Even nine months after China declared that all cryptocurrency transactions are forbidden, the nation can roil the markets for digital assets.
GST, a token linked to the “move-to-earn” fitness app STEPN, fell by approximately 10% after the app’s operator said on Thursday that Chinese users would be effectively barred from using the program beginning July 15. According to CoinGecko data, GMT, a cryptocurrency-related application, had a thirty percent decrease before starting to rebound.
To acquire virtual shoes that may be used to earn GMT or GST coins via activities such as walking or jogging, non-interchangeable tokens are needed. STEPN can make this a reality thanks to the utilization of blockchain technology. Customers in China will no longer be able to collect tokens as a result of STEPN’s decision to stop its GPS services.
The Chinese tweet simply said that STEPN “has always paid great attention to compliance duties and has diligently complied with the applicable requirements of local regulatory bodies,” but did not clarify whether the change was enforced directly by Chinese regulators.
Despite China’s restriction on cryptocurrency trading and mining, the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain technology is not restricted in the country. There is presently no secondary market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as OpenSea, which is built on state-regulated permission-based blockchains.
By walking or jogging and accumulating Green Satoshi Tokens, STEPN users may level up their NFT shoes. This is possible in any NFT shoe (GST). After reaching a specific level with their NFT shoes, users are awarded Green Metaverse Tokens (GMT).
According to the results of a recent Dune Analytics survey, around 38,000 of the more than 580,000 people who have joined up for STEPN since the platform’s launch in December had been active in the last twenty-four hours. There is no data specific to a country in the results.
STEPN secured $5 million in investment in January from a group of investors that included Sequoia Capital and Alameda Research.
There was no mention of conducting direct business in China in the corporation’s tweet, nor was there a link to download the app from inside the nation. Users whose Internet Protocol (IP) address or GPS location indicates that they are in the United States will be denied access to the GPS system.
During the month of March, there were several mentions of GMT. CoinGecko believes that its current market value is under $600 million, down from $2.4 billion in April. The Solana cryptocurrency, the native currency of the blockchain that STEPN uses for its platform, fell 9.6 percent on Friday.