BTCC, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges in China and the world, has just announced that it will cease all trading operations by the end of September. The market has responded quickly and the price of Bitcoin has fallen to just around $3545 at this time.
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1/ After carefully considering the announcement published by Chinese regulators on 09/04, BTCChina Exchange will stop all trading on 09/30.
— BTCC (@YourBTCC) September 14, 2017
As a reminder, the price of Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $5000 less than two weeks ago.
This move is not all that surprising, considering that there have been reports in the Chinese media for the past week regarding a possible ban on Bitcoin exchanges by the country's financial regulators. While an official confirmation of this ban has still not surfaced, this move by BTCC seems to confirm the matter.
It is also very likely that we will see all the other top exchanges in China following suit in the coming hours and days - representatives of the Chinese regulators will explain their intentions to the exchange operators in private rather than publish an official clarification regarding the legality of Bitcoin trading in the huge Asian market.
While the dominance of China in terms of Bitcoin trading volumes cannot be understated, other markets in Asia have risen in importance over the past year, Japan and Korea most notably. Given this, there is room for optimism that trading volumes will not fall by 90%, which would have happened for sure if this had happened a year ago.
