By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 19th, 2024
Bad news for the virtual currency in China – the Bitcoin price crashes as Chinese government stops Bank deposits.
The Bitcoin price has made a steep decrease by almost $50 over the last 24 hours as Chinese banks informed about the official deposit shutdowns toward customers, confirming recent fears of an impending clampdown.
The Chinese exchanges BTCTrade, BTC100 and Huobi made an announcement to their customers confirming that Chinese government will be suspending bank transfers from clients till April 15th. The announcements have come from the banks themselves without any official “paper” notice, nevertheless such news made a significant impact on the price of Bitcoin.
The news about the inevitable change have been circulating for over a week now, the Bitcoin prices sank under $403 from a high of $450.74 on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index after companies began making public announcements on their sites.
Bobby Lee, CEO of BTC China, said that his company would not be taking any actions regarding bank deposits until it receives a formal notice that hasn’t been received yet.
“So far, we still have NOT received any official notices from Banks or the PBOC,” he said. “I have indeed heard that some other exchanges apparently have received notice, but we have not.”
Other exchanges such as OKCoin and FXBTC also suspended some account funding options after receiving official notices from their financial partners, but planned to continue trading otherwise after April 15th.
Star Xu, CEO of OKCoin, said that the company would maintain daily operation by all means.
“OKCoin’s margin management, risk management, and cash withdraw and coin withdraw functions are working properly at this moment, OKCoin’s English version site will be up quickly, OKCoin will establish overseas offices and move servers there if needed.”
A 10% change in value of the Bitcoin leaded to a decrease in price of other major cryptocurrencies and caused an unstable situation across all markets. The only currency that hasn’t been influenced is Isracoin (an unofficial cryptocurrency of Israel). Isracoin has experienced an impressive boost – increasing in value by 650% and becoming one of the world’s most valuable altcoin.
On 4th of April BTC38.com, specializes in altcoin trading operations, paused account funding via bank deposits. At that time the prices for other digital currencies other than bitcoin sank by 20% or even more. Megacoin (MEC) lost around 50% of its value, quark dropped by 40 % and dogecoin amounted to 25%.
Litecoin also lost its value (20%) in the last week, even though it is traded on most major platfornms and is not an altcoin per se in China. At present the trading of altcoin equals only to $10.22 on BTC-e.
According to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index the price for bitcoin is currently stabilized at around $412.
Last week the similar bitcoin price drop happened on OKCoin and FXBTC after they’ve received the notices from their banks that some of their accounts would be freezed.
It’s unclear what effect will have Chinese government restrictions on the price of bitcoin, but it is unlikely to be positive.