cryptopotato.com
Yesterday the majority of cryptocurrency media outlets reported broadly on the fact that Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, allows people to buy Bitcoin peer-to-peer through on-ramps on Binance. When asked, Zhao confirmed that people can use Wechat and Alipay to do so. Almost immediately after that, however, Alipay came up with a complete refute of this statement, saying that it monitors transactions and blocks all those which are related to cryptocurrencies.
Spreading Like Wildfire
Binance announced yesterday that it has launched P2P trading functionality for ETH, BTC, and USDT available for trading against the Chinese Yuan. Initially, the access should be provided to Android users but Binance said that they are working on rolling out the service for iOS users as well.
Not long after that, people took it to Twitter to ask Changpeng Zhao, the CEO at Binance, whether or not this means that they can now use Alipay and Wechat to do so.
Zhao confirmed.
YES https://t.co/dnHKQSLvS4
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 9, 2019
Naturally, the news spread like wildfire. This was perhaps expected, mainly because of the fairly scrutinous attitude of China towards cryptocurrency in general. Moreover, reports have it that Alipay has over 900 million users, which would definitely have been a massive step towards potential Bitcoin adoption.
Not So Fast, Alipay Fires Back
However, the good news didn’t last for long. Alipay’s confirmed Twitter account responded to CZ today, directly denying his claims.
Moreover, the company added:
“There’re several reports about Alipay being used for bitcoin transactions. To reiterate, Alipay closely monitors over-the-counter transactions to identify irregular behavior and ensure compliance with relevant regulations. […] If any transactions are identified as being related to bitcoin or other virtual currencies, Alipay immediately stops the relevant payment service.”
In other words, as good as it would have been for the industry, people in China and around the world still won’t be able to use the application to buy Bitcoin.