China has reportedly banned all bitcoin executives from leaving its borders as part of the country’s crackdown on its cryptocurrency industry.

Though these reports named bitcoin executives in particular, some see the move as the onset of a larger “war” between governments everywhere and all cryptocurrencies.

This is the latest in a series of new Chinese regulations supposedly designed to eliminate the economic risks associated with cryptocurrencies and ICOs.  The first was an all-out ban on all ICO activity, and the second was a subsequent ban on all local cryptocurrency exchanges.

When the initial ICO ban was announced, some analysts predicted that the ban would only be temporary, and that it would end once the government had put the necessary framework in place to help regulate the relatively unregulated industry.

Now, analysts are predicting that this ban is permanent.  Earlier this week, CNBC published an article which began with the sentence, “China’s latest crackdown on bitcoin will likely shut down the local industry around the digital currency for good.”

There is even the fear that Beijing will come to ban all bitcoin mining, as well.  Currently, about 70 percent of all new bitcoin are mined in China.

But earlier this year, China became the first country in the world to develop a prototype of its own cryptocurrency.

At that time, the People’s Bank of China was reported to be testing its own cryptocurrency to be used alongside the renminbi, or the Chinese yuan.

Since then, the People’s Bank of China has not issued any comments about these ventures.

This apparent reverse in the Chinese government attitude toward cryptocurrency remains unexplained.

Read more at: Bitcoin.com, CNBC, CoinTelegraph, Futurism, and The Street.