crypto
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Coinbase censored on China's social web

The Coinbase logo, with coins.

On Tencent's messaging app QQ, users can't find any user or chat group that has Coinbase, or other crypto exchanges, in its name.

Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

WeChat and Tencent's other popular messaging app QQ has blocked searches of Coinbase, along with names of other crypto exchanges, Protocol has learned.

By Wednesday, searches of "Coinbase" returned with empty results on WeChat. The same happens to searches of both the Chinese and English names of Huobi and Binance, two other major crypto exchanges in China. It doesn't mean the articles and posts on WeChat that mention Coinbase have been taken down, just that they are now hidden from search results.

On Tencent's other massively popular messaging app QQ, users can't find any user or chat group that has Coinbase, or the other crypto exchanges, in its name. But online articles that mention the crypto exchanges are still searchable.

In June, China's search engine Baidu and social media platform Weibo both censored searches of some crypto exchanges like Huobi and Binance, but Coinbase was and remains exempted on those platforms.
Zeyi Yang

Zeyi Yang is a former reporter with Protocol | China. Previously, he worked as a reporting fellow for the digital magazine Rest of World, covering the intersection of technology and culture in China and neighboring countries. He has also contributed to the South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia, Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications. In his spare time, Zeyi co-founded a Mandarin podcast that tells LGBTQ stories in China. He has been playing Pokemon for 14 years and has a weird favorite pick.

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