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China’s Crackdown: Why Bitcoin Will Continue to Thrive

September 15, 2017, the Chinese government officially issued a ban on all Bitcoin exchanges and trading platforms. The ban did not come as a surprise, rumors had been circulating for some time, but the ruling still triggered a mass exodus of investors. When rumor became reality a nervous market began selling off, sending the price of Bitcoin into a slide. The talk in the crypto-community immediately turned to whether Bitcoin was a bubble and this was the beginning of the end for the digital currency.

However, experience investors know that the price dip and setback with China are mere bumps in the road and Bitcoin’s path to growth will continue. As a proof point, by press time the price of Bitcoin had already recovered from $3,000 up to $4,011.

Here are just a few reasons and arguments from the experts as to why Bitcoin and digital currencies will be unaffected by the China exchange and ICO ruling.

Facebook and Google are Banned from China and Still Thriving

If there’s a precedent to be set about China’s ability to stifle innovation, one only need to look to companies like Facebook and Google. Both platforms can easily be characterized as giants worldwide with billions in earnings and mass adoption. What’s more, both platforms have also been banned in China.

There’s no doubt that China is a huge market, but Google and Facebook have thrived despite having no presence there.  

Stelian Balta, Founder and Managing Partner of HyperChain Capital had this to say: “Digital assets can be considered commodities trading on supply and demand. There is fixed supply and increasing demand. China is an important market and the recent news of exchanges shutting down and ICO funding being banned certainly has a short term negative effect on the prices. However, digital assets are a global phenomenon. Huge Internet businesses like Facebook or Google are banned in China and are doing pretty well.”

In fact, China only accounted for 6.4 percent of global Bitcoin trades. The world of cryptocurrency is still growing and has a long way to go before it overtakes traditional currency. In short, there’s plenty of opportunity left in the digital currency marketspace.

Trading Volume has Moved to Japan

Once China left the digital currency market, other countries were ready and waiting to take up the slack. Case-in-point, according to CryptoCompare, Japan became the leader in volume by currency with 50.75 percent market share of the global Bitcoin exchange market in the days after the ban. The three largest exchanges, BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin immediately moved to Japan after the ban, boosting it to the number one position. Time will tell how Japan continues to fair against the usual leaders of Korea, Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, but China’s ruling has opened up opportunity.

Some experts are even arguing that the China ban could be beneficial to the rest of the market. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, said, “This is a good thing. China can no longer play with the markets by banning Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency cannot be killed by any country. One solution to centralized exchanges is decentralized ones.”

Bitcoin’s rebound in price post China ruling serves as proof of Lee’s statement that no single country determines the fate of digital currency. The heart of Bitcoin and other coins is decentralization. They are the people’s currency and governments will never truly be able to stomp them out.

Bitcoin Always Recovers

Tom Lee, the former JP Morgan Chief Equity Strategist and current Head of Research for Fundstrat, made an appearance on CNBC’s Fast Money about Bitcoin is still a strong investment and store of value. “I unequivocally believe bitcoin is your best investment to the end of the year.” Lee went on to say that he believes Bitcoin will be worth $25,000 in five years.

Bitcoin investors are used to these types of swings in price because one thing remains true: Bitcoin always recovers.

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BTC-China launches Multi-currency wallet, looks to increase adoption by Social Media Integration

February saw an iconic change in the functioning of Bitcoin markets after the Chinese Exchanges stopped withdrawals from their exchanges citing regulatory reasons. Bitcoin has been historically powered by any adverse movements in the Chinese Markets and has been majorly been a hedging ground and speculation vehicle. With the Chinese Government imposing strict restrictions on ‘Capital Flight’, Bitcoin has come under major scrutiny that prompted a closed door meeting of PBOC with top Chinese Bitcoin Exchanges. The Chinese government is skeptical that people are banking on Bitcoin to get the money out of the country and hence have enforced exchanges to stop withdrawals till the exchanges have a regulatory set up in place.

The PBOC intervention:

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While the exchanges are taking sufficient time to set up the required monitoring system, they have extended the suspension of withdrawals. The dwindling Bitcoin volumes from China were an indication of how automated traders were flushed out from Bitcoin Markets and pseudo Chinese volumes were avoided. This has allowed Bitcoin’s perceived value to move closer to its real value and gave the market participants a good glimpse of the adoption status of the cryptocurrency and its true market presence. BTC China, famously known as BTCC has been optimistic about the cryptocurrency despite all the hurdles.

The wallet features and social media adoption:

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BTC China’s CEO, Bobby Lee recently tweeted his prediction placing Bitcoin’s price in the range of $5,000-$10,000 by the end of 2020. To pace up the adoption and promote the cryptocurrency, the exchange has come out with interesting features for Bitcoin users. The exchange which already mints physical Bitcoins for usage, has now entered the mobile payments market. The platform- Mobi is a multi-currency mobile wallet that enables bitcoin storage and conversion. One can convert to over 100 currencies including gold and silver. The wallet has no registration process and enables users to register with the phone number associated with their mobile device.

The app enables customers to transfer every currency the platform supports to Twitter and through SMS text as well. With cryptocurrencies’ adoption relying heavily on social media publicity, this was a premeditated attempt to use it to integrate the platforms for better and comfortable usage.

“With Mobi, we are taking Bitcoin mainstream”, stated the Bitcoin start-up.

The longest running Bitcoin Exchange is now open to USA Bitcoin Traders

When two-man team from China launched a Bitcoin exchange in Shangai, they certainly didn’t have US markets on their mind. What launched as a Yuan denominated exchange, in an unregulated environment, is now all set to trade with BTC USD. We are talking about BTC China, currently the longest running Bitcoin exchange. With heavy Chinese involvement, it has been the highest in terms of volume and the oldest in terms of running exchanges. Let’s look into its journey and how BTCC got to US Markets:

The History and the growth:

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BTC China was one of three major exchanges started in the summer of 2011. Its contemporaries included Slovenian Bitstamp and the Russian BTC-E. Around that time, MtGox in Japan had the highest volumes in bitcoin market for USD trades. The exchange grew quickly in 2012, despite the close monitoring of Chinese officials. Chinese government and Central bank were starting to enforce threatening steps for the growth of Bitcoin. Despite the negativity, the platform being China’s only exchange for trading Yuan for bitcoins garnered positive press coverage on national television. After the fall of MtGox, the exchange has seen steady increase in volumes which was later pushed up by imposition of capital controls in 2015.

Operating structure:

BTC China has been in business since 2011 building an effective customer relationship. While the company offers services to almost every country in the world, 16 countries are excluded.  These include the typical outsiders like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. Accompanying them are residents in the US states of New Hampshire, North Carolina, and New York. Anyone can sign up with a photo of their passport, a selfie of themselves holding the passport. They would also need a third form of identification that can be a driver’s licenses or utility bill.

Benefits over traditional exchanges:

The exchange’s fee structure might really attractive for US Dollar traders. Buyers pay only 0.2 percent of a trade, with a minimum of one penny. This is on par with Bitfinex and better than Bitstamp’s 0.25 percent. Meanwhile, sellers can earn money on each trade, receiving a rebate of 0.05 percent for adding liquidity to the board. This beats both Bitfinex and Bitstamp which still charge money to sellers.

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The new real-time exchange, currently in beta, offers Market, Limit, Stop, and One Cancels the Other (OCO) orders for spot trading. The Pro trading platform also provides 25x margin trading. The company now also offers a few other bitcoin services, including a bitcoin wallet, physical bitcoins, and a bitcoin mining pools. This would certainly make it  very lucrative option for all the US based traders.