In response to the latest wave of regulatory pressure regarding ICOs, and being unsure of what policy decision could come next from Chinese authoritarians, Shanghai-based BTCChina has confirmed it will stop trading at the end of the month, on September 30th.
Just recently, the company announced DAX.BTCC, a crypto to crypto only exchange, this could be where the team concentrates its efforts in the coming months.
Don’t forget that the company also runs a bulk of its bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading business out of Hong Kong with BTCC.com. Who could blame them for leaving the unpredictable Chinese government environment behind?
BTCChina left its mainland Chinese users the following message:
According to the September 4th issue of the “People’s Bank of China Central Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Ministry of Industry and Commerce, China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission on the prevention and treatment of the risk of issuing currency,” the spirit of the document, adhering to the prevention of investment risks, the maximum protection of users the principle of interest, the BTCChina Chinese team through careful discussion, is to make the following decision:
1. Will stop the registration of new users;
2. September 30, 2017, the digital asset trading platform will stop all trading business.
The company’s mining pool and other business will not be affected, and continue normal operation.
Below are a couple quotes in response from experts in the cryptocurrency industry:
Bharath Rao, CEO of Leverj, the decentralized platform for cryptocurrency derivatives trading:
“For those of us in the exchange space, the possibility of governments clamping down on exchanges is a foregone conclusion ever since bitcoin was first noticed by the government. Bitcoin price has dropped to $3,500 amid news of the BTCChina exchange shut down. The price is always a solid metric of the markets’ greed and fear and reflects regulatory uncertainty at the moment.”
“This also signals that development of non-custodial and decentralized models will accelerate. Regulation is neither necessary nor possible for decentralized models, and the future may have gotten just a bit brighter by nudging the crypto community to develop high-speed, non-custodial exchanges.”
Jason English, VP of Protocol Marketing at Sweetbridge, a global alliance that aims to use blockchain to create a liquid supply chain:
“China is practically building a cottage industry for mining and exchanging bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, so it is hard to believe that they intend to exit a market with so much potential upside. Even the apparent ban on ICOs seemed to be more of a stopgap in order to get some policies in place.”
“If anything, this example shows the volatility of the space and that some market-makers can likely take advantage of an unclear news cycle to create a sell-off and buyback opportunity.”