With both India and Turkey cracking down on bitcoin, is China set to warm to the cryptocurrency that it has been waging a not so quiet capital control war with for the past four years? In a dramatic and material shift in Beijing's tone after a crackdown on cryptocurrency issuance and trading nearly four years ago, CNBC reported that China's central bank is now calling bitcoin an "investment alternative."

Industry insiders called the comments "progressive" and are watching closely for any regulatory changes made by the People's Bank of China.

"We regard Bitcoin and stablecoin as crypto assets ... These are investment alternatives," Li Bo, deputy governor of the PBOC, said on Sunday during a panel hosted by CNBC at the Boao Forum for Asia.

"They are not currency per se. And so the main role we see for crypto assets going forward, the main role is investment alternative" he added.