Agricultural Bank of China restricts the use of digital assets
The Agricultural Bank of China has tightened its policy for cryptocurrency transactions. The institution now has the power to block the accounts of customers who are suspected of carrying out transactions using digital money.
China Agricultural Bank, ABC, is the third largest bank in the country and has a large customer base. Now, however, the number of users may decrease as the financial institution intends to block suspicious transactions. Contracts will also be terminated unilaterally. Such a statement from the bank caused a wave of indignation, and after a while this publication was removed from the official website.
According to a number of experts, such demands from the ABC are not an isolated case. Rather, the Chinese government has obliged all financial institutions to limit transactions that involve digital assets. It is expected that in the near future a similar message will come from the People’s Bank of China. Experts came to this conclusion after a meeting with representatives from five financial institutions in the country and the electronic payment system Alipay. According to several sources, the regulator urged banks to eliminate the possibility of transactions using cryptocurrency.
The news had an impact on the bitcoin exchange rate, which fell by 7% to $32,000 just in half an hour. Within two weeks, a law banning the mining of digital money began to take effect in four Chinese provinces.
The Agricultural Bank is a strategic institution for China. It was organized in 1951, and in addition to the country, has offices in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Frankfurt, London, Seoul, New York and other major cities around the world. In total there are 24,000 branches.
ABC serves more than 320 million retail customers, 2.7 million corporate clients. In 2010, the bank carried out an initial public offering, at that time it was the largest IPO in the history of the global stock market, exceeded only by the listing of the oil and gas company Saudi Aramco. ABC is one of the ten largest banks in the world, and is ranked fifth in the current Forbes Global 2000 list.
During its history, the bank has gone through a lot of transformations and reforms. In 1952 it was merged with the Central Bank of China, and in 1963 it was organized as another agricultural bank, followed by several stages of mergers with other institutions.
The ABC as it exists today appeared in 1979, at which time it was transformed into a financial holding company. After that, the institution began to actively build up its customer base.
