Overnight, BTC continued to trade around the 30-day moving average of 105k. Today, the June 5th Education Chain Internal Reference "Circle, the First Stablecoin Stock, US Stock IPO" mentioned another major industry event, that is, the financial regulatory agency MAS in Singapore issued a new regulation at the end of May, which greatly tightened the loopholes for the encryption/web3 industry. The new regulations will take effect at the end of June without any buffer period, and the attitude is quite tough!
From the so-called "crypto paradise" to the order to expel residents, this cliff-like policy adjustment has caused the crypto industry to exclaim that the great retreat of web3 in Po County is imminent.
The world has fallen for the people in Po County.
Why do you say that?
Jiao Lian still remembers that more than three years ago, in February 2022, the Supreme People's Court issued a judicial interpretation (Fa Shi [2022] No. 5), listing "illegally absorbing funds through virtual currency transactions, etc." as one of the behaviors of illegal fundraising. For the first time, virtual currency transactions were included in the scope of regulation of illegal fundraising at the criminal law level.
This is to plug a loophole. Previously, illegal fundraising and fundraising fraud only recognized RMB (and some legally recognized forms of property). In other words, you are only considered illegal if you receive RMB from others. Receiving BTC, USDT, or other virtual currencies is not illegal. Why? Because we are a continental legal system country, and we only recognize legal provisions. If there is no provision in the law, it does not count.
Illegal fund-raising and fund-raising fraud are crimes in the criminal law. Once violated, the most severe criminal sanctions will be imposed. However, it is precisely because of this loophole that the big profiteers who issued air coins to raise BTC and USDT in the hands of leeks took advantage of the legal loophole and went unpunished.
It is precisely because of this loophole that our country's judicial crackdown on some coin-issuing scams was far weaker than that of the United States on the other side of the Pacific. The United States is a maritime law system, which does not mechanically apply laws and regulations, but focuses on flexibility. So you see, the US SEC directly used the Howey Test as a net, and caught a lot of big and small fish at once, and directly accused you of illegal securities issuance. Those who should be arrested should be arrested, those who should be sentenced should be sentenced, and those who should be fined should be fined. How happy.
Of course, how to strike the line between protecting innovation and combating fraud is an art. The US SEC has been attacking hard for several years, successfully arousing the resentment of the entire crypto industry. When the crypto industry pushed for Emperor Trump to ascend the throne, the first thing they did was to oust SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. This is a later story, so I won't go into it here.
Let's talk about this judicial interpretation. The most fatal problem for the big cuts here is that it is a judicial interpretation, not a revision of the law.
Those who understand the law know that there is a legal principle called "laws do not apply retroactively". This means that the laws revised today will only apply in the future, and cannot be used to judge yesterday's affairs with the laws revised today. Otherwise, it would be terrible, and the whole society would be in danger. It would be meaningless to do what is not prohibited by law, because you don't know whether tomorrow will redefine today's affairs as illegal. Without certainty, society will fall into chaos.
However, there must be exceptions to the principle. The principle that laws do not have retroactive effect only applies to the revision of laws, not to judicial interpretation. In other words, if an existing law is interpreted expansively through judicial interpretation, then it is theoretically allowed to have retroactive effect. In other words, it is theoretically feasible to use the judicial interpretation issued in 2022 to crack down on the issuance of coins in 2017.
As a result, the traitors, who were already hated by everyone in the country, scattered like birds and beasts and fled almost overnight.
The escaped tycoons looked around. The world is so big, where can they stay? Go to the United States? They are afraid of being wiped out by the American iron fist. Go to Dubai? They are afraid of being kidnapped and beaten. After looking around, the tycoons unanimously chose Po County, which is a mixture of Chinese and Western culture and has loose regulations. Except for the higher cost of living, other aspects are almost the same as living in China (such as language, time difference, etc.), which makes the tycoons who are wandering in a foreign land feel less homesick. As for the cost of living, for the tycoons who have become billionaires, it is naturally a drop in the bucket.
The key is that there is no bilateral extradition treaty between Po County and mainland China, which makes the big cutters feel at ease. As early as the bull market cycle in 2017, Po County adopted an extremely relaxed policy on coin issuance and fundraising. Simply put, you can issue and cut as you please, as long as you block Po County people and don’t cut Po County people.
Recalling the ICO issuance wave in full swing in 2017-2018, various fancy issuance methods were invented, such as forked coins, public chain coins, ERC-20 coins, and even pure air coins. The issuance speed could not keep up with the speed of the leeks scrambling for them. If you grab them, you will earn money. The so-called private placement quotas can only be obtained through connections and backdoors. Buy at a low price and sell to the next buyer, making dozens of times the profit. The entire crypto market fell into an irrational carnival. It was not until the deep bear market at the end of 2018 that the leeks' heated minds were calmed down by the cold losses.
In such a crazy market, there are perhaps only two types of people: gamblers and liars. There may also be some people who are both gamblers and liars.
No one can keep a cool head in front of the vivid examples of their friends who became rich overnight. No one can hold a sickle and watch billions of wealth lying in front of them without harvesting them. Holding a sharp weapon will naturally make you want to kill. Moreover, in a market where everyone has lost their reason, the so-called sharp weapon only needs a eloquent and clever mouth.
Everyone is lost in the flying money. "I am not a gambler, nor a liar. If you don't make money, you are a bastard" has become the motto and life creed of many people.
All good things must come to an end. The violent joy will inevitably have a violent end. When the drumbeats of the game of passing the parcel suddenly stopped, stampedes began to appear. Private equity cut public equity, project owners cut private equity, and the sickle cut each other became the last glimmer of light before the industry went into a bear market. Those who locked their positions became idiots. Those who sold at high prices became winners. Those who raised funds through issuing coins made a lot of money, while gamblers who chased the rise at high prices lost their pants.
Gamblers accuse cheaters of manipulating the market and being unethical. Cheaters accuse gamblers of not following casino rules and accepting defeat.
The so-called "compliance" that was popular back then was to register a so-called foundation in Po County as the main body of the currency. This so-called compliance is in line with the rules of Po County, but the people in the mainland are being harvested. But who among the harvested leeks is not sending their heads thousands of miles away? They climb over the wall and register fake identities just to use their precious BTC in hand to exchange for other people's air coins. Who is not blinded by lard, wanting to take the low-priced chips and sell them at a high price to the stupid leeks behind, so that they can reap a lot of the later ones and become rich overnight?
Zhou Yu beat Huang Gai, one was willing to fight, the other was willing to be beaten. In the final analysis, neither of them was purer than the other, neither was more kind than the other, and neither was more righteous than the other.
Therefore, the big harvesters of that year also felt at ease in harvesting - "They are all gamblers with evil intentions. Cutting them off is also a way of doing justice for the heavens!"
Whenever the leeks want to do something big, they will be done big. God is too lazy to personally do something to a small leek like you. There are big cuts, hackers, runaway platforms, telecommunications fraud, and other methods to harvest you.
The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. As the saying goes, good things come to those who go against them.
In February 2022, the judicial interpretation came, and the big cutters fled in panic.
Suddenly, many people gathered in Singapore. Coffee shops and five-star hotels were filled with people talking about web3 and cryptocurrencies in Chinese or a mixture of Chinese and English. Many KOLs praised Singapore's booming business on various social platforms, and even criticized Hong Kong, which was still insisting on strict regulation at the time, saying that it might lose its position as Asia's financial center in the web3 era because of its lack of openness in thinking and regulation.
Po County's unguarded embrace of encryption may be simply because it has not suffered from the beatings of the market and has not felt the power of the big harvesters' unscrupulous harvest.
In November 2022, FTX, once a hotshot and the world's second largest crypto exchange, collapsed. The wealth of countless investors was wiped out overnight. Temasek, a sovereign wealth fund wholly owned by the Singapore government, invested a total of US$275 million in FTX in two rounds from October 2021 to January 2022. After FTX went bankrupt, Temasek announced a full write-off of its investment and admitted that its trust in founder SBF was "misjudged."
In addition, there are a series of other cases of crypto fraud, money laundering, etc., which may have prompted the Po County government to begin to reflect on whether its past unguarded policy attitude was really beneficial.
These reflections eventually led to the new regulations, the "Guidelines for Licensing of Digital Token Service Providers," which were issued at the end of May 2025. The wild era of unlicensed web3 operations in Po County has come to an end.
