China bans yuan stablecoins while holding 190,000 bitcoin

China holds about 190,000 bitcoin, worth roughly $14.6 billion, and its citizens are not allowed to trade the asset. That is the whole of Chinese crypto policy in one sentence, and the rules issued this year tightened it further rather than resolving the contradiction.

“Without the approval of relevant authorities in accordance with laws and regulations, domestic or foreign entities or individuals are prohibited from issuing stablecoins pegged to Chinese yuan abroad.”

— People's Bank of China, Joint circular of 6 February 2026

From the February circular, the first time Beijing set out a position on stablecoins

Crypto in China: the rules as they stand

What changed and what did not:

• 6 February 2026: the central bank and other agencies extend the ban to yuan stablecoins and to tokenised real-world assets.
• 1 January 2026: commercial banks are allowed to pay interest on digital yuan wallets.
• Still in force: the 2021 prohibition on crypto trading, including across borders.

The February notice is the significant one because it closed the last open door. Crypto trading has been prohibited since 2021, and the February text reads as an extension of that regime rather than a new one. Stablecoins pegged to the yuan and issued offshore had sat in a grey zone that Hong Kong had been openly exploring. Beijing has now said no, to domestic and foreign issuers alike, and extended the same treatment to tokenised real-world assets.

That lands hardest on Hong Kong. The territory spent two years positioning itself as the regulated crypto hub of the region, and as recently as last year its officials had not ruled out renminbi-pegged stablecoins under a licensed framework. A privately issued yuan token is now off the table regardless of how well it is supervised.

The part that does not fit

What replaces it is the digital yuan, and the January change tells you how seriously. Letting commercial banks pay interest on e-CNY wallets turns a payment instrument into something that competes with a deposit account, which is the one feature a stablecoin cannot offer inside China. The state is not refusing the technology. It is refusing anyone else's version of it.

The holdings make the position awkward rather than incoherent. Those 190,000 coins arrived through enforcement, and China has never published a policy on what happens to them, which we set out in our look at state reserves. A government can seize an asset, decline to sell it, and still forbid its citizens to own it. Contradictory as that reads, it is also the position of several governments on the same list.

For a reader the practical question is what applies where, and the answer changes by jurisdiction rather than by year. Our China page carries the current status, the named regulator and the date we last checked it, alongside 45 other countries. Compare it with Singapore, which wrote reserve ratios into law, and the two approaches turn out to share a premise: neither trusts a private issuer with a currency peg.

Informational material, not investment advice. Chinese rules are issued as administrative notices and change without legislative process.