Cryptocurrency-linked stocks dropped in Hong Kong, after Chinese authorities intensified their clampdown on the industry, while major cryptocurrencies steadied.
Shares of crypto-asset manager and trading firm Huobi Tech, an affiliate of Huobi Global, one of the world’s largest exchanges, fell more than 30 percent after the opening bell.
Huobi Global said it had stopped taking new mainland customers and would close accounts belonging to mainland-China-based clients by the end of the year to comply with local regulations.
China’s regulators intensified the clampdown, banning cryptocurrency transactions and mining, and saying that overseas exchanges are barred from providing services to mainland investors via the internet and that mainland-China-based employees of overseas crypto exchanges would be investigated.
OKG Technology Holdings Ltd, a financial technology and construction company majority-owned by Xu Mingxing the founder of crypto exchange OK Coin, fell more than 20 percent.
However, cryptocurrencies traded firmly, having rebounded from selling driven by the Chinese crackdown as buy-the-dip speculators swooped in.
Bitcoin was up about 2.4 percent in Asia trade at $44,250, having fallen to just below $41,000 after Friday’s announcement of a blanket ban on crypto mining and transactions in China – the most wide-ranging clampdown yet.
Rival token Ether rose 3 percent to $3,163 and has recouped.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Finance World staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
