Christian Science Monitor – At the Garage Café, a dimly lit magnet for young programmers and entrepreneurs in Beijing’s hi-tech Zhongguancun district, one topic dominates the low hum of conversation: Bitcoin.
The crypto-currency’s value has soared more than fivefold over the past month, driven in large part by hectic speculative trading on Chinese exchanges.
“Most of our customers talk Bitcoin, and some of them trade as much as ten million RMB’s worth ($1.6 million) at a time,” says Xu Tianhai, who manages the Garage.
Now they are holding their breath, in the wake of a Chinese Central Bank notice Thursday that banned financial institutions from trading in Bitcoin and forbade its use as a currency. The value of Bitcoin on Chinese exchanges fell after the announcement, and one expert said he thought it could drop by half in the next few weeks.
The Chinese have seized the limelight in recent months as the world’s leading Bitcoin traders and “miners.”
BTC China, the biggest Chinese Bitcoin exchange, has grown to become the largest in the world, handling an estimated 30 percent of global Bitcoin transactions over the past month. In November, China accounted for one third of worldwide downloads of Bitcoin electronic wallets, needed to trade or spend the virtual currency.
