Given the history of strong government control of economy in China, I am kind of surprised this didn't happen sooner. Personally, I think the recent ICO fever i

Given the history of strong government control of economy in China, I am kind of surprised this didn't happen sooner. Personally, I think the recent ICO fever is likely the final straw. In Chinese society, the citizens expect the government to protect them from harm, whether the government is responsible for them or not. On the other hand, the government values stability above everything else, in order to maintain their regime. Now, there's this ICO thing, which has the potential to scam millions of Chinese (and trust me, it will happen), who will inevitably protest until their money is returned, you wonder what's gonna happen… People have received DEATH SENTENCE before for scamming investors[1]. Let that sink in. edit: someone mentioned capital control. While I agree this is probably one of the reasons, I doubt it's the biggest. Sure, having money flowing out of the country gives the government headache, compared to having thousands of people on the street holding signs, it seems like a rather minor one. Plus, if you want to move millions of dollars, you probably won't trust whatever-coin to do the job. There are tons of ways of doing that, and the government has bigger fish to fry. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilishen_Tianxi_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yilishen_Tianxi_Group