A Trust Reserve stablecoin team was detained by police in China on May 29, according to PANews.
The news outlet reported that the team “had been taken away by the police and detained, and the family members of some employees had been notified.”
The office in Shanghai was vacant and had a seal of “Judicial Seizure, Strictly No Vandalism,” on it, according to PaNews.
Trust Reserve had products including stablecoin CNHC and the Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDC.
HKDC is a stablecoin pegged to the Hong Kong dollar backed one-to-one, and CNHC is a stablecoin pegged to the offshore RMB, also backed one-to-one, according to the website.
Trust Reserve also completed a $10 million A+ fundraising round, led by KuCoin Ventures and followed by Circle and IDG Capital, according to the tech company’s website.
Trust Reserve did not respond to a request for comment.
China’s stance on crypto
Since 2021, China has banned crypto mining, crypto trading and eventually crypto transactions.
The country has also launched its own central bank digital currency, which has processed over $14 billion worth of transactions so far, according to a figure from October 2022.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong outlined plans in February to allow retail investors to trade certain digital currencies on licensed exchanges, according to previous cryptonews.com reporting.
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission said retail investors would be allowed to trade certain “large-cap tokens” on licensed exchanges, given that safeguards such as knowledge tests, risk profiles, and reasonable limits on exposure are put in place.
Hong Kong is working on becoming a crypto hub after the SFC first banned retail investors from trading crypto in 2018.
However, the SFC said that the “virtual asset landscape has changed significantly” since it first announced the regulatory regime.
