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Current Affairs

How do Chinese police track and seize cryptocurrency? Rare paper reveals forensic tools

Chinese police have published a detailed technical report on tracking, seizing, and freezing cryptocurrency – revealing a sophisticated arsenal of forensic tools.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and the…

By Samantha Johnson / July 1, 2026
Chinese police have published a detailed technical report on tracking, seizing, and freezing cryptocurrency – revealing a sophisticated arsenal of forensic tools.

Bitcoin, Ethereum and the like may be household names, but they are illegal in China.

A 2021 government notice banned their use as currency, and new rules from earlier this year went even further, cracking down on stablecoins and the tokenisation of real-world assets.

Yet despite the ban, criminals still favour virtual coins for scams, gambling and money laundering because crypto transfers hide identities and do not require approval by central authorities.

A rare technical paper published on June 4 in the journal Forensic Science and Technology offers an unprecedented glimpse into how Chinese law enforcement agencies pursue illicit virtual assets.

The authors – Sun Shengbin of the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau, Lou Yandi of the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department’s Criminal Investigation Corps, and their colleagues – outline the process of evidence collection, transaction tracing and asset seizure.

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