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How to Buy Bitcoins in China

Buying bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies in China used to be easy, when people were able to
buy and sell bitcoins at local bitcoin exchanges such as OKCoin, Huobi and BTC China.
However, in late 2017, all bitcoin exchanges in China were banned from cryptocurrency trading.
As a result, it’s no longer easy to buy (and sell) bitcoins in China. In this article, we will
introduce some alternative methods to buy bitcoins in China under the current situation.

If you don’t have the patient to read through the whole article, here’s the shortcut: Currently the
best way to buy bitcoins in China is using peer-to-peer marketplaces or OTC (over-the-
counter) bitcoin exchanges such as LocalBitcoins:

 Visit Localbitcoins

Bitcoin is Popular in China

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Bitcoin has been very popular in China. You might have heard that there are a large number of
bitcoin miners in China, and the bitcoin trading volume used to be very high in China (before
Chinese bitcoin exchanges were banned from bitcoin trading).

It’s well known that people can make some serious money by trading bitcoins, and the bitcoin
price has been rising sharply in the last few months.

Top Bitcoin Exchanges in China

Before the late 2017 bitcoin exchange shutdown, there were some big bitcoin exchanges in
China where you can sign up and trade cryptocurrencies. They were:

OKCoin

Huobi

BTC China

At these exchanges, users were able to buy bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies using at
currency such as RMB. In late 2017, the Chinese government ordered all bitcoin exchange in
China to stop cryptocurrency trading. After that, buying bitcoins in China became quite di cult.

Bitcoin Can Be Used to Get Money out of China

Why did the Chinese government decide to shut down local bitcoin exchanges?Well, here’s one
possible reason: to prevent Chinese people from sending money out of China.

If you have been staying in China for some time, you must know that getting money out of
China is quite di cult. There is a USD $50,000 per year limit for anybody in China to send
money overseas without the government’s approval. Many people in China want to transfer
money out of China for different reasons. And the law makes it very di cult to do so.

Then people discovered bitcoins can be used to bypass this restriction. As many people know,
bitcoin is a digital currency that doesn’t belong to any country. There’re many ways to buy
bitcoins. Given the right tool (such as a bitcoin wallet), you can transfer bitcoins worldwide
between two bitcoin accounts anonymously. Therefore, if you want to transfer a large amount
of money out of China, you can buy bitcoins using renminbi (RMB) at a China bitcoin exchange
(such as OKCoin) and then transfer the bitcoins to a overseas bitcoin exchange (such as
Coinbase) and then sell the bitcoins at the overseas exchange and nally withdraw the cash
(such as USD) to your overseas bank account. In this way, you can bypass the USD 50K limit.

Using Bitcoin to Get Money out of China Is No Longer

Easy
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This method used to work quite well for some time, until early 2017, when the Chinese
government noticed this “hole” in their system and decided to stop it. As a result, bitcoin
exchanges in China were told to temporarily halted bitcoin withdraws. As a result, you could
still buy/sell bitcoins using RMB in China and you could still deposit RMB and withdraw RMB,
but you could no longer move your bitcoins to another bitcoin account (for example, your
bitcoin account at an overseas bitcoin exchange). In the beginning of June 2017, China’s large
bitcoin exchanges started to allow bitcoin withdraw again with some new restrictions on
bitcoin withdraw amount. However, around September 2017, the government decided to
completely ban cryptocurrency trading at local bitcoin exchanges. In early 2018, China blocked
internet access to all major cryptocurrency exchanges that are operating outside of China.
People in China had to rely on tools such as VPNs to visit the blocked exchanges.

As a result, using bitcoin to get money out of China is no longer easy.

How to Buy Bitcoins in China Under the Current

Situation?
After all local bitcoin exchanges were shutdown in China, cryptocurrency trading activities
declined dramatically in China. However, people have found some other ways to buy bitcoins in
China.

For example, you can still buy bitcoins from overseas bitcoin exchanges such as Coinbase,
Bit nex etc. However, it’s quite di cult to open an account at most overseas bitcoin
exchanges. Moreover, to fund your oversea account with at currency, you will be restricted
with the USD $50,000 per year limit for cross-border money transfer.

Some people in China choose to trade bitcoins o ine (face-to-face). For example, two people
can meet face-to-face. One can pay the other with RMB cash or send money to him/her using
WeChat. The other person can transfer bitcoins to the rst person using a mobile bitcoin
wallet. You can see, while this method works, it’s far from secure and convenient.

Under the current situation, many people believe the best way to buy bitcoins in China is to
use peer-to-peer marketplaces or OTC (over-the-counter) bitcoin exchanges such as
LocalBitcoins.

Buy Bitcoins in China Using P2P and OTC Bitcoin

Exchanges

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Services such as LocalBitcoins and Paxul are bitcoin marketplaces for peer-to-peer bitcoin
trading. This kind of P2P bitcoin exchanges differs from other bitcoins exchanges such as
Bit nex in a number of ways. For example, at Bit nex, the buying and selling processes are
transparent and you don’t know who has bought whose bitcoins. At a peer-to-peer bitcoin
marketplace, sellers can post their offers and the buyer buys bitcoins from the seller directly.
Unlike with traditional bitcoin exchanges, where all buyers need to send money to the exchange
rst (and the payment process might involve international money transfer), at P2P
marketplaces, the buyer pays the seller directly using a payment method the seller is happy
with, for example, bank transfer, Alipay, WeChat, or even face-to-face cash payment.

 Visit Localbitcoins

For example, if you live in Shanghai and you want to buy some bitcoins, you can log on
LocalBitcoins where you might nd some sellers in China willing to sell some bitcoins and
accept Alipay as a payment method. You decide to buy from that guy and you send money to
him using Alipay (or using WeChat, bank transfer, or even cash). Once your payment has been
veri ed by the exchange, the seller’s bitcoins will be transferred to you. As you can see, in this
way you can trade bitcoins in China without going through complicated account opening and
international money transfer as with bitcoin exchanges such as Coinbase and Bit nex.

Below is a screenshot from Localbitcoins, where you can see listed buying and selling orders:

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The downside of using a P2P bitcoin exchange is that the trading process takes more time, and
it’s de nitely not as smooth and easy as with traditional bitcoin exchanges. Also, you might
need to be ware of bad guys when doing your trade. But given that there’s not many better
options left, this is still a good way to buy and sell bitcoins in China under the current situation.

As it turned out, after bitcoin trading was banned from China’s local bitcoin exchanges in 2017,
the trading volume at both Localbitcoins and Pafxul increased dramatically.

If you’re looking for a good way to buy bitcoins in China, you can give them a try:

 Visit Localbitcoins

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