An unnamed head of a department at China's central bank said in an interview that Financial News published on 6 November 2026 that promoting SOL violates a February 2026 notice on virtual currencies, and that authorities halted Solana's "Accelerate China 2026" event in Shanghai and will investigate the entities and individuals involved. The Solana Foundation said on 16 October that it postponed the event's Shanghai opener because registrations quadrupled. No names, penalties or timeline have been given, we found no separate PBOC statement, and the Foundation had not responded to the interview as of 6 November (Solana Compass). SOL trades at $90.23 (7 November, 01:17 UTC), close to its 5 and 6 November levels.
Key Takeaways
The source is one anonymous official in a newspaper the PBOC supervises, reported by Solana Compass, Cointelegraph and Cryptopolitan. The official called SOL "in essence a virtual currency" and said promoting Solana "violates the Notice" (translations by Solana Compass). Solana Compass identifies the notice the official referred to as Yin Fa [2026] No. 42 of 6 February 2026, which, according to Solana Compass, holds domestic helpers liable if they knew or should have known what they were helping with. Hong Kong is moving the other way: it licensed stablecoin issuers in April, and Anchorpoint plans to mint its HKDAP stablecoin natively on Solana. The Foundation and the PBOC-linked account give different reasons for the same event, and both may be true.
What the PBOC Official Said
Financial News is a newspaper supervised by the People's Bank of China (Solana Compass). On 6 November it published an interview with the head of a PBOC department, who is not named. According to Solana Compass, which translated the Chinese quotes, the official said Solana had used a domestic company to run high-profile advertising for its brand and token, shown on the exterior wall of Citigroup Tower in Shanghai's Lujiazui financial district. "Recent monitoring found" this, the official said, and described it as virtual-currency marketing.
The official gave two grounds, per Solana Compass. SOL, the official said, is "in essence a virtual currency." And Solana provides technical services for issuing and trading major tokens such as USDT. Promoting Solana, the official said, "violates the Notice." The PBOC will investigate the entities and individuals involved, working with other departments. The official gave no names, no timeline and no penalties (Solana Compass, 6 November 2026).
Cryptopolitan's account of the interview adds customer-identification and anti-money-laundering gaps and speculative-trading risk to the stated grounds, and describes Solana as a priority watch after the Shanghai campaign, which included branding across the skyline and promotion of its Pudong office. It also reports that the PBOC will keep targeting domestic crypto traders and the local affiliates of offshore platforms. Solana Compass notes that the whole account comes from one anonymous official, with no formal PBOC statement of its own.
Two Accounts of the Same Event
The Shanghai opener was due on the morning of 16 October, and attendees were emailed that morning that it was postponed (Cryptopolitan). Foundation president Lily Liu explained it on X the same day.
"Due to the publicity, event registrations quadrupled overnight, far exceeding the event cap." (Lily Liu on X, 16 October 2026, as quoted by Cryptopolitan)
Solana Compass quotes her saying the cap had been registered with local authorities and that the team postponed "in order to comply with local requirements." Her post did not mention enforcement. Cryptopolitan reports that attendees at the Shangri-La venue did see law enforcement on site. Solana Compass notes that the two accounts can both be true: the PBOC version does not mention capacity, and Liu's version does not mention the ads.
| Point | PBOC-linked account (6 Nov) | Solana Foundation account (16 Oct) |
|---|---|---|
| Who | Unnamed head of a PBOC department, speaking to Financial News | Lily Liu, Foundation president, on X |
| What happened to the event | Halted by relevant departments before it opened | Postponed "in order to comply with local requirements" |
| Why | Illegal virtual-currency promotion through domestic entities, including ads on Citigroup Tower | Registrations quadrupled overnight, far exceeding the cap registered with local authorities |
| Names, penalties, timeline | None given | Not applicable |
| Formal statement | No separate PBOC statement found | Not applicable |
| Response to the interview | Not applicable | None found as of 6 November |
What Is Confirmed and What Is Not
Both accounts agree the opener did not go ahead as planned. Everything else about why, and what comes next, depends on whose account you read. We could not read the original Financial News article, so the quotes below come from outlets that did. The PBOC has not posted a separate statement, and Solana Compass notes the Chinese quotes in its piece are its own translation.
| Claim | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| A PBOC department head told Financial News that promoting SOL is illegal | Relayed by three outlets that rely on the same interview | Solana Compass, Cointelegraph, Cryptopolitan |
| The Shanghai opener did not go ahead as planned | Agreed by both accounts | Liu's own post, and the PBOC-linked account, which says halted |
| Authorities halted it | One side's account | PBOC-linked official; the Foundation says postponed |
| Cryptopolitan: law enforcement was seen at the venue | Reported, not independently verified | Cryptopolitan |
| Entities and individuals will be investigated | Stated intent, no details | No names, timeline or penalties |
| Solana Foundation response | None found | As of 6 November (Solana Compass) |
| Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing stops were affected | Unconfirmed | Only U.Today lists these cities as planned stops |
The Rule Behind It: Notice Yin Fa [2026] No. 42
The official referred to "the Notice". Solana Compass identifies it as the Notice on Further Preventing and Handling Risks Related to Virtual Currencies, Yin Fa [2026] No. 42, issued on 6 February 2026 by the PBOC and seven other bodies, which replaced a 2021 notice. According to Solana Compass, it treats virtual-currency business in mainland China as illegal financial activity and extends its controls to real-world-asset tokenization. Cryptopolitan and Cointelegraph add that it bans unauthorized yuan-pegged stablecoins. For China's own digital-currency direction, see our earlier piece on China's digital yuan and US stablecoin rules.
Two clauses matter here, again per Solana Compass. One bars overseas entities from illegally providing virtual-currency services to domestic parties. The other holds domestic helpers liable if they knew or should have known what they were helping with. Our reading, not the official's: that second clause may be why the official spoke of "entities and individuals" and focused on the Lujiazui ad, which the official said ran through a domestic company.
Why the Official Named USDT
The official's second ground was that Solana supports issuing and trading of tokens like USDT. Solana Compass token data shows about 3.84 billion USDT circulating on Solana, held by about 3.1 million wallets, as of 6 November 2026. That puts the PBOC's point in context: it is a statement about what the network is used for, not about SOL's price. In our reading, the same reasoning could extend to other chains that host large stablecoin supplies; no source says it will.
A Timeline: October 2025 to November 2026
The story did not start on 6 November. Cointelegraph reports that a Solana event in Shenzhen was cut short in October 2025, per Solana's Chinese-speaking community on X, and calls the Shanghai case the second reported disruption in two years. In our framing, set beside the Hong Kong developments from April to November, the picture is of two regimes inside one country.
Hong Kong Is Moving the Other Way
On 10 April 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted its first stablecoin issuer licences to Anchorpoint Financial Limited and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, effective the same day. HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue called it "an important milestone for the development of digital assets in Hong Kong" (HKMA press release, 10 April 2026).
On 30 October, Solana's official account announced that Anchorpoint plans to mint and redeem its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, HKDAP, natively on Solana (Solana Compass, 30 October 2026). The caveats matter: no go-live date has been set and no Solana mint address has been published, HKDAP currently runs only on Ethereum for institutional distributors, and reports of a signed memorandum of understanding come from PANews, not from an Anchorpoint or Foundation release. Until Anchorpoint publishes a mint address, we cannot point to any official HKDAP token on Solana.
On 6 November, the South China Morning Post reported, as summarised by U.Today, that the Nasdaq-listed Solana Company wants to grow its Hong Kong presence. It already has its Asia-Pacific headquarters there, and its local staff could rise from fewer than ten people to as many as thirty. The same report quotes Securities and Futures Commission chief executive Julia Leung saying the SFC has approved 17 tokenised investment products for retail investors, managing about $1.3 billion. Solana Compass also notes that the Pando Solana ETF began trading in Hong Kong earlier in October. Earlier this year, Foundation president Lily Liu used her Consensus Hong Kong keynote to name Asia as a core hub for the next generation of global finance, according to our February coverage.
| Hong Kong | Mainland China | |
|---|---|---|
| Stablecoins | HKMA licensed Anchorpoint and HSBC Hong Kong on 10 April 2026. Anchorpoint plans HKDAP on Solana, no date and no mint address | The February notice bans unauthorized yuan-pegged stablecoins (Cryptopolitan, Cointelegraph) |
| Tokenization | SFC has approved 17 tokenised investment products for retail investors, about $1.3B in assets (SCMP via U.Today) | The notice extends its controls to real-world-asset tokenization (Solana Compass) |
| Solana-specific | Pando Solana ETF began trading earlier in October (Solana Compass); Solana Company plans a bigger local team | Official says halted; Foundation says postponed; investigation stated as intent |
Did the Price React?
So far, nothing visible. CoinGecko's last data point of each UTC day shows SOL at $89.55 on 5 November and $89.99 on 6 November, the day the interview was published, a change of about 0.5%. The live reading was $90.23 at 7 November, 01:17 UTC. The sharp drop of about 6% came on 5 November (CoinGecko daily points: $95.96 on 4 November, $89.55 on 5 November), before the story broke, and CryptoTicker ties it to a sell-off in US tech and AI stocks that also pushed Bitcoin below $76,000 that day. That sell-off is the better-supported explanation for that move; we found nothing connecting it to China. The price context from earlier in the week is in our look at the record ETF outflow.
Daily data points cannot isolate an intraday reaction, and we do not know the time of day the interview was published, so one or two days of data cannot show whether the market treats the story as material. Under the notice, virtual-currency business in mainland China is treated as illegal (Solana Compass), so a direct price channel through regulated mainland products is unclear. What the story can affect is Solana's ecosystem activity in China: events, contractors and local partners who might now read the notice's liability clause more cautiously. That is our reading, and no source has said it yet.
What to Watch Next
- A formal PBOC statement. So far it is one official's interview, with no names, timeline or penalties.
- The Foundation's response. None had been published as of 6 November, and Solana Compass says it is unconfirmed whether the Shanghai event will be rescheduled.
- Other tour stops. Only U.Today names Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Beijing as planned stops, and nothing we read confirms what happened there. The October 2025 Shenzhen event in the timeline is a separate, earlier incident.
- Named targets. The official said, per Cryptopolitan, that the PBOC will go after domestic traders and the local affiliates of offshore platforms. In our view, any named company or person would be the first concrete enforcement step.
- HKDAP on Solana. A go-live date and an official mint address are the two things still missing.
Known Discrepancies
Several claims in circulation do not match each other or the sources behind them. We list them so you can tell them apart.
| Claim in circulation | What the sources support |
|---|---|
| The official statement came from Financial Times reporting | PANews attributes it to the Financial Times. The three other outlets we read on this point (Solana Compass, Cointelegraph, Cryptopolitan) attribute it to Financial News, a PBOC-supervised paper. |
| The event was "banned" or "cancelled" | The PBOC-linked account says halted. Liu said postponed. Outlets use halted, cancelled, shut down and stopped for the same event. |
| China banned Solana | Some headlines frame it as a crypto ban. The official said promoting Solana violates an existing notice. We found no report of a new ban on holding or trading SOL. |
| Foundation president "Lily Lu" | The name is Lily Liu in Cointelegraph, Cryptopolitan and Solana Compass. One outlet misspelled it. |
| The ad ran on 14 October | Only U.Today gives that date. Others say mid-October. |
| SOL fell because of China | SOL fell about 6% on 5 November, a day before the interview was published, and CryptoTicker ties that move to a US tech sell-off. We found no price reaction to the interview. |
Sources and Methodology
The PBOC official's statements come from Solana Compass, Cointelegraph and Cryptopolitan (all 6 November 2026), which report an interview published by Financial News. We read those articles, plus PANews and U.Today, and checked the HKMA licensing against the HKMA's own press release. We did not read the original Chinese Financial News article or the SCMP original, and the quotes marked as translations are Solana Compass's. The secondary outlets are mostly crypto-industry sites, and all rely on the same interview. The price series and live quote are from the CoinGecko API, queried on 7 November 2026; each daily point is the last data point of that UTC day. Where outlets disagreed we cite both and say what each measures.
Items we saw and left out because we could not verify them or they did not bear on the facts: a commentary attributed to Changpeng Zhao and liquidation figures from 5 November whose scope was unclear.
- Solana Compass, "PBOC Official: China Halted Solana Accelerate China 2026 Events, Will Probe Shanghai Lujiazui Ads", 6 November 2026
- Cointelegraph, "Solana's Shanghai Event Halted Due to Unauthorized Promotion", 6 November 2026
- Cryptopolitan, "PBOC says it stopped Solana's Shanghai event over crypto promotion", 6 November 2026
- PANews, "PBOC Responds to Shutdown of Solana's Shanghai Offline Event", 6 November 2026
- U.Today, "Solana's Skyline Crypto Ad Triggers Central Bank Investigation in China", 6 November 2026
- U.Today, "Solana Targets Hong Kong's Tokenization Market" (reporting SCMP), 6 November 2026
- Hong Kong Monetary Authority, stablecoin issuer licences press release, 10 April 2026
- Solana Compass, Anchorpoint HKDAP on Solana plan, 30 October 2026
- CryptoTicker, "Solana Price Slides to $89, First Test of the 200-Day Line Since August", 5 November 2026
- CoinGecko API, SOL price data, 7 November 2026
This article is analysis, not legal or investment advice. Rules and positions change quickly, and every figure here carries the date it was checked.