The first of China’s bitcoin exchanges BTCChina (BTCC) has announced its shutting down the domestic cryptocurrency trading at the end of September. The recently appeared rumors that China is going to ban all domestic cryptocurrency exchanges are becoming reality.
As it has recently been reported, BTCC, one of top-three bitcoin exchanges in China and one of top-five in the world, will cease its China-based trading operations starting from September 30. The news appeared earlier today on BTCC’s Twitter, adding that other products and services, including mining pools and international exchange, will not be affected by the change and remain operational:
“1/ After carefully considering the announcement published by Chinese regulators on 09/04, BTCChina Exchange will stop all trading on 09/30.”
“2/ BTCC products, including BTCC Pool, are not affected by this change. Please contact us at support@btcc.com if you have any questions.”
According to BTCC’s official microblog, the registration of new users will be stopped starting from today.
China used to be one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency trading locations attracting investors to domestic exchanges and boosting demand, until the rapid growth of such highly risky and speculative market prompted the country’s authorities to crack down on the cryptocurrency sector in order to stamp out potential financial risks.
Earlier this month, China banned the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a radical new fundraising technology helping to create and sell digital currencies and tokens to potential investors of start-up projects. This ban was followed by a great loss in bitcoin’s price and caused many rumors that China is going to shut down all the cryptocurrency exchanges in the country.
As Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis site Cryptocompare, stated:
“The Chinese ban is causing a panic in the market as mixed messages and lack of clarity has turned sentiment negative.”
However, no official announcement has yet been made by the People’s Bank of China or the country’s government regarding the ban of all domestic digital currency exchanges.
Another China’s leading cryptocurrency exchange Huobi isn’t going to stop digital currency trading as they haven’t received any guidance from the government yet. As Huobi spokesperson told TechCrunch:
“As a Chinese enterprise, we are strictly compliant with the regulations, meanwhile, we put our users’ best interests as the top priority. Stay tuned with our announcement if there is any change.”
How the changes will affect world’s cryptocurrency trading is yet to be seen. At press time, bitcoin’s value was $3429.60, demonstrating the loss of 12.11%. All the other major cryptocurrencies demonstrate loss in value as well.
next