China situation

ICO ban

• At the beginning of September The People's Bank of China has declared initial coin offerings (ICOs) illegal and wants them to "cease immediately".

• Several Chinese ICOs had to issue refund information including Walton, Loopring, Bytom or LTToken

• Most of ICO-based cryptos were removed from Chinese exchanges incuding NEO, Qtum, OmiseGO or EOS

• Market crashed with Chinese cryptos suffering the most

What does it mean?

• Apparently the ban is temporary - this information is based on random goverment official however.

• Ultimately I believe China will seek to regulate the ICOs to make sure the scammy ones get eliminated while also making sure the government can profit as well.

• My bet: ICOs will need to be approved by the goverment. Government will also have approved ICO platforms (NEO? Qtum? ETH?)

• Overall a good thing since it should remove scammy ICOs and protect investors

Exchanges banned

• Rumour was that all centralised exchanges will have to cease operations as requested by Chinese government

• BTCC already announced closure at the end of September

• Yunbi following by announcing closure on September 20th and ViaBTC on 30th

• OkCoin and Huobi supposed to close by the end of October

• No news what will happen to the other exchanges so far

What does it mean?

• Market reacted really badly (as expected) with all of the cryptocurrencies tanking

• It's currently not known if the ban is permanent

• Some exchanges are also banning Chinese users like Binance for example

• Some sources specify that the ban just involves halt of yuan trading so basically any pairings crypto-fiat and exchanges that only trade cryptocurrencies should be fine?

• I expect that the exchanges will have to be officially approved by government

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon situation

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon situation

• China FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) was also enhanced by JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin 'a fraud'

• Dimon said that Bitcoin and other currencies are " not a real thing and eventually it will be closed,"

• He said that at some point Bitcoin will be closed by government and also mentioned the Chinese situation

• This futher tanked the price

Price movement

• All of these events badly affected the price of Bitcoin and all of the other cryptocurrencies

• It has been rough 2 weeks for cryptocurrencies:

Price movement

Decentralised exchanges

• The situation with the exchange ban highlighted the need for decentalised exchanges

• Decentalised exchanges can not be banned or closed so they are immune to the government interference

• Currently the most popular decentalised exchanges are: EtherDelta, Waves, BitShares DEX, OpenLedger

• There are several planned - Ethfinex (and other using 0x technology), Binance DEX, Kyber and more

Future

• Crypto will be fine - I think China will seek to regulate cryptocurrencies, exchanges and ICOs

• More governments will probably follow China's steps

• While not ideal this means only the best projects will survive so overall should increase the quality and protect customers

• Decentalised exchanges should flourish in these circumstances

• Price wise - cryptos should quickly recover (as long as there aren't any bad news)