In China, the court for the first time arrested cryptocurrency

Chinese law enforcement agencies confiscate $160 million in an unnamed cryptocurrency through mediation with the issuer

For the first time, the Chinese authorities were able to freeze $160 million in cryptocurrency through the courts. This is reported by the local newspaper Toutiao, citing details of the investigation. According to the translation from Chinese, law enforcement agencies were able to arrest the cryptocurrency in cooperation with a certain "issuer of virtual currency".

It is unclear what kind of cryptocurrency and issuer we are talking about. Previously, Tether, which issues the stablecoin tether (USDT), has repeatedly frozen USDT wallets on suspicion of misconduct. Whether we are talking about Tether is unknown. The news outlet claims that cryptocurrency was used on gambling web sites. During the investigation, Beijing arrested three suspects.

At the beginning of the year, the media learned about the refusal of Chinese money changers from USDT based on the TRON network (TRC20 standard). According to Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu, local "money changers" require customers to convert TRC20 to the Ethereum network standard (ERC20). He noted that local exchangers are concerned about claims to TRC20-based tokens from the American blockchain firm Chainalysis.

In June, Bloomberg journalists found out that Tether's reserves include short-term loans to Chinese companies worth billions of dollars. At the same time, the issuer of the stablecoin itself has previously denied any ties with the Chinese market. According to journalists, Tether had securities of large Chinese state-owned companies, including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and others. All of them had a maturity in 2020 or 2021.