Xunlei to take measures against illegal virtual currency trade

The board of Xunlei Networking Technologies Co, a large Internet company in China, said on Wednesday that it would act to contain any potential illegal activity involving its cryptocurrency project.

In an open letter, Xunlei’s board said that it would start to require the real identity of participants of its “Wanke coin mining” cryptocurrency project starting in mid-December.

The letter also said that follow-up measures will be taken to curb illegal transactions, according to financial news site yicai.com.

Those measures include asking all trade platforms that offer Wanke coin to close down trade, the report said.

In addition, Xunlei will also start to monitor activity on its cryptocurrency platform and report to relevant government agencies if it observes any suspicious transactions, the letter said.

Xunlei launched its cryptocurrency project in October and produced Wanke coin, which has been skyrocketing. Wanke coin prices have rose 90 times in the past 40 days, the China Securities Journal reported on Wednesday.

Wanke coin, based on blockchain technology, is very similar to bitcoin.

Following Chinese government moves to tighten regulation of bitcoin trade. Bitcoin China announced in September this year that it had stopped accepting new registrations and that it will shut down all trading activities on its platform by the end of the month.

In a separate statement on Wednesday evening, Xunlei announced it had fired senior vice president Yu Fei, after an internal investigation found that Yu had been engaged in wrongdoing, including signing deals that ran counter to the company’s interest.