张苏杭律师

With the new regulations coming down, the "professional spirit" of OTC traders has impressed me.

The new law clearly aims to eliminate stablecoins, strictly prohibiting and resolutely banning virtual currency exchanges. The entrepreneurs who should be fleeing are still acting as if nothing happened, continuing to cash in USDT, still placing orders in the market, still changing accounts to hold on.

Not closing accounts, not withdrawing from the market, not cutting ties, I don't even know what they are waiting for?

I have always said that this round of regulation has no intention to harm retail investors, no intention to ban blockchain, and has not said anything about not allowing individuals to hold or trade cryptocurrencies.

Even if the entrance and exit for deposits and withdrawals has narrowed, affecting retail investors, it is still collateral damage to the OTC market.

After the new regulations on virtual currencies were introduced, the entire internet was again divided into two groups of idiots:
One group is shouting that the cryptocurrency world is finished, everything is banned, and they should run quickly;
The other group pretends to be calm, repeating the same old tune, just like 9.24, trading as usual, nothing to worry about.
To be honest, from the perspective of a cryptocurrency lawyer, this round of new regulations shows that the regulators actually have no intention of killing retail investors or banning crypto trading.
From start to finish, there is only one stablecoin that has to be dealt with harshly, along with the illegal financial activities that rely on stablecoins.
But this time it has nothing to do with retail investors; instead, this new regulation has more tricks!

Yan is an officer in the original public security bureau, serving at a certain police station in early 2019, and was selected to participate in the investigation of a certain organization and the leadership of a pyramid scheme case during his work.
During this time, Yan encountered the detained criminal suspects Zhang, Liao, and others' mobile phones and laptops, thereby obtaining the virtual cryptocurrency account numbers and keys of the two criminal suspects.
However, he did not report these account numbers and keys to the special investigation team, but privately kept them after work and deleted the above account numbers and keys from Zhang and Liao's mobile phones, and then submitted the phones to the special investigation team.

For those engaged in gray industries in Southeast Asia, Huiwang has never been just a simple payment tool.

It is the breathing machine of electric fraud platforms, the black jade ointment of online gambling platforms, and the core router of the entire black gold chain. Whether you are settling in U, exchanging currency at a counter, or making cross-border transfers, it doesn't matter if the money is obtained through fraud or gambling; as long as it goes through Huiwang's hands, it can transform and circulate as 'cleaned' money.

Hundreds of billions of funds circulate here every year, and various gambling platforms in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand rely on it to survive, with countless people dreaming of getting rich overnight relying on it to transfer money.

Previously, Prince Chen Zhi was arrested, which at most cut off the roots of the black industry.

A few days ago, Zhang's legal team received a consultation. The client is from Taiwan and had bought 4 million worth of Ethereum a few years ago, but due to identity issues, he placed the coins in his girlfriend's best friend's boyfriend's account, as the other party didn't understand it anyway. He registered an email and other binding services himself.

The value has appreciated several times in recent years. A while ago, I was preparing to take it back, but I found that I couldn't log into my account, and things like my email had been changed. I contacted the other party, but they ignored me, which made me anxious. In a rush, I found a local lawyer who said he had mysterious powers and charged me 200,000.

On February 16, 2026, the (Special Preventive Measures Management Measures for Anti-Money Laundering) jointly released by the People's Bank of China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, and other eight departments will officially take effect.

This time it is not that cash out has become 'more difficult', but that it is 'completely going to cool down'. Even ordinary individuals borrowing a card or companies handling vague accounts may directly face account freezes and asset locks.

The most severe aspect of this new regulation is not the strengthening of reviews, but the formal establishment of a Chinese version of a three-tier anti-money laundering blacklist. Once you are on this blacklist, it is a direct kill, and the coverage ranges from institutions to individuals, with no one able to escape.

In 2020, this tech guy selected high rebate ratio and many sub-accounts from the agent account of the 'Kyun Sports' gambling website and replaced the rebate bank accounts of these agent accounts with the bank accounts he controlled, stealing a total of more than 35.5 million yuan from the agent rebate funds of the 'Kyun Sports' gambling website.
Among them, more than 6.44 million yuan was transferred to 13 bank cards purchased by the tech guy; additionally, a certain group used this to buy Bitcoin and other virtual currencies transferred to his own wallet, with this portion of stolen funds amounting to more than 29.05 million yuan.
However, according to insiders, there was basically no Kyun platform before 2020, and the allegations might involve collusion between internal and external parties.

I mentioned a few days ago in my livestream that there will definitely be moves in virtual currency legislation in 2026.

Here it is, at the beginning of 2026, this Central Political and Legal Affairs Work Conference has directly placed virtual currency alongside autonomous driving and low-altitude economy for the first time, clearly proposing forward-looking legislative research.

This time it’s not just a simple policy statement; this time it should be a real move.

Today, Lawyer Zhang will start from the whole legislative matter, unpack the signals released by this conference, and discuss the future direction.

First, let's understand: why is legislation being proposed right now?

The Central Political and Legal Affairs Work Conference focuses on one thing each year - setting the tone for the direction of political and legal work for the year. In 2026, as we start the 14th Five-Year Plan, we need to deal with geopolitical games outside and accelerate economic transformation and technological change domestically.

The case of Yao Qian, I've been closely following it for several days, and the more I analyze it, the more intriguing it becomes.
Former head of the Technology Regulation Department at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, former director of the Digital Currency Research Institute at the People's Bank of China, a widely recognized blockchain expert, was caught on 2,000 ETH, expelled from the party and the public service, and placed under investigation, with the involved amount exceeding 60 million yuan.
A seasoned insider who understands both regulatory rules and blockchain technology, using virtual currencies to build a path for corruption, ultimately targeted and brought down with precision.
For Yao, this is a tragic story.
Yao, the former head of the Digital Currency Research Institute, later took charge of technology regulation at the China Securities Regulatory Commission. He had deep knowledge of blockchain, private keys, hardware wallets, and on-chain transactions—more than many in the cryptocurrency community.