Users in China are currently unable to access CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, the two leading data websites in the cryptocurrency market, due to China’s internet firewall restrictions.
China turns on the firewall to block CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap
An experiment from The Block showed that both big data crypto websites, CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, were blocked by China’s Internet firewall.
In addition, the search results on Greatfire.org – a specialized tool to check the list of websites censored by China’s Great Firewall – also showed that these two websites were 100% blocked as of press time. Currently, it is not clear when CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap have been blocked. However, users began to notice traffic congestion early on September 28 (China local time).
Source: GreatFire
CoinGecko co-founder TM Lee said they are not actively cutting off China’s IP access. Instead, it was the country’s Internet censorship agency that put CoinGecko on the firewall-blocked list.
“As far as we know, we didn’t block proactively,” CoinGecko co-founder TM Lee told The Block.
This move shows that China is stepping up its crackdown on cryptocurrency trading and mining and wants to limit people’s access to market information. However, Chinese people can still bypass the firewall and access these two websites by routing through a virtual private network (VPN).
VPN usage is increasing dramatically in the Chinese crypto community. Especially after the PBoC introduced tough measures to thoroughly crackdown on cryptocurrencies on September 24. Concerned about government retaliation, the administrator of many crypto chat groups on the WeChat application had to change their name to hide. Or they dissolve the group on WeChat and switch to Telegram.
Many of them are also actively posting VPN setup guides and encouraging group chats on Telegram. According to them, this makes discussing cryptocurrencies more secure.
Read more:
- China Didn’t Ban Bitcoin, But Regulators Have Their Eyes On Crypto Exchanges
- First Mining Pool F2Pool Has Started Banning Users From China