Beijing Sci-Tech Report (BSTR), China’s oldest media publication covering the tech industry, has announced it will offer subscriptions payable with Bitcoin (BTC).
Chinese government pressure has forced crypto exchanges and Initial Coin Offering (ICO) operators to stop activities over the past year, and BSTR says it wishes to promote blockchain and crypto use through “practical actions.”
Subscribers can pay subscription fees to the specific bitcoin receiving address of the newspaper to complete the subscription.
The product on offer is an annual subscription to the publication’s ‘Tech Life’ magazine, which costs 0.01 BTC.
The authorities of China continue to clamp down on trading and promotional operations related to cryptocurrency, they also take efforts to tackle overseas platforms by blocking access to them online.
However, owning and investing in cryptocurrency is not officially illegal.
Responding to queries about the BSTR move on social media, Chinese cryptocurrency news commentator cnLedger underlined the fact that by offering a Bitcoin subscription, the publication was not breaking the law.
“Owning and investing in crypto is not banned. Otherwise Jihan of Bitmain and Leon of Huobi would be among the first ones to get fined/caught. Thousands if not millions would have been arrested already (large amount of OTC tradings)”, – he wrote.
At the end of September, cnLedger wrote that Ethereum Hotel, China’s first hotel that accepts $ETH as payment, opened their business in National Scenic Area of Four Girls Mountain (Sichuan Province). The hotel accepts BTC as a payment too.
