On Friday, Chinese authorities’ announcement of a crackdown on Bitcoin (BTC) mining and trading behavior sent crypto prices falling once more. Two crypto exchanges recently announced the suspension of some of their crypto-related services, moves that many believe to be a result of China’s recent warning.
Huobi announced that it has stopped its miner hosting services in mainland China, according to Coindesk. The move came after the government’s announcement of a crackdown on crypto mining and trading behavior.
The crypto exchange also said suspended some of its services and products in certain countries. The affected activities include leveraged investment products, exchange-traded products, and futures contract trading services.
“Due to recent dynamic changes in the market, in order to protect the interests of investors, a portion of services such as futures contracts, ETP, or other leveraged investment products are temporarily not available to new users from a few specified countries and regions,” Huobi said in a statement.
“Huobi always strives to abide by the evolving policies and regulations of each jurisdiction to adhere to risk and preserve the well-being of our users and their assets,” the crypto exchange added. However, the statement did not specify the countries or regions where the products will be suspended.
Aside from Huobi, the crypto exchange OKEx is reportedly stopping one of the products traded on its platform. “One of China's largest exchanges, OKEx stated that it will stop OKB's fiat currency (RMB) trading at 14:00 on May 24,” Chinese journalist Wu Blockchain posted on Twitter on March 23. “OKB is OKEx's platform coin which has fallen by 63% in the last 7 days.”
However, the Twitter account posted an updated an hour later. “Because of the panic, OKEx just stated that it will not cancel OKB transactions in the legal currency trading area,” Wu Blockchain added.
Wu Blockchain pointed out that there is no definite information on what China’s crackdown plans might be. However, this uncertainty only added to the volatility of the crypto market, considering the size of the trading volume by Chinese investors.
“Chinese investors still account for more than 60% of the trading volume of perpetual contracts,” Wu Blockchain pointed out, according to Bitcoin.com. “Chinese miners hold large amounts of Bitcoin and Ethereum. We cannot underestimate the impact of Chinese investors on the cryptocurrency market.”
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