Bitcoin exchange ViaBTC has just announced that it is to cease all trading operations in China by the end of the month. This is the second major Bitcoin exchange in China to do so in response to a recently announced ban.
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The company wrote today to clients:
"On September 4th, China's central bank together with six other departments released a public statement on Regulation policies and warning the risks of ICO projects. As a responsible cryptocurrency exchange platform, ViaBTC (www.viabtc.com) has made a serious decision to carry out the spirits of the policy - we will officially close the website www.viabtc.com for exchange business in Mainland China on September 30th. Before that we will complete processing of all withdrawal requests of CNY and cryptocurrency assets.
Please make sure to withdraw all your assets including CNY and cryptocurrency before September 30th, after which ViaBTC website www.viabtc.com will be officially closed in Mainland China."
Like in the case of BTCChina, ViaBTC mining pool and cloud mining services will not be affected.
Not OK anymore
In response to the market in China getting the axe from the central bank, the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange OKEx has announced that it is delisting the top three Chinese exchanges from its main indexes. OKCoin, Huobi, BTCC will be replaced by OKEx with Kraken and bitfinex.
The company wrote to clients:
"We noticed some price deviation, mispricing and Volatility in OKEx’s Futures market due to the recent uncertainty and instability in BTC and LTC’s Spot Market.
In consideration of market stability and safety of client’s monies, OKEX’s would change the index constituents as below:
1) OKCoin.cn, Huobi, BTC China would be temporarily delisted from BTC and LTC’s index constituents from Sep 30, 2017 applicable to all OKEX’s Futures (Weekly, Bi-weekly and Quarterly)
2) Kraken, bitfinex would be added into component of BTC and LTC’s USD Index. Hence the updated index would be weighted and constructed with price from Bitstamp, Coinbase, bitfinex and Kraken."
As a result of all this the price of Bitcoin is now just about $3100.
