One of China’s oldest crypto exhcanges has shut down its Bitcoin business as crackdowns continue in the nation.
BTCChina Exits Bitcoin Business
Huang Xiaoyu and Yang Linke founded BTCChina back in 2011. According to a report by South China Morning post, the platform has now completely closed its Bitcoin businesses.
BTCChina also had a stake in ZG.com, a Singapore-based crypto exchange. The company sold it to a foundation in Dubai over a year ago, as per the report.
The platform was the first Bitcoin exchange in China, and it accounted for 80% of the world’s cryptocurrency trading at one point.
The company also faced some issues during the previous crypto crackdowns by the government. In 2017, when China banned cryptocurrency in the country, BTCChina announced they would shut down trading services.
In January 2018, the platform sold off its exchange business to a Hong Kong-based blockchain investment fund.
The exchange continued under the name BTCC, and reportedly no longer had any affiliation with BTCChina.
According to BTCC, their platform isn’t influenced by the mainland’s latest crypto crackdowns, and that their trading services will keep working normally. Here is a statement from the platform:
BTCC is not impacted for now because BTCC doesn’t provide trading of cryptocurrencies, but derivatives of cryptocurrencies
However, BTCChina isn’t the same. They have decided to completely move out of the Bitcoin business during Beijing’s latest attempts to block the cryptocurrency.
China’s Crackdown Continues
The Chinese government finds that cryptocurrencies can destabilize the nation’s financial systems as they can be used to workaround the capital policies.
The major concerns include illegal foreign transactions and money laundering. As such, China deems it a threat and has launched many crackdown operations throughout the years.
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In April of this year, Bitcoin was still riding its highest point ever. However, as soon as China reiterated its cryptocurrency ban, the price crashed by almost 40%.
Crackdown on mining farms followed the ban. Huge miner hubs like Sichuan have already been shutdown by their local governments.
Miners have started moving out of the country in hordes as the crackdowns surge throughout the country. Since China accounted for a good chunk of world Bitcoin hashrate, it has plummeted as well.
Though, it should be noted that while the country is against cryptocurrencies, it’s in support of the blockchain technology itself. As a result, BTCChina is moving to applications of blockchain other than cryptocurrencies.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $34k. It’s up 4.5% in the past week, but down 0.1% in the last 30 days.
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Here is a chart showing the fluctuation in BTC’s price:
Bitcoin Jumps Back To $34k | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from pixabay.com