Xinhua Daily, a Communist party-controlled media, has just published a front-page article entitled “Bitcoin: The First Successful Application of Blockchain Technology”.

The editorial gives an objective introduction about bitcoin – an open-source peer-to-peer digital currency, and describes how BTC transactions and mining work, as well as its features including limited supply, anonymity, great power consumption and price volatility.

The article in the party mouthpiece comes after the laud from the country’s president Xi Jinping in the blockchain sector.

Following Xi’s blockchain endorsement, the nation has gone into a blockchain frenzy – blockchain-related stocks and crypto markets soared, WeChat and Baidu search volumes for blockchain spiked, officials required to study blockchain on government propaganda app…

Now it is spurring a whirlwind of local media coverage, not only about blockchain technology, but also about bitcoin, the “virtual currency” unwanted by the country since the ICO ban in 2017.

Prior to it, the country’s ruling Communist Party mouthpiece used to lashed out at bitcoin, labeling the volatile cryptocurrency a bubble and a modern-day tulip mania amid the over-pumped speculation sentiment especially during late 2017.

Since then, the central government sees bitcoin as a source of financial risks. It banned domestic crypto exchanges after failing to regulate the fast growth of initial coin offerings (ICOs). Under such circumstances, local crypto exchanges moved overseas to avoid regulations, and crypto traders came up with nicknames for those sensitive cryptocurrencies to circumvent unwanted attention from censors on social media platforms.

Apart from crackdowns on ICOs and companies providing services for bitcoin transactions, the country later took further actions against bitcoin mining by containing power supply for crypto mining and drafting to classify bitcoin mining as the eliminated industry.

While last week, the country’s top economic planning agency has quietly removed cryptocurrency mining from the catalog list of industries they want to eliminate.

The recent blockchain frenzy triggered by Xi seems to be a boon to bitcoin both in price and regulation consideration. As media reports are beginning to offer objective descriptions about cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin investors are wondering whether Beijing will change its attitude towards cryptocurrencies, or, it is just a preparation for its own state-bank digital currency which is said to roll out very soon.