WeChat bans NFT accounts associated with secondary trading

On June 20, WeChat, the biggest messaging app in China with 11.27 billion monthly active users, updated its platform regulations to include more rules on virtual currency and digital collectibles. The revised regulation forbids content related to issuing, trading, and financing of virtual currency, and content or services related to secondary trading of digital collectibles.

More specifically, the ban includes accounts that provide information and pricing of virtual currencies and services that offer exchanges between fiscal currencies and virtual currencies, as well as exchanges between virtual currencies and virtual currencies.

A WeChat official account named “NFTea” has recently been banned due to the updated platform rules, which is the first time that WeChat bans accounts in the name of “conducting secondary NFT trading”.

This is a step up for WeChat in its series of efforts to regulate virtual assets on its platform. In March this year, the platform banned dozens of NFT-related accounts such as “Art Meta”, “One Meta”, “Zero Earth”, etc, citing “financial fraud” or “no legal license for operations” as the reasons.

In the past months, even though regulators in China have been trying to curb NFT and virtual currencies, the popularity of which has not faded. As of June 15, there are at least 500 digital collectible platforms in China, a significant boost compared to the over 100 platforms in February, according to Huaxia Times. Such a phenomenon can be attributed to the lack of regulatory systems in China, which leads to poor quality of digital collectibles and IP infringement.

“Currently, the regulatory system in the field of digital collections in China has not yet been established, and although several industry associations have jointly issued initiatives and statements on the development of the digital collections industry, these do not have legal effect and cannot effectively guide and manage the digital collections industry, ” says senior researcher Jiang Zhaosheng, according to Jiemian News.