The Chinese search giant Baidu is joining Alibaba and Tencent in their move to distance themselves from crypto related activities.

A few days ago, a message from Tencent, the developer of WeChat, stated that they have established that they implemented a function to identify cryptocurrency transactions. The will restrict all transactions and track them in real time to make sure no cryptocurrency related transactions occur.

Tencent is not the only major company that makes restrictions regarding cryptos. Alibaba Group and Ant Financial service are two other major companies that are tracking payments down and making certain restrictions and will educate users about the risk of cryptocurrencies. That being said, Ant Finacial is the world leader regarding blockchain patents with a total of 49 approved.

However, now Baidu joined in on the restrictions on cryptocurrencies. China Times, a Beijing-based business media, reported on Sunday that Baidu is seeking to censor and ban forum topics that discuss crypto-related activities on Baidu Tieba, the firm’s Reddit-alike online community business.

“At present, the company has increased supervision over digital currency, and according to relevant laws, regulations and policies, it will not open the relevant post bars,” said an insider close to Baidu.

Baidu Tieba was founded in 2003 and is the largest Chinese communication platform provided by the Chinese search engine company, Baidu. It is an online community bound tightly by internet search services, one of the main business of Baidu. The website functions by having users search or create a bar (Forum) by typing a keyword, and if the bar has not been created before, it is then created upon the search. They have around 300 million monthly users.

A while back, the forums on WeChat and Baidu about cryptocurrencies were lively communication channels for crypto enthusiasts, but a reporter now noticed that the lively currency circle, digital currency bar, virtual currency bar and other stickers were all banned, and even some of the unknown currency items posted disappeared without a trace.

“Many people tend to be dubious about the new currency. They always like to check it online and ask a friend to ask.” A public relations officer of the exchange said that because they seized the psychology of investors, they usually spend a lot of energy to maintain the information of the post, just like maintaining the media and other publicity channels, do not hesitate to go to the positive publicity. Sometimes it is pretending to be very objective, not to judge, to convince more people to let less negative information flow out.

Commenting on such statement, the Baidu Tieba representative hinted it was because these sub-forums were suspected of distributing information about initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency speculation. Just like WeChat, the discussions are therefore now banned since the market is highly speculative and especially

ICOs has been a topic when talking about scams and fraud. Baidu did not want people to promote ICOs that could be scams.

However, China is a global leader when it comes to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies and has invested well over $3 billion to fund blockchain project.

Image Source: “Flickr”