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China owns more crypto than most governments even admit exists, and it all came from law enforcement seizures, mostly connected to the PlusToken scam, which collapsed in 2019. According to a 2020 ruling by the Jiangsu Yancheng Intermediate People’s Court, authorities seized:
- 194,775 BTC
- 833,083 ETH
- 487 million XRP
- 6 billion DOGE
- 79,581 BCH
- 1.4 million LTC
- 27.6 million EOS
- 74,167 DASH, and;
- 213,724 USDT
PlusToken had pulled in over $2 billion worth of crypto from investors around the world. The fraud started in 2018, when a group of scammers based in China and claiming to be from South Korea launched an app that promised monthly returns between 9% and 18%.
The PlusToken app was marketed as a crypto wallet and investment platform. It operated using a multi-level marketing model, requiring users to bring in more people.
Over two million people fell for it, sending crypto to the platform with the hope of earning high rewards. But there was no trading, no arbitrage, and no profits—just new money used to pay off earlier investors.
By mid-2019, users started reporting that they couldn’t withdraw their funds. That’s when investigators discovered that wallets were being drained, and the funds were being moved out. Authorities in China responded fast.
They arrested 27 top members of the PlusToken team, plus 82 others linked to the case. The full list of what they took in the raid was released by the court in November 2020, revealing the scale of the seizure.
The total value of the crypto at the time was exactly $4 .2 billion. At currents prices though, they’re worth $20.77 billion. Yeesh!
China took the crypto but said almost nothing after
After the arrests and asset seizures, the court ruling said the funds would be “processed pursuant to laws and the proceeds and gains will be forfeited to the national treasury.”
That’s all anyone officially heard. There was no public info about how, when, or if the assets were sold. That silence kicked off years of speculation.
By January 2025, it’s still not officially clear if China still holds those assets or if they’ve been sold. But some on-chain analysts say they’ve seen the trail. Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, posted that on-chain data shows the Bitcoin was moved to exchanges like Huobi (now HTX) soon after it was seized. He said:
“China sold 194K Bitcoin already, [in my opinion]. PlusToken’s seized BTC in 2019 was sent to Chinese exchanges like Huobi. The CCP said it was ‘transferred to the national treasury’ without clarifying if it was sold. A censored regime holding censorship-resistant money feels unlikely. The CCP hasn’t confirmed a sale, which is why people still talk about the 194K BTC. On-chain data tells a different story: they sold everything, using mixers to distribute funds across exchanges in 2019. I trust on-chain, not the CCP.”
The Chinese government has never confirmed the sale or given any breakdown of where the funds are now. But if Young Ju’s right, that would mean one of the largest known BTC dumps in crypto history was done without any public statements, exchange warnings, or official notice, which you got to admit is just a classic China move.
Beijing cracked down on crypto while Hong Kong kept building
While the PlusToken saga played out, China’s central government was tightening its grip on everything crypto. Starting in 2013, authorities began cutting off bank support to crypto exchanges.
In 2017, they went further—banning initial coin offerings (ICOs) and telling major exchanges to shut down. That was when Binance, founded by Zhao Changpeng in Shanghai, moved to Hong Kong after just two months of operating on the mainland.
By May 2021, Liu He, China’s Vice Premier, said the country would crack down on bitcoin mining and trading behavior, citing risks to financial stability and environmental concerns.
That same year, in September, the People’s Bank of China officially declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal. That move effectively shut down all legal crypto activity in the country.
But Hong Kong was a different story. While the mainland locked everything down, Hong Kong became a sandbox for crypto, with major players like Bitfinex, ANX (which later became OSL), and FTX setting up operations there.
Traders used price gaps between regions for arbitrage. Developers worked around regulations. By 2025, Hong Kong is still active, even though its ties to the mainland have tightened politically.
China wants the blockchain, but without its coins
Despite banning crypto, China’s leadership hasn’t walked away from the technology behind it. In October 2019, President Xi Jinping said blockchain should be treated as a core technology and pushed for more research and investment.
The government added it to the official five-year plan in 2021. But the focus has been on enterprise tech and centralized systems, not crypto assets.
One example is the Blockchain Service Network (BSN), built by Red Date Technology. The company’s CEO, He Yifan, said BSN is now focused on blockchain-based digital ID, which lets people transact without giving personal info to third parties. Yifan said this tech is meant to work without crypto, which still remains banned in China.
Still, some think the door to crypto isn’t fully shut. He Yifan said:
“If China doesn’t open up to crypto before Donald Trump leaves office, then it probably won’t ever open up, because it will definitely become even more difficult later. With Trump in office, at least there is still room for discussion.”
Yifan also said that if mainland users are allowed to use licensed exchanges in Hong Kong, that could turn the city into the global center of crypto—but only if the red lines aren’t crossed.
Yifan explained that mainlanders would still be stuck with the $50,000 annual foreign exchange cap, and no crypto could be used to send funds overseas. “The inflow and outflow of money remain the most sensitive issue and will never be relaxed,” he said.
President Trump, now in his second term, is going in the opposite direction from China. He ran on a pro-crypto platform and signed an executive order to create a strategic bitcoin reserve for the U.S. That move is part of his push to make America the leader in crypto, while China continues to treat it as a threat.
Old addresses still move coins linked to early China crypto days
China’s crypto history didn’t start with PlusToken or even with Binance. It goes back to 2012, when a user named Friedcat posted on BitcoinTalk that he was launching a company to build ASIC hardware for bitcoin mining.
His real name is Jiang Xinyu, and he promised to pay dividends from mining profits. People sent money. The company was called ASICMiner. It worked for a while, but eventually collapsed after complaints about missed payments and undelivered machines.
That didn’t stop the rise of crypto in China. With cheap power and fast factories, the country quickly became the top place for making mining gear and mining coins. That lasted until the bans began rolling in. Even after that, remnants of the early days are still showing up on-chain.
After the November 5, 2024 presidential election, one of the old Bitcoin addresses linked to Friedcat sent out over 206 BTC, worth $19.6 million. It was the first major movement from that address in seven years, and it nearly emptied the wallet.
