When China announced that all its domestic exchanges will stop trading Bitcoin from September 30th this year, the digital cryptocurrency markets have seen a huge dip in prices: Bitcoin alone was down with 40%, Ethereum with 10% and overall, last week was a “bearish” one for the “people’s currencies”.
Just before the ban, the Initial Coin Offering market (ICOs) amounted to $400 million in China, according to South China Morning Post. However, China reported that around 90% of all ICOs were a fraud.
One interesting point of the ban is that Hong Kong may be the big winner after the news broke. Hong Kong is currently one of the melting pots for cryptocurrency startups and projects. With China’s ban, enthusiasts may see the arising opportunity for domestic alternatives to Bitcoin and move to Hong Kong to develop those projects.
The CEO of Gatecoin, Aurelien Menant, one of the numerous cryptocurrency exchanges in Hong Kong, announced that their platform received multiple requests and inquiries of whether blockchain “gurus” can list their tokens on their exchange, as reported by Investopedia.
The future of domestic digital currencies in China is still vague, but with the uprising Hong Kong power and the know-how of blockchain project founders, there may be soon a very real Chinese competitor to the well-known cryptocurrencies.