The People’s Bank of China has been stepping up its efforts to ensure regulatory compliance by domestic bitcoin exchanges since the beginning of this year. Reports now suggest that the central bank is going to roll out new rules for bitcoin exchanges later this month, according to CoinDesk.

Bitcoin price hit new highs in January this year, which caught the attention of the PBoC. The central bank officials met with the representatives of domestic bitcoin exchanges. The PBoC also launched spot checks on these exchanges.

Soon after, leading exchanges, including BTCC, OKCoin, and Huobi, in February announced the suspension of withdrawals of bitcoin and litecoin for a month. Later in March, Bloomberg reported that the three exchanges have decided to extend this suspension on all coin withdrawals for an indefinite period, as they seek regulatory approval.

More recently, the PBoC reportedly issued a statement saying:

“We did not ask trading platforms to suspend w/d. It was a decision made by themselves. The inspection has not ended.”

However, in a new report dated 10 May 2017, Caixin has stated that the PBoC’s investigations are now complete and new regulations will be released this month.

“The domestic central bank's spot check on the Bitcoin trading platform has come to an end”, according to Caixin (loosely translated).

Director of PBoC’s business management department Xuedong Zhou had earlier suggested that the regulators are expected to ban the exchanges from providing leveraged trading, financing, and margin trading services. He also said that exchanges should not attempt pumping up the trading volume by waiving transaction fees.

In a report review by Yao Qian, director of PBoC’s digital currencies research department, Chinese regulators are also considering possible regulations on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

BTC/USD hit a fresh all-time high on June 06 at 2933 levels (Bitstamp). It is currently trading at 2812 levels at the time of writing.