One of China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges said that it would end trading after news reports said regulators have ordered all Chinese exchanges to close, causing the price of the digital currency to plunge.
BTC China (比特幣中國) said on its Web site it will “stop all trading business” on Sept. 30.
The exchange said it was acting “in the spirit of” a People’s Bank of China ban last week on initial coin offerings, but gave no indication it received a direct order to close.
Photo: AP
The Chinese central bank has not responded to questions about the currency’s future there.
There was no immediate word from other Chinese bitcoin exchanges about their plans.
Bitcoin’s value tumbled 15 percent on Thursday to about US$3,300. The famously volatile currency has shed about one-third of its value since Sept. 1, but is up from about US$600 a year ago.
Bitcoin surged in popularity in China last year as its price rose. Trading dwindled after regulators tightened controls and warned that the currency might be linked to fraud.
Two business newspapers on Thursday reported that regulators in Shanghai, the country’s financial center, gave verbal instructions to Chinese bitcoin exchanges to close.
Bitcoin is created and exchanged without the involvement of banks or governments.
Transactions allow anonymity, which has made bitcoin popular with people who want to conceal their activity.
Bitcoin can be converted to cash when deposited into accounts at prices set in online trading.
A Chinese business news magazine, Caixin, said that at one point, up to 90 percent of global trading took place in China.
The Chinese government’s clampdown on cryptocurrencies has not only sent bitcoin tumbling, it is also hitting the shares of related companies.
Hong Kong-listed PC Partner Group Ltd (柏能集團), which makes graphics cards used in bitcoin mining, has tumbled 27 percent since China’s central bank declared initial coin offerings illegal earlier this month.
Shenzhen-based Ysstech Info-tech Co (贏時勝信息技術) and Beijing’s Global Infotech Co (高偉達軟件) — which both have links to blockchain technology, the system that underpins bitcoin — have retreated at least 5 percent.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
RSS