00:00No, Coinbase is not legally usable in mainland China. Beijing's 2021 ban on crypto trading and
00:07offshore exchange access remains in force, and Coinbase has no licensed or regulated presence
00:12in the country. However, technical access has recently become murkier. As of mid-July 2026,
00:19Coinbase reportedly began accepting Chinese national IDs and mainland addresses for account
00:25verification based on unconfirmed user reports, even though its own support documentation still
00:31lists a passport as the only accepted identification document for China. This looks like an unannounced,
00:37possibly reversible rollout rather than a policy shift. Coinbase officially has no regulated services
00:44in China, where crypto remains banned. And as recently as February 2026, the People's Bank of
00:50China reiterated that crypto and stablecoins remain banned, extending the prohibition to tokenized
00:56real-world assets. KuCoin. KuCoin. Practical access routes differ sharply. Coinbase, mainland direct,
01:04technically inaccessible-slash-blocked. Any current onboarding is an unofficial gray-zone workaround,
01:10not sanctioned use, and carries legal risk for the user. Coinbase International Exchange,
01:15offshore entity. Available to customers in over 100 countries for crypto, equities, and commodities,
01:22but not marketed as China-compliant. VPN plus offshore exchange. The most common real-world
01:28method Chinese users have used since the 2021 ban, since crypto adoption persists despite restrictions,
01:35though it directly violates capital control and trading laws. KuCoin. The answer changes by user
01:41type. Institutional-slash-regulated entities in China face zero-legal pathway and severe penalty risk.
01:48Individual retail users technically bypass restrictions via VPN-slash-ID workarounds,
01:54but remain in breach of PBOC rules. And this data itself is unconfirmed-slash-unofficial as of
02:01publication. So treat it as provisional, not policy. Practical takeaway. Do not treat any current
02:08access as legal or stable. Assume it can be revoked instantly. And any mainland Chinese user engaging
02:15with Coinbase is operating outside PBOC regulations regardless of technical onboarding success.
02:21Finally, remember that everything we discussed today is for educational purposes only and does
02:26not constitute financial advice. Good luck to everyone, and see you in the next video.