Huobi and OKCoin to Suspend Yuan Based Bitcoin Trading in October

Following on from the closure of ViaBTC and BTCC, Huobi and OKcoin are closing down their Yuan based trading at the end of October. They have been given a month extra to facilitate that closure because of their size relative to their competitors.

Given that they mentioned that this only relates to Yuan denominated trading, one can assume for now that Crypto to Crypto is still being offered. They will release all guidance to their traders in the coming weeks but aim to have all Yuan trading phased out by the end of October.

Although these companies were not given any documents formally to close down, they were called into the regulators offices and given verbal directives. It has also being reported that they were told to retain all user data and hand it over to the government. This is no doubt a new point in the constant upheaval that we have been witnessing over the past few days.

Two Weeks of Upheavel

Indeed the past two weeks have been some of the most volatile in crypto markets. First we had the announcement last week Monday that China was shutting down ICOs. This caused a large movement in the price of all coins but especially Ethereum and Neo.

The crypto markets tried to stage a recover but then came the leaks Friday that the government was considering banning all crypto currencies. There was no clarity given on the matter but the markets kept on falling. This week, there was still uncertainty but eventually as the exchanges started to close investors realised it was real and began to panic culminating in the falls we have seen.

This is the culmination of months of rumours of the Chinese authorities trying to find a way to tighten up on money laundering regulations at their exchanges. For example, earlier this year the PBoC disclosed that it met with the country's largest exchanges and requested a withdrawal freeze for a period of time.