China cracks down on Tether, Hong Kong to introduce licenses for stablecoins: Law Decoded

CointelegraphPublished on 2023-12-31Last updated on 2024-01-02

Abstract

More than two years after enforcing a significant crypto ban, Chinese authorities are moving to crack down on using cryptocurrencies like Tether (USDT) in foreign exchange trading. China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) — the highest national agency responsible for legal prosecution in mainland China — has warned the public against using USDT as an intermediary to trade the Chinese yuan with other fiat currencies. The agency issued a joint statement with the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), urging local officials to implement stricter measures against the stablecoin in cross-border foreign exchange transactions.
In the statement, the SPP and the SAFE declared that using USDT as a medium of exchange between local and foreign currencies is illegal. The authorities said their local branches should improve coordination to “punish fraudulent foreign exchange purchases, illegal foreign exchange transactions and other foreign exchange-related illegal and criminal activities” in accordance with the law.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong has proposed accepting and regulating “fiat-referenced stablecoins” (FRS), with issuers required to obtain a specific local license. A joint consultation paper from the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) spells out the definition of fiat-referenced stablecoins and requires any companies that “actively market their issuance of FRS to the public of Hong Kong” to be licensed by the HKMA.
The criteria for obtaining an HKMA license will include full backing of all circulating stablecoins with reserves “at least equal to the par value,” segregation and safekeeping of reserve assets, disclosure and regular reporting. The document states that algorithmic stablecoins won’t qualify for a license.
South Korea makes officials’ crypto holdings transparent
Starting in 2024, almost 6,000 South Korean officials will be obliged to publicly disclose their crypto holdings. The country’s Ministry of Personnel Management said that information about government officials’ private holdings of crypto assets will be included in the Public Official Ethics System. A recent probe found that 18 out of 298 Korean lawmakers have held digital assets during the last three years, while 11 lawmakers traded almost $100 million in cryptocurrencies. Starting June 2024, five major South Korean crypto exchanges — Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax — will launch separate “information provision systems,” simplifying the registration of information about crypto holdings.
Continue reading
The New York Times files lawsuit against OpenAI
Another copyright infringement lawsuit has hit the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, with legacy media outlet The New York Times suing ChatGPT creator OpenAI. The NYT alleges that OpenAI has unlawfully used its content to train its AI chatbots, thereby hindering the NYT from doing its work. The lawsuit pulls from both the United States Constitution and the Copyright Act to defend the original journalism of the NYT. It also points to Microsoft’s Bing AI, alleging that it creates verbatim excerpts from its content. The New York Times is not the first media company to raise concerns over AI chatbots. In October, the News Media Alliance made similar claims that AI chatbots illegally rip copyrighted news while their developers take revenue, data and users from news publications.
Continue reading
Council of Europe adopts new guidelines for AI in journalism
The Council of Europe’s Intergovernmental Steering Committee on Media and the Information Society has adopted new guidelines for the “responsible implementation” of AI in journalistic practices. The guidelines cover AI systems in various stages of journalistic production, such as the initial decision to use AI and media organizations acquiring AI tools and incorporating them into the newsroom. The technology’s effect on audiences and society is a significant aspect of the guidelines, which also propose responsibilities to be taken on by technology providers, platforms and member states.
Continue reading

Trending Cryptos

CitreaCTR

wrapped stUSDTWSTUSDT

Velodrome FinanceVELODROME

BrevisBREV

ZRX（0X）ZRX

PancakeSwapCAKE

Strategy Watch #5

Strategy Watch #5 analyzes institutional digital asset trends in May, highlighting diverging flows. While corporate treasuries continued accumulating Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), spot ETF investors reduced exposure. Market-neutral strategies benefited as CME basis yields turned positive, reviving cash-and-carry trades. A deep dive into DeFi notes that while outflows slowed, total value locked (TVL) continued declining. The report also covers fund performance, on-chain vault yields, manager positioning as cash balances rise, and new institutional expansion initiatives.

insights.glassnode35m ago

Google's 'Reasoning King' Also Departs for Meta, Originally Recruited by Fei-Fei Li

"Google's 'King of Reasoning' Leaves for Meta, Quietly Departing After Over Eight Years. Denny Zhou, a key figure behind Google's AI reasoning advancements including work showcased by CEO Sundar Pichai, has joined Meta's MSL as a research scientist. His low-profile move, discovered via a LinkedIn update, occurred months before the high-profile departures of Noam Shazeer to OpenAI and Nobel laureate John Jumper to Anthropic. Zhou was originally recruited to Google by Fei-Fei Li's China center initiative after nearly 11 years at Microsoft. This is part of a significant talent drain at Google, with top researchers like Shazeer (co-author of the Transformer paper) and Jumper (AlphaFold lead) recently leaving for rivals. Reports suggest internal friction is a contributing factor, particularly around Google's strategic shift. The company has reportedly formed a high-priority 'AI Coding Strike Team,' involving co-founder Sergey Brin, to urgently bridge the gap in AI coding agents, potentially reallocating resources and focus away from other research directions like DeepMind's 'world model' AGI approach. This pivot towards commercially-proven coding applications may have influenced departures, as hinted by Shazeer's comment about his compute allocation being given to another team. Meanwhile, Meta continues to bolster its team, also recently hiring UC Berkeley professor and 'security godmother' Dawn Song, along with her startup Virtue AI team, as a VP of AI research."

marsbit35m ago

Google's 'Reasoning King' Also Departs for Meta, Originally Recruited by Fei-Fei Li

marsbit35m ago

How Did Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Flow into SpaceX After Its Index Inclusion on June 26th? Will SpaceX Experience a Massive Price Surge?

Will SpaceX ($SPCX) stock surge when billions in passive index fund money flows in on the effective date? A common retail investor belief is that a massive wave of buying will hit on July 6th, when SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100, potentially causing a huge price spike. However, the reality is far more complex and less dramatic. The anticipated billions are not controlled by a single entity but are spread across hundreds of passive fund managers (e.g., BlackRock, Vanguard) whose sole mandate is to minimize "tracking error." They aim to buy shares at prices as close as possible to the index's closing price on the effective date, not to aggressively drive the price up. There are two key index inclusion scripts: 1) For the Russell US Index (effective June 26th at close), buying is compressed into the final minutes via Market-On-Close (MOC) orders. 2) For the Nasdaq-100 (announced June 26th, effective July 6th), a 10-day window creates a layered game. Arbitrage funds buy early, betting on selling to passive funds later. Some index funds "front-run" by accumulating shares gradually before the deadline. The bulk of passive funds execute large MOC orders at the July 6th close, often trading directly with arbitrageurs. A critical wildcard is SpaceX's limited free float due to a standard 180-day post-IPO lockup. To avoid causing a massive price spike by competing for scarce shares on the open market, large funds will likely use off-exchange methods: 1) Negotiating large block trades (over-the-counter) with major holders. 2) Using derivatives like total return swaps with locked-up shareholders to gain economic exposure without physically buying the stock. Most of the index-driven buying will thus happen invisibly, not on public exchanges. For retail investors, trying to front-run these sophisticated flows is risky. More viable strategies include: waiting for post-inclusion volatility to subside before establishing a long-term position, or employing options strategies like selling strangles to profit from elevated, but potentially overstated, implied volatility around the event. In conclusion, while price appreciation may occur in the days following the announcement due to arbitrage and front-running activity, a single-day "explosive pump" on July 6th is highly unlikely. The major index fund buying will be executed efficiently and discreetly, often away from public markets, turning the anticipated climax into a well-orchestrated, anti-climactic settlement.

marsbit48m ago

How Did Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Flow into SpaceX After Its Index Inclusion on June 26th? Will SpaceX Experience a Massive Price Surge?

marsbit48m ago

Toss Brings 30 Million Users Into the AI Data Economy in Partnership With Poseidon

Poseidon, a data infrastructure company for AI, has partnered with South Korean mobile financial platform Toss (operated by Viva Republica) to integrate its contributor app, Numo, into the Toss app. This partnership allows Toss's approximately 30 million users to contribute real-world voice, image, and video data for AI training and receive direct payment for their contributions. The initiative addresses the AI industry's growing need for high-quality, first-person data not available on the open web, crucial for developing physical intelligence in robotics and autonomous vehicles. Poseidon's infrastructure tracks each contribution's value, while Toss handles user payments. Contributions are registered on the DATA network, which provides verifiable provenance via its Trace audit layer. The partners aim to prove this user-compensated data model in South Korea—a market with dense real-life data and advanced mobile finance—before expanding globally. Poseidon recently raised a $15 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

TheNewsCrypto50m ago

Toss Brings 30 Million Users Into the AI Data Economy in Partnership With Poseidon

TheNewsCrypto50m ago

0.7nm Process Chip Emerges, Moore's Law Lives On

IBM has unveiled the world's first sub-1-nanometer (0.7nm) chip technology, integrating nearly 100 billion transistors into an area the size of a fingernail. This breakthrough doubles the transistor density of current 2nm chips and promises a 50% performance gain or a 70% improvement in power efficiency. The achievement is powered by IBM's "NanoStack" architecture, a pioneering 3D design featuring vertically stacked nanosheet transistors. This evolution from FinFET and Gate-All-Around (GAA) technologies offers superior electrostatic control. IBM has demonstrated the technology's viability with functional CMOS inverters and a 40% area reduction in SRAM, crucial for AI chip data bandwidth. Addressing the critical power consumption challenges in AI computing, this advancement extends the roadmap for chip miniaturization. While IBM does not manufacture chips itself, it licenses its process technology to partners. The company projects that NanoStack-based chips could enter production within the next five years, potentially sustaining Moore's Law for another decade.

marsbit1h ago

0.7nm Process Chip Emerges, Moore's Law Lives On

marsbit1h ago

Trading

Spot

Hot Articles

In-Depth Research Report on Account Abstraction (AA): Generational Leap in Ethereum’s Account System & Landscape Reshaping in the Next Five Years

As a major evolution of Ethereum’s account system, AA is designed to address the fundamental security and experience bottlenecks of the “private key equals account” model in the EOA era.

4.5k Total ViewsPublished 2025.12.18Updated 2025.12.18

In-Depth Research Report on Account Abstraction (AA): Generational Leap in Ethereum’s Account System & Landscape Reshaping in the Next Five Years

Hot Tokens Learning Week 14: Glamsterdam Set to Be Ethereum's Most Closely Watched Upgrade in 2026

Ordinals/Runes continue to drive block fee revenue and developer activity, and are seen as the starting point for Bitcoin's "native asset issuance".

27.0k Total ViewsPublished 2026.04.29Updated 2026.04.29

Hot Tokens Learning Week 14: Glamsterdam Set to Be Ethereum's Most Closely Watched Upgrade in 2026

Hot Tokens Learning Week 15: Ethereum Glamsterdam Public Testnet Launching Soon

Ethereum Glamsterdam’s current Devnet-4 has completed multiple EIP tests and is transitioning to Devnet-5; the public testnets (Holesky/Sepolia) are about to be launched.

25.6k Total ViewsPublished 2026.05.21Updated 2026.05.21

Hot Tokens Learning Week 15: Ethereum Glamsterdam Public Testnet Launching Soon

Discussions

Welcome to the HTX Community. Here, you can stay informed about the latest platform developments and gain access to professional market insights. Users' opinions on the price of ETH (ETH) are presented below.