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.