Yet another blow below the belt to Bitcoin this month. Following after the recent extension of its cryptocurrency crackdown to the Sichuan province, China has now ordered banks to stop supporting any transactions involving cryptocurrencies. China has been hitting digital currencies hard, cracking down on bitcoin mining operations and trading as part of its measures to control and mitigate financial risks associated with cryptocurrency trading.
The recent order to banks to stop supporting crypto transactions has been yet another nail in the coffin and finally brought the currency down below the $30,000 line for the first time yesterday. The price has recovered since, to around $34,000 but the fact remains that it did go below that threshold.
The last time bitcoin was below $30,000 was early January when Donald Trump was still president. Those times were good for the currency. Tesla has announced that it would accept bitcoin as payment, the mining operations in China were going strong. But it all went downhill when the world realized just how much carbon had to be burnt in order to sustain these mining operations.
Tesla backed off, touting environmental concerns, China started its crackdown on cryptocurrency because of the financial risk it had, All but banning mining operations in three of its provinces, namely Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, and Xinjiang. Stopping new mining operations from starting and forcing existing ones to shut down. Bitcoin has dropped its price by over 50 percent after it hit a record high above $63,000 in mid-April.
The only silver lining is that GPU prices in China are finally going down. Nvidia’s Quadro P1000 is now going for 2,429 yuan or $376. The GPU dropped the price from 3,000 yuan or $464. Nvidia’s RTX 3060, dropped from 13,499 yuan or $2087 to 4,699 yuan or $763. That’s more than half of its inflated price. Although the 3060 is still far from its MSRP, this is still a good thing to see.
China’s rejection of cryptocurrency is having heavy effects on the market. No one really knows when things will calm down. Many investors are worried that even stricter regulations could be put on the currencies from other countries as well.