China continues virtual currency ban

China's central bank is carrying out new measures to ban initial coin offerings and virtual currencies on Tuesday, aiming to maintain the country's financial market stability.

According to the central bank's Shanghai head office, regulators will continue to strengthen supervision over 124 platforms that set up servers abroad and provide virtual currency services to Chinese mainland residents, as well as block these platforms.

The regulators will also reinforce clean-up and rectification of payment and settlement processes, and guide payment institutions to manage payment channels, identify customers and warn of risks. They will also create a monitoring and inspection mechanism, and stop providing services for suspicious transactions.

Currently, about 3,000 accounts engaged in virtual currency dealings have been closed.

The regulators will closely monitor initial coin offerings, or ICOs, as well as ICO variants.

In addition, the regulators also strengthened their disposition on newfound domestic websites, public accounts and self-media, which are related to ICO and virtual currency dealings.

Some public accounts suspected of spreading and hyping ICO and virtual currency dealings have been permanently blocked.

The central bank said ICOs are an unauthorized illegal public financing move, and speculation and hyping of virtual currencies disturbs economic, financial and social order.

As China has taken strict action to hit ICOs and virtual currencies, the global share of virtual currency dealings in the Chinese mainland has fallen from 90 percent to less than 5 percent.