Speaking at a press conference amid the Two Sessions, China's annual political event, People's Bank of China (PBoC) governor Zhou Xiaochuan took aim at cryptocurrency projects that have shifted away from their purported use cases in favor of promoting what is essentially market speculating.
"Lots of cryptocurrencies have seen explosive growth which can bring significant negative impact on consumers and retail investors," Zhou said. "We don't like (cryptocurrency) products that make huge opportunity for speculation that gives people the illusion of getting rich overnight."
The comment may signal an increasing level of scrutiny down the road by the PBoC over initial coin offerings and trading services that are still available for domestic investors, even after regulators issued a ban on ICOs and essentially pushed fiat-to-crypto exchanges out of the domestic market.
His comments seem weird to me, given that China closed down all it's exchanges last year. Does the PBoC suspect that Chinese citizens are still trading crypto and that the Chinese govt has lost control?