BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s central bank will launch a crackdown on all types of virtual currencies this year, a vice governor of the central bank said on Thursday.
A Chinese national flag flutters outside the headquarters of the People's Bank of China, the Chinese central bank, in Beijing, April 3, 2014. REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic
This news story is from 2014 btw.
The crypto market was much more centralized within china in 2014 which caused news of a chinese crackdown to have a much more powerful effect. Also in that time the crypto market was heavily centralized within the first silk road. Around the same time as china's crackdown occurred law enforcement apprehended Ross Ulbricht (aka Dread Pirate Roberts) and shut down silk road which may have negatively impacted the utility crypto was perceived as having during that time.
Similar things have happened recently. China claimed they would crackdown on crypto exchanges. Alpha bay, silk road 2.0 and many other deep web markets were shut down by law enforcement. It didn't appear to have any noticeable negative effect on the value of bitcoin, which could imply that crypto markets have decentralized enough for them to not be centrally affected by any single negative piece of news they way they were in 2014.