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Bitcoin resurged in value to peak at over 4,100 US dollars on Monday, a massive recovery after going into a freefall below 3,000 US dollars last Friday.
Last week's 16-percent drop came following announcements from a series of leading Chinese exchange platforms that they would be closing down in the coming weeks.
BTC China announced on Thursday that it would stop all trading from September 30, and halt registration of new users.
This was followed by similar announcements on Friday by OKCoin and Huobi, two of China’s major cryptocurrency platforms after the National Internet Finance Association of China (NIFA) last week warned that “financial and social risks [of cryptocurrencies] have accumulated to a level that cannot be ignored.”
Despite Friday's crash, cryptocurrencies on Tuesday morning were continuing to show signs of rapid recovery on exchanges outside of China.
US platform Coinbase was selling bitcoin for 3,980 US dollars at the time of writing, which while still well short of 4.943 US dollar peak on September 2, only represents a 2.89-percent month-on-month drop. In the grand scheme of things, bitcoin is still up 325 percent year-on-year.
However Chinese exchanges are struggling to keep up, as local investors continue to sell off cryptocurrencies while they still can. Huobi was selling bitcoin for 22,740 yuan (3,450 US dollars) at the time of writing, while BTC China – the exchange which sparked the initial selloff – was also lagging behind at 24,800 yuan (3,761 US dollars).
While China remains a big player when it comes to cryptocurrencies and mining, its global significance decreased in 2017, after consecutive reports of a looming crackdown on the sector by authorities.
Bloomberg reports that in previous years, as many as 90 percent of all bitcoin trades were happening in China. However, following investigations into several cryptocurrency exchanges by the central bank in January, the country now only represents around 10 percent of global trades, according to TechCrunch.
(CGTN)
