Autor Cointelegraph By Zhiyuan Sun

RMB stablecoin team allegedly arrested

On May 31, local news outlet PANewsLab reported that the developers for the offshore Chinese RMB and Hong Kong dollar stablecoin issuer CNHC had allegedly lost contact or had been taken away by law enforcement officials. A photo shows what appears to be an empty office building at CNHC’s Shanghai division with the following message posted:

“The building’s assets have been seized by law enforcement; vandalism is prohibited.”

In March, CNHC raised $10 million in its Series A, led by KuCoin Ventures, Circle, and IDG Capital. The team said back then that it planned to use the funds for “expansion in the Asia Pacific Region” and was in the process of moving its headquarters from the Cayman Islands to Hong Kong.

The reported move appears to be part of a wider crackdown on cryptocurrencies by Chinese authorities. On May 24, Asia Express reported that tokens of Singaporean inter-blockchain communications protocol Multichain had plunged 30% on a delayed backend upgrade and rumors of Chinese police arrest of its core developers.

Though Multichain says that it is still operational, it stated on June 1 that it is still “unable to contact CEO Zhaojun and obtain the necessary server access for maintenance,” and as a result, the protocol will need to suspend a number of affected cross-chain services.

In the past two days, the Multichain protocol has experienced multiple issues due to unforeseeable circumstances. The team has done everything possible to maintain the protocol running, but we are currently unable to contact CEO Zhaojun and obtain the necessary server access for…— Multichain (Previously Anyswap) (@MultichainOrg) May 31, 2023

Hong Kong opens up retail crypto licensing

Despite censorship and bans on the Mainland, the adoption of cryptocurrency exchange regulation in Hong Kong proceeded as scheduled. On May 31, the Hong Kong Virtual Asset Consortium was formed to approve the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap for listing and to conduct quarterly reviews of registered digital asset exchanges to ensure compliance with licensing regulations that took effect on June 1.