It's been a rocky year in China. After a tremendous end of year rally in 2016 pouring into the new year 2017, PBoC pissed on everyone's parade.
Since then, price has been doing fine in the West, despite a massive discount building in Chinese spot markets:
Since then, price has been doing fine in the West, despite a massive discount building in Chinese spot markets:
However, there's been lots of FUD that the market has been fighting against in order for price to stay in the $1,100-$1,200 range. Bitmain founder Jihan Wu, who has an effective monopoly on ASIC equipment production, has been promoting an alt-coin Bitcoin Unlimited as a successor to Bitcoin. The threat of a hard-fork has made many market participants bearish. Two Bitcoin ETFs, The Winkelvoss COIN ETF and the SolidX ETF, were rejected by the SEC. These reports that the SEC produced are now on the record, and multiple subsequent reports by consulting firms and analysts will be citing this as an authoritative analysis of bitcoin.
So we're in a situation where China has forbidden BTC withdrawals, potential Wall Street money has been denied, and price still fights at its near All Time High levels.
More recently, BitVC; which is Huobi's futures exchange, has closed down due to regulatory pressures. Traders were wondering, is OKCoin futures next? OKCoin.com is meant to be a seprate Singapore entity, distinct from OKCoin.cn. BitVc was a Hong Kong entity. So the reach of China may be going even outside their borders if the companies are owned by Chinese.
Finally, suspicions were answered today when OKCoin introduced strict new KYC/AML regulations:
So we're in a situation where China has forbidden BTC withdrawals, potential Wall Street money has been denied, and price still fights at its near All Time High levels.
More recently, BitVC; which is Huobi's futures exchange, has closed down due to regulatory pressures. Traders were wondering, is OKCoin futures next? OKCoin.com is meant to be a seprate Singapore entity, distinct from OKCoin.cn. BitVc was a Hong Kong entity. So the reach of China may be going even outside their borders if the companies are owned by Chinese.
Finally, suspicions were answered today when OKCoin introduced strict new KYC/AML regulations:
Previously, you could trade on OKCoin.com futures by providing any passport number you wanted, and if they asked you to withdraw then you would just need to provide the number verbally. No documentation proof or verification was necessary.
Now, they appear to be more strict, and are overtly saying in Point 3 that they will be giving you trouble if your information is not legitimate or verifiable. This means that if you provide any information to them it would be subject to document verification.
This is a deal-breaker for many in bitcoin who value their anonymity and privacy.
Now, they appear to be more strict, and are overtly saying in Point 3 that they will be giving you trouble if your information is not legitimate or verifiable. This means that if you provide any information to them it would be subject to document verification.
This is a deal-breaker for many in bitcoin who value their anonymity and privacy.