ViaBTC CEO Haipo Yang tweeted that “China will shut down all exchanges,” lending credence to rumors that the country will make it illegal to operate a Bitcoin exchange after its recent ban ICOs. However, a Chinese official says that the ICO ban is temporary and they are working on introducing licensing and more regulation to cryptocurrency according to state media.
Earlier today, Chinese media outlet Caixin reported that the country’s regulators are planning to ban Bitcoin exchanges.
The site said; “The supervisory authority has decided to close the exchange of virtual currency in China, which involves all virtual currency and denominations represented by ‘OKcoin’, ‘coins’ and ‘Bitcoin China’. Of the exchange, the new financial reporter from the Internet financial risk special rectification work leading group (hereinafter referred to as the leading group) who confirmed the news, and understand that the resolution has been deployed to the local.”
These rumors thus far unconfirmed, Haipo Yang–CEO of Bitcoin exchange and mining pool ViaBTC–added fire to the speculation Tweeting that “China will shut down all exchanges,” with a picture a news article with a quote. Yang has not commented any further on the matter.
China will shutdown all exchanges. pic.twitter.com/lmEiF0S5Eo
— Haipo Yang (@yhaiyang) September 8, 2017
If the China Bitcoin ban rumors are true, this would be the People’s Bank of China’s (PBoC) second move against the cryptocurrency industry in less than a week, which may be a stronger ripple felt inside the broader crypto markets as a whole.
When China banned ICOs we saw a total plunge in the markets declining below $7.5 billion from its earlier high last week of $10 billion according to Coin Market Cap.
Bloomberg’s China reporter, Lulu Yilun Chen, gave comfort that its all hype and China isn’t banning Bitcoin exchanges, OKCoin and Huobi said they have not received shutdown notices from any Chinese financial authority and the sites still seem to be operating as normal. Regional cryptocurrency news source cnLedger contacted the exchanges and confirmed that they are functioning normally.
Regarding tonight’s rumours, we asked representatives from okc & huobi, they have not received any notice and they’re operating normally
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) September 8, 2017
CnLedger furthered tweeted out that “fake news” was the cause of the panic displaying a photo they said was “altered” that was actually from 2016 of an arrest of an unrelated scam.
Lot’s of false news. Don’t believe them unless they’re confirmed or verified. Up to now, no exchange is forced to close, no body is arrested pic.twitter.com/puCQVBJH5u
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) September 6, 2017
This is the second time this week that China has scared the cryptocurrency markets – Bitcoin price plunged by $400. BTC/CNY plunged below $3,800 on several exchanges after this recent scare and the markets are still down as of this report with NEO (the Chinese Ethereum) dropping almost 15%, according to Coin Market Cap.