The public security organs in a certain place in China confiscated the illegal income of 90,000 yuan on the grounds of "climbing the wall to speculate in cryptocurrencies"

PANews reported on December 18 that according to the official account of Wu Enxiang's lawyer team, a local public security agency in China, based on a case of "climbing over the firewall to trade in cryptocurrencies", determined that the act of using VPN to climb over the firewall to trade Bitcoin was illegal. In the case, the client Zhang used VPN to access an overseas trading platform and engaged in virtual currency trading to make a profit of 90,000 yuan. According to the "Interim Provisions on the Management of International Networking of Computer Information Networks" and the "Public Security Administration Punishment Law", the public security agency confiscated his illegal income of 90,000 yuan and imposed a fine of 15,000 yuan, and also confiscated the tools used to commit the crime, including mobile phones and computers.

The controversial point of the case is whether the behavior of circumventing the firewall can be directly linked to the subsequent gains from cryptocurrency speculation, and whether the gains from cryptocurrency speculation can be considered illegal gains. The legal community believes that the illegality of circumventing the firewall mainly lies in the use of illegal channels, while cryptocurrency speculation itself is not illegal, and it is unreasonable to consider the subsequent gains as illegal gains just because of circumventing the firewall.