Huobi bans crypto derivatives trading for users in China

Huobi cryptocurrency exchange has updated its user agreement document banning crypto derivatives trading for customers in China.

According to the updated User Agreement section on the Huobi Global website, the crypto derivatives trading ban includes users in jurisdictions such as China, Taiwan, Israel and Iraq. Other prohibited countries are the UK – restricted to private customers – as well as Bolivia, Bangladesh and Ecuador, to name a few.

The ban on trading crypto derivatives is also in addition to longstanding bans on using their platform in places like Hong Kong, Japan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Canada and the United States, etc. The platform warns users who are against these restrictions violates the risk of losing their account.

Huobi’s ban on trading crypto derivatives for Chinese users is likely due to new crypto crackdowns by Beijing authorities. In early June, the platform prevented new domestic users from trading crypto derivatives while reducing the allowable leverage from 125x to less than 5x.

Chinese authorities have been ramping up the stakes in the past few weeks and even targeting the mining sector as nearly 90% of Bitcoin (BTC) miners in the country are forced to shut down.

It is expected that a number of companies that have moved overseas at Bitcoin’s hash rate will, at least temporarily, lessen their greatest difficulty with a significant portion of the offline network’s hash power.

Connected: The Huobi cryptocurrency exchange is said to have stopped trading in derivative products for new users

The Huobi ban is also likely to limit options for Chinese crypto derivatives traders. Platforms like Binance and OKEx could be the next stop for trading high leverage crypto contracts.

For its part, Binance is also subject to increased regulatory control. Just last week, the stock market giant received notices from regulators in the UK, Japan and Ontario, Canada.