The period at the start of this year when the Chinese exchanges put an end to zero fee trading and closed withdrawals, should have put paid to the idea that China controls bitcoin. All their volume was fake - and what is more, during the period when their "volume" collapsed is when bitcoin went from $1000 to over $4000.
The bitcoin price is driven by western investors and people should stop panicking about what is happening in China, they are very small players in this.
I disagree.
They are still very big players, even if they now have much less buying power due to the fact that they are not able to execute trades for free anymore, and the government seems to be putting an increasing amount of pressure on regulating the bitcoin and altcoin markets.
Now BTC is still at around $3600-3700 on Chinese exchanges, and arbitragers can't get in because of capital controls. I think that a lot of investors are pulling out because of the fact that they realize their funds may be in danger if the government actually bans all exchanges, but western investors are realizing this news may be BS and doesn't affect them anyways. I think that soon Chinese investors will realize the same thing. However if the panic continues then we may see even farther gaps in western exchanges and chinese exchanges.
