Yesterday, Huobi Global revealed its plans for a gradual withdrawal from the Chinese market. One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges announced that new account registrations were suspended in order “to comply with local laws and regulations.” The policy change was put into effect almost immediately after the news of China banning crypto transactions became known.
Key Takeaways:
- Huobi Global has become the first major centralized exchange to respond to Beijing’s regulatory crackdown. The exchange will no longer offer its suite of products and services to users from Mainland China. As of September 24, new account registration is no longer available.
- Huobi has also revealed that it plans on withdrawing from the market completely by the year’s end. At the moment, the exchange hasn’t yet shared detailed information. “The specific arrangements and details,” the announcement reads, will be shared to users via “official announcements, e-mails, text messages, etc.”
- Beijing’s ban on cryptocurrency transactions has thoroughly shaken up the blockchain sector. Bitcoin had been hit with a 5% loss, while Ethereum had recorded an almost 9% drop in the hours following the news, and had slipped below the $3,000 milestone.
- The price of the Houbi token saw a sharp decline after the new set of regulations became known, almost halving in value in the span of 48 hours.
- Tokens of other centralized exchanges also took a big hit to their price. OKEx’ native OKB, had slipped from $16.9 to $10, but managed to recover much of its lost value by the time of this writing.
- Conversely, the value of decentralized exchange tokens has skyrocketed as many members of the blockchain community believe that Chinese crypto users will flock to decentralized exchanges. UNI, for instance, has rallied by more than 30%, while DYDX’s price nearly doubled in the last 48 hours, increasing from $12 to $21.5 at press time.
