Bitcoin prices took a tumble after the rumored China ban was made semi-official. This had a large knock-on effect on Ether and Dash too, which are down in USD terms (although flat vs BTC). Due to the large affect this news is having on the crypto market, we’ll cover BTC instead of Dash in this article.
Bitcoin Tumbles on China Exchange Ban
Bitcoin prices dropped sharply during the past few days as the rumored china exchange ban is slowly being rolled out. First Bitkan, a popular Chinese OTC trading platform, announced that they will shut down. Then BTC China, one of the biggest three Chinese exchanges followed suit. And finally today OKEX, a futures platform run by OKCoin, announced that their new futures will be based on a 100% USD price index, instead of the previous 50/50 CNY/USD mix. A smaller trading platform VIABTC announced that they will close their doors as well.
While nothing has been officially announced by regulators yet, it now seems certain that all crypto exchanges in the country will be forced to shut down. At this point it’s not clear just how far reaching the crackdown will be. Initial reports by the WSJ and Caixin suggested that OTC trading will not be affected but after the Bitkan shutdown that is under question as well.
Bitcoin prices fell to a low of $3,051 today, down over 26 percent in three days and down 38% percent from the $4,960 all-time high. As noted in our previous article, the break of $3,930 level triggered a bear market for BTC/USD. Strong support on the way down can be found at the $3,000 round figure, followed by weaker levels at $2,892, $2,597 and $2,500. On the weekly and monthly charts bitcoin is still in an uptrend.
ETH/BTC not Fazed by Drama
Both Ether and BTC are down sharply versus the U.S. Dollar. But against each other there has been little price change. We are currently quoted at 0.06928 BTC, down by only 3 percent compared to last week.
On the lower end the bears are looking at 0.06630 per BTC. A breakdown below here could start a new downtrend. On the higher side, the ‘number to beat’ is 0.085, a breakout above here could lead to a rally in prices. On the weekly charts ETH/BTC is range-bound but on the monthlies the pair is still looking bullish.
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