China’s Stablecoin Underground Hits $104 Billion Despite Beijing’s Crypto Ban - forkast.news

A new report from Forkast.news estimates that China's underground stablecoin market has reached roughly $104 billion in volume, even as Beijing maintains its ban on cryptocurrency trading and related services. The figure points to a persistent gap between formal prohibition and actual usage: stablecoins, which are typically pegged to the US dollar, remain attractive for cross-border payments, savings, and settlement because they offer price stability that other crypto assets lack.

For markets, the number matters less as a precise statistic than as a signal. It suggests demand for dollar-linked digital assets continues to find routes around capital controls and domestic restrictions, which could keep pressure on policymakers to tighten enforcement or accelerate work on a state-backed digital currency. It also highlights stablecoins' growing role in global payments infrastructure, a theme regulators in the US, EU, and elsewhere are already addressing through new rules.

What to watch: whether Chinese authorities escalate crackdowns on over-the-counter desks and payment channels, how offshore exchanges respond, and whether the reported volumes are corroborated by independent data. Those factors will shape how seriously global markets treat this estimate.