being China’s internet giant, Alibaba, which announced that it will no longer be selling crypto mining equipment on its site.