September has been a wild ride for Bitcoin, echoing January 2017 as a month dominated by news driven by the Chinese government.
The current round of announcements began on the Sept 4, when the government made the sale and trading of ICO tokens illegal across china. Many of these digital assets were traded on bitcoin exchanges.
Exchanges in the country have since purged any ICO-related products, while maintaining cryptocurrency trading services. However, some rumors about cryptocurrencies themselves being banned arose.
On the 9th of September a mainstream financial news report from Caixin announced that the top three Bitcoin exchanges in China would be closed down, in an article titled “The end of the virtual currency exchange era.” The article did not name any sources, and at the time the three exchanges said that they had received no such orders.
Soon after the article was published, the official twitter account of the Chinese Communist Party posted a comment that appeared to confirm the news.
Chinese regulators have dealt a huge blow to the cryptocurrency market. One of China’s largest bitcoin exchanges, BTC China, Announced that it will shutdown its operations by end of month. The news sent BTC prices plummeting from around $5,000 to as low as around $3,000. It has currently bounced back in price and is hovering around $3,700. This is all after BTC had hit highs of around $5,000 earlier this month.
"This all because of China. Chinese investors have until September 30th to get their money out of exchanges before they close," Brian Kelly, CEO and founder of BKCM and a CNBC contributor, said in an email. "This is a market structure drop and not a drop on fundamentals, therefore this is a buying opportunity.""This all because of China. Chinese investors have until September 30th to get their money out of exchanges before they close," Brian Kelly, CEO and founder of BKCM and a CNBC contributor, said in an email. "This is a market structure drop and not a drop on fundamentals, therefore this is a buying opportunity."
On the 9th of September a mainstream financial news report from Caixin announced that the top three Bitcoin exchanges in China would be closed down, in an article titled “The end of the virtual currency exchange era.” The article did not name any sources, and at the time the three exchanges said that they had received no such orders.
Soon after the article was published, the official twitter account of the Chinese Communist Party posted a comment that appeared to confirm the news.
Over the past few days, however, a number of bitcoin exchanges in the country announced a halt of yuan trading. BitKan made the first announcement, on the 12th, stating “Our OTC trading function is suspended; the money inside of the wallets can still be used normally, accepting digital assets both into and out of the affected accounts like normal.” The exchange revealed that the suspension was “in response to relevant management measures.”
These measures were put forward by a long list of government departments, the exchange explains, including “the People's Bank of China, the Central Committee of the People's Republic of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the CSRC and the CIRC.”
Top-five Chinese bitcoin exchange company BTCC then announced the closure of its subsidiary BTC China, the oldest Bitcoin exchange still in operation today. The company tweeted their first announcement early on Thursday, stating that it would completely shut down its exchange businesses on the last day of the month. A follow-up statement by the company Friday on Reddit offered more details.
BTC China, which encompasses a range of yuan-to-cryptocurrency trading pairs, did not state if the shutdown was permanent. Other businesses that the company runs, including a mining pool, physical bitcoin line of products, and an international cryptocurrency exchange will continue to operate normally.
BTCC also made it clear that the decision for the shut-down was based upon the government’s latest statement made on the 4th, which was targeting ICOs.
On Friday, the two largest Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges, OKCoin and Huobi, each made announcements, at roughly the same time. In similarly-worded statements. Both companies posted announcements on their respective sites, clarifying that they would each close the yuan trading part of their business as of October 30, and encouraged all customers to withdraw their fiat currencies as soon as possible.
While users were not told that they had to remove their cryptocurrencies, for those who have bought cryptocurrency with fiat already, the exchanges were adamant about customers completing a video interview for AML/KYC purposes first before withdrawing. Both letters gave similar reasons for the closure of service, and neither gave any hints as to when or if they might re-open.
With all this news going on its hard to tell wether BTC will continue in a down trend or if this is just a quick pull back with a great buying opportunity? What do you fellow stemians think? Would love to hear some feedback! Please Upvote, Comment, and Resteem!
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