China stated that all exchanges must cease operations by Oct 1, 2017. The markets reacted in a devastating sell off that has impacted cryptocurrencies across the board… but are they reacting too harshly?

The Endless Summer

As you know, this summer has been amazing for crypto. We have seen record high’s for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin as well as most altcoins. We have also seen the rise of hundreds of alt-coins, some of which are built on top of BaaS platforms such as Lisk or Ethereum. The combination of a booming season, a high market adaptation rate by investors, hedge funds, day traders, and everyone in-between made it pretty easy for people to start dubbing the last few months as “the summer of bitcoin” or as we prefer “The endless Summer”.

China stated previously that they will be allowing ICO’s contrary to the public release they issued the other morning which we wrote about in our article on China Cracking Down on Cryptocurrency.

We also then wrote an article following China’s response, the market’s fearful reaction to the pending resolution, and what that meant for the cryptocurrencies currently being traded there (which you can find here). Today, that all changed when China came out and stated all Cyptocurrency exchanges would have to close down and cease operation by Oct 1, 2017.

The market jerked downward in a full on fear based free-fall, some coins seeing as much as 50% loss in value. Bitcoin, as of this writing, saw a fall from $4200 to $3400, with Ethereum seeing similar dips from $380 to $240 in a matter of hours. The problem here is that people are reacting without knowing the facts of the situation.

The Facts

I think there are definitely some important things to consider here:

• This is not a ban, this is a stop sign. They want to hold off on having all of these ICO’s launch with no regulations overseeing them
• China is still very much standing behind NEO and NEO founder’s new coin, Onchain, and I believe it would be foolish to think they are “anti-cryptocurrency”
• This is not the first time this has occurred with China, nor will it most likely be the last, but people need to remember that every time China has put out press such as this, it scares the markets
• JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said “Bitcoin is a fraud” in a news report this week, only to be corrected by thousands of viewers, community members, his peers, even including JP Morgans former CEO Alex Gurevich

So China has come out with some bad news for the wild west trading that has been common place not just in China but everywhere and at the same time, JP Morgan’s CEO made a statement saying Bitcoin was a fraud and a foolish investment… so I assume we would agree we have had a bad press week.

It is important to note that JP Morgan is not only heavily invested into Cryptocurrency but the same Jamie Dion from above also serves on the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. This all smells pretty funny to us at this point…

While the markets have started to rebound slightly, with Ethereum already up to $255 in the time it has taken to write this article, I think it will be a few days to a week until we can see the long term reaction from the markets. I do think the Chinese outcome has affected the current price of most Crypto’s and I think this is a short term low that will balance out over the next few days to around $3,800 price for BTC. More regulated and trustworthy companies hosting ICO’s are definitely something we are in favor of although I am fearful for what China locking down something that is supposed to be decentralized is going to send as a message.

We called out NEO having a sharp uptick after we published our other article on the crackdown of ICO’s by china and I think we still have a chance to see that now after the smoke and fog is lifted over exactly what China plans to do for regulating cryptocurrency. As of now, it is trading at $16.72. We have seen a good support line over the course of the morning and for now, hope this bloodbath is over and we can get back to our summer party!

BTC:

1DF47PEyPfDNdFMzpmdJKQ47fdBVStyoSX

LTC:

LLi5f7GeWvw3HKARUcM4NKP8Q8YFYkSKA3

ETH:

0x8D43e1D8bFa45E1ADa728343Cc53e513Ec8235c9