Investors lament Beijing crackdown

BEIJING: China’s decision to shut down bitcoin trading platforms has left investors scrambling to cut their losses and threatens to deprive the cryptocurrency of a crucial market.

“The authorities don’t understand anything about bitcoin!” fumed Zhang Yanhua, founder of an investment fund that was dead on arrival after Beijing started tightening the screws at the start of the month.

Last month, the People’s Bank of China told virtual currency trading platforms based here and Shanghai to cease market operations.

The bank has focused its sights not just on bitcoin but also ethereum and any other electronic units that are exchanged online without being regulated by any country.

They include two Chinese platforms, Okcoin and BTC China, which accounted for 22 per cent of the global volume of bitcoins at end-August.

The bank’s warning shot has shaken world prices and put a damper on the active community of local investors.

“The chances of a reversal are minimal,” said Zhang Yanhua, who has been scrambling to offload Percentage of global volume made up by Okcoin and BTC China his bitcoins.

To acquire virtual currencies, “investment channels (in yuan) are becoming scarcer” and access to platforms using foreign currencies “will become too complicated”, he said.

Others are seeking an alternative way out — private over-thecounter transactions between individuals are taking off on messaging applications.

But Zhang said that was “too risky”.

For his part, Sun Minjie, an investor who says he bought more than US$150,000 (RM633,405) worth of bitcoins, intends to hold on to them for the long term.

“The fate of bitcoin does not depend on the Chinese authorities,” he said. AFP