As Bitcoin magazine reported, China has reiterated its anti-crypto stance, announcing that all services that enable the exchange of fiat and cryptocurrencies or between cryptocurrencies are now considered illegal activities.

In addition, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) stated that people who live in the country but work for overseas cryptocurrency exchanges to offer cryptocurrency trading in China can also be legally prosecuted.

Like a stone thrown into a calm lake, the entire crypto market is in turmoil. Bitcoin plummeted from $ 45,000 to $ 42,000 while altcoins were also dragged down. Bitcoin doesn’t stop there, but continues to slide towards $ 41,000 while other coins in the top 10 are losing around 10%.

Source: Coin360

Exchange tokens are likely to be the hardest hit as the PBoC’s new statement targets the OTC service that major exchanges like Huobi, OKEx and Binance are currently offering in the country.

Within an hour of the news, the price of Huobi’s HT token and OKEx’s OKB both fell nearly 20%. They are currently the two biggest losers in the top 100 at press time.

HT is currently down 18.7% and trades at $ 9.8 with a market cap of $ 1.59 billion – a 20% decrease in the past 24 hours. However, trading volume is growing more than 164% to $ 501 million as of press time.

Source: TradingView

Meanwhile, OKB has fallen a little less, losing 16.7% in 24 hours and trading at $ 14.1 with a market cap of $ 847 million – a 16% decline. The trading volume grows by about 19% and reaches $ 357 million.

Source: TradingView

Both Huobi and OKEx were born and founded in China many years ago. Although they announced that they moved out of China and stopped trading renminbi, they still have staff working in the country serving Chinese customers so they can exchange human currencies for crypto assets via OTC trading.

Binance also offers OTC services in Chinese yuan on its platform. However, the price of the native token BNB was less affected than that of the two aforementioned tokens, which has fallen by around 9% in the past 24 hours. Market capitalization is down 9% to $ 56.8 billion, while trading volume is up 16% to $ 1.6 billion.

Source: TradingView

Huobi, OKEx and Binance were all blocked from the country’s most popular internet search engines and social media platforms in June. The official Weibo accounts of Huobi, OKEx and Binance were blocked back in March.

The central bank’s strong words reflect the tough stance Beijing has taken on cryptocurrency trading. The PBOC has repeatedly criticized the “speculative character” of cryptocurrencies, which “leads to criminal activities such as money laundering, illegal fundraising, fraud and pyramid schemes”.

Meanwhile, the PBOC is actively developing its own digital currency, the e-CNY, which is expected to gain wider adoption in the run-up to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February next year. It seems that cracking down on cryptocurrencies is a stepping stone for the adoption of e-CNY.

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Annie

According to The Block

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