Share this article
P2P Exchange Hodl Hodl Sneaks Around China's Google Firewall
Hodl Hodl said Google's reCAPTCHA service, blocked by Chinese firewalls, prevented Asian users from logging on.
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 11:23 a.m. Published Aug 27, 2019, 7:00 p.m.
Peer-to-peer bitcoin trading just got a little bit bigger thanks to a simple technical change.
On a company blog post, multi-sig P2P bitcoin exchange Hodl Hodl announced the extension of its services to China. Hodl Hodl said Google's reCAPTCHA service, used by the exchange and blocked by Chinese firewalls, was to blame.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
As part of its on-boarding and trading services, Hodl Hodl uses Google’s reCAPTCHA service to identify bots. By moving off of Google’s service in China, Hodl Hodl was able to open up Chinese traders to its platform.
Speaking with CoinDesk, Hodl Hodl team manager Arthur Zaharov said the exchange has always accepted Chinese traders, the problem came down to China's Great Firewall. Moreover, Hodl Hodl expects China to be a large market moving forward:
"For the privacy and security of our customers, we don't publicly provide data on P2P trading on our platform, but I can say that there's a huge demand in this country for P2P trading, especially after the biggest centralized exchanges disappeared from radar some time ago.
And yes, we plan to firmly gain a foothold in the market and expect China to be one of the biggest markets we serve."
P2P trading expands
In May, P2P bitcoin trading site LocalBitcoins blocked Iranian traders from using the platform. As CoinDesk reported at the time, the move most likely came down to U.S. sanctions against the Iranian government and economy.
As Iranian traders were cut off from the site, they sought and found alternatives such as Hodl Hodl.
In fact, when LocalBitcoins went dark in Iran, Hodl Hodl had just added Farsi language support. It is now adding Mandarin right now.
Currently, Hodl Hodl is working on access for U.S. traders, the only country the service does not operate in. As a P2P exchange "[Hodl Hodl's] position is to be opened for as many people as possible,” Zaharov said.
Firewall image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Farcaster Switches to Wallet-First Strategy to Grow Its Social App
The protocol still consists of casts, follows, reactions, identities and wallets, and third-party clients are free to emphasize whichever components they want.
What to know:
- Farcaster is shifting its focus from social media to its in-app wallet and trading features to drive user engagement.
- Cofounder Dan Romero acknowledged the lack of sustainable growth in their social-first strategy over the past 4.5 years.
- The wallet's trading tools have shown the strongest product-market fit, leading to a strategic pivot towards financial use cases.
Top Stories
