Key points:1) Huobi and OKCoin, two Chinese exchanges, now collectively account for some 92% of global trading in bitcoin.
2) The surge in bitcoin buying this weekend could be the latest sign of how Chinese investors are moving money between asset classes quickly in search of high returns. In the past year, equities, bond and commodities markets in China have in turn seen massive surges of new investing, often followed by a collapse in prices as funds have moved elsewhere.
3) Investors are worried about the decreasing value of the yuan. The Chinese are protecting their investments by converting yuan into bitcoin.
China Buying Sparks Bitcoin SurgeSource: The Wall Street Journal[Suspicious link removed]j.com/articles/china-buying-sparks-bitcoin-surge-1464608221
By GREGOR STUART HUNTER and CHAO DENG
Updated May 30, 2016 8:09 p.m. ET
Chinese investors are pumping up bitcoin again, sending prices up nearly 16% in the past four days, just two years after the country was at the center of a boom and bust in the crypto-currency.
The four-day surge in bitcoin since Friday has added $1.2 billion in market capitalization for all bitcoin in circulation, according to data from blockchain.info. On Monday, prices moved up as high as $525.49 per bitcoin, though that’s still well below the all-time high of about $1,151 in November 2013.
Chinese bitcoin exchanges have been operating despite past efforts by Beijing to curb trading in the currency, which is not subject to any central authority and which can be traded almost instantly across borders.
Huobi and OKCoin, two Chinese exchanges, now collectively account for some 92% of global trading in bitcoin.
The surge in bitcoin buying this weekend could be the latest sign of how Chinese investors are moving money between asset classes quickly in search of high returns. In the past year, equities, bond and commodities markets in China have in turn seen massive surges of new investing, often followed by a collapse in prices as funds have moved elsewhere.
“There’s a lot of hot money in China that has to go somewhere,” says Du Jin, chief marketing officer at Huobi. Huobi has seen a surge of new registrants in the past one month, he said.
Expectations that new supply of the virtual currency will decrease next month could also be behind the latest price surge. The creation of bitcoin via a complicated computing process called “mining” gets more challenging over time, thanks to a mechanism that cuts the number of bitcoin that can be created in half every four years in order to limit supply.
But industry participants also say a number of China-specific factors are also in play.
Stories of scams in peer-to-peer financing have sent Chinese investors familiar with the most innovative forms of investing to bitcoin specifically, says Huobi’s Mr. Du.
The bitcoin network, composed of traders around the globe accessing virtual platforms via their computers and the Internet, also allows a discreet way for a Chinese to move money beyond the country’s tightly-controlled borders.
Bitcoin currently trades at a 7.2% premium when priced in Chinese yuan on mainland bitcoin exchanges compared with counterparts pricing the currency in U.S. dollars, according to industry tracker Bitcoinity.org.
This premium in Chinese prices has persisted throughout the year, suggesting that demand from the country has accounted for much of bitcoin’s recent gains, says Zennon Kapron, founder of financial technology consultancy Kapronasia and author of a book on bitcoin.
Investors are worried about the decreasing value of the yuan and “it seems that China is leading a lot of the movement,” he adds. “People are protecting their investments [by converting yuan into bitcoin].”
