Bitcoin is having a wild ride on Friday.
The digital currency has gone from being down over 7% against the
dollar to up more than 10% against the greenback in about two
hours.
The cryptocurrency briefly fell below the symbolically
significant level of $3,000 a coin for the first time in over a
month around lunchtime in London, down as much as 7.8% against
the dollar at one point. A crackdown on trading in China is a
cause of the fall, with Reuters reporting that exchanges have
been
ordered to stop signing up new users and announce a trading
halt.
However, at 3.15 p.m. BST (10.15 a.m. ET), bitcoin was up 10.43%
against the dollar, to $3,587.74. It represents a swing of
about $500 on the day — you can see the wild volatility below:
Despite the fightback, bitcoin is still about $1,000 below where
it started the week.
The Financial Times reports that bitcoin is now on its
longest losing streak in a year.
Bitcoin collapsed 16% against the dollar on Thursday after
Chinese media reported that the country’s regulators were
moving closer to shutting down exchanges. Business Insider
first reported that China was
looking at a crackdown on all cryptocurrencies after the
People’s Bank of China
banned so-called initial coin offerings — where startups
issue new digital coins to fund projects — at the start of the
month.
Things got worse after BTCChina, one of the biggest local
exchanges, said it would stop trade at the end of the month;
Bloomberg is now reporting that exchanges will be
banned by then.
Regulators around the world have been cracking down on the
cryptocurrency space since the start of the month. Regulators in
China,
South Korea,
Hong Kong, and
Britain have all moved to either ban or rein in activity in
ICOs, which has dented sector sentiment. The combined value of
the crypto space, which includes over 800 digital currencies, has
declined by more than $50 billion in the last week, according to
CoinMarketCap.com.
Elsewhere in the crypto space, ether, which is powered by the
Ethereum blockchain and is the second-largest cryptocurrency by
market value, is down
0.21% against the dollar in early trading. Bitcoin cash,
which was spun off from bitcoin at the start of August, is
down 1.4%
against the dollar.
Get the latest Bitcoin price here.