By China is a strange nation. You most certainly don’t want to get on the bad side of the government as a business, of any size or nature. One business doesn’t seem to be bothered by the country’s ban on cryptocurrencies as. A recently opened hotel recently announced that they’ll be accepting Ether payments which of course won’t bode well with the Chinese regulators.
To make matters worse, the hotel is called Ethereum Hotel and has opened its doors in the National Scenic Area of the Sichuan province, making it the first hotel in all of China that openly accepts cryptocurrency.
The owners behind this aptly named hotel failed to explain their plan on they were going to approach the regulators in China who are apparently upping the efforts in their war against cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum. A local report examined the notions of this decision as a whole as one that is an advanced move on a whole;
“The hinterland of western China has a rich and traditional hotel industry. They are entrepreneurs who accept Ethereum as payments with a goal to participate in advanced blockchain technology and trend.”
Photographs taken at Ethereum Hotel show off huge Bitcoin wall art at the reception, which hints at the fact that they might even accept the top crypto as payments.
There has been no response from local authorities as of yet but we can take a guess that their reaction will not be positive due to the People’s Bank Of China’s negative stance on digital currencies. This regulator and others have accelerated their levels of scrutiny by eliminating nearly all the routes in which one can attain cryptocurrencies. The PBoC is making efforts to block access to exchanges (including offshore exchanges), banning financial accounts which have ties to cryptocurrencies and have urged payment companies to monitor and report any suspicious transactions.
Regardless of this country-wide ban, it seems that Chinese investors are still investing in ICO’s in large amounts. They do this by converting their RMB holdings to USDT or even Bitcoin in over the counter exchanges. It seems China’s “scrutiny” is just a media fiasco as their “efforts” are hardly showing positive results due to the encrypted nature of p2p transactions. 
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the brave souls at Ethereum Hotel aren’t drawing unwanted attention to their business. In their case, regulators will have an easy time taking action against them as they will have access to the identity of the senders and receivers of Ethereum and it won’t be a tough task to locate the hotel as the owners have given explicit directions on how to find them.
One must note, however, that there exists no law or PRC regulation that prohibits Chinese investors from trading or storing crypto.
It was a legal counsellor at the JunZeJun Law offices who referred to an early PBoC notice which was issued by five separate government agencies, which pointed out the Bitcoin was actually seen as a special commodity and not a currency.
“That notice also explicitly provides that Bitcoin does not have legal status as a currency and should not be circulated and used in the market as a currency. This should still be the position taken by the PBOC today,” he said.
What are your thoughts on Ethereum Hotel? Could their blatant disrespect for authority land them in hot water? Let us know your thoughts.
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