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Alibaba bans all Bitcoin payments

Friday 10 January 2014 08:17 CET | News

Chinese e-commerce provider Alibaba has banned all Bitcoin payments and Bitcoin-related products on its online shopping websites.

The decision follows the two recent initiatives taken by the Chinese government, one preventing financial institutions from handling the virtual currency and another preventing deposits made in CNY.

Alibaba’s Taobao, an eBay-like platform connecting individual buyers to small-time merchants, has never accepted bitcoin payments itself, but it previously allowed merchants to accept bitcoin as payment. But those transactions will no longer be allowed. Alibaba has also banned all other virtual currencies along with Bitcoin, as well as all related products including mining software.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without a central authority and was first introduced in January 2009. Bitcoins are stored in anonymous ‘electronic wallets’ or code, and can travel from one wallet to another by means of an online peer-to-peer network transaction.
 


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Keywords: Alibaba, Bitcoin, online payments, China
Categories: Payments & Commerce
Companies:
Countries: World
This article is part of category

Payments & Commerce