The People’s Bank of China officially banned security token offering (STO) businesses on Saturday, in another blow to digital currencies in mainland China. An STO is an initial coin offering (ICO) backed by tangibles such as assets, or profit or revenue of a company. An ICO is fundraising activity that allows digital currency start-ups to raise funds through the creation and sale of digital “tokens”.
Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, told an internet finance forum in Beijing that “illegal” financing activities through STOs and ICOs were still rampant in the mainland despite a nationwide clean-up of the cryptocurrency market last year.
“The STO business that has surfaced recently is still essentially an illegal financial activity in China,” he told the forum, according to state-owned China Central Television. “Virtual money has become an accomplice to all kinds of illegal and criminal activities.”
In what amounts to a top financial official acknowledging the ban on ICOs and STOs for the first time, Pan said most of the financing operations conducted through ICOs in China were suspected of being illegal fundraising, pyramid sales schemes and other financial fraud.
Beijing launched a crackdown on ICOs in September last year, ordering all platforms to halt digital currency issuance immediately. Before the crackdown, 80 per cent of the world’s virtual currency transactions and ICO financing took place in mainland China.