Why are crypto prices down?
Why are crypto prices down?
The drop comes amid a growing crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, where authorities in the southwest province of Sichuan ordered bitcoin mining projects to close.
The State Council, China's cabinet, recently vowed to clamp down on mining and trading as part of a series of measures to control financial risks.
According to data from the University of Cambridge, while data on mining is scarce, production of Bitcoin in China accounted last year for about 65% of global production.
Sichuan is its second-biggest producer.
"(The) crackdown on Chinese miners might mean that they are offloading coin into a thin market and taking us lower," said Ben Sibley of London-based crypto firm BCB Group.
China's central bank said it had recently summoned some banks and payment institutions, urging them to crack down harder on cryptocurrency trading.
Agricultural Bank of China (AgBank), China's third-largest lender by assets, said separately it was following the People's Bank of China's guidance and would conduct due diligence on clients to root out illegal activities involving crypto mining and transactions.
Companies that mine bitcoin - an energy-intensive process - typically hold large inventories of the cryptocurrency, with any moves to sell large amounts depressing prices.
Following the move, countries like South Korea also pledged to tackle the rise in money laundering taking place via cryptocurrency, while the Metropolitan Police announced that it had successfully closed in on a huge UK cryptocurrency money-laundering operation.
On June 24, the Met declared that special investigators had made the UK’s largest cryptocurrency seizure yet and one of the world’s largest seizures estimated at a whopping £114 million in value.