HONG KONG/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Cryptocurrency-linked stocks dropped in Hong Kong on Monday morning, after Chinese authorities intensified their crackdown on the industry, while major cryptocurrencies steadied.
Shares of crypto-asset manager and trading firm Huobi Tech, an affiliate of Huobi Global, one of the world’s largest exchanges, fell more than 30% after the opening bell.
Huobi Global said on Sunday it had stopped taking new mainland customers from Friday and would close accounts belonging to mainland-China based clients by the end of the year to comply with local regulations.
China’s regulators intensified a crackdown on Friday, banning cryptocurrency transactions and mining, and saying that overseas exchanges are barred from providing services to mainland investors via the internet and that mainland-China based employees of overseas crypto exchanges would be investigated.
OKG Technology Holdings Ltd, a fintech and construction company majority-owned by Xu Mingxing the founder of crypto exchange OK Coin, fell more than 20%.
However, cryptocurrencies traded firmly on Monday, having rebounded from selling driven by the Chinese crackdown as buy-the-dip speculators swooped in.
Bitcoin was up about 2.4% in Asia trade at $44,250, having fallen to just below $41,000 in the wake of Friday’s announcement of a blanket ban on crypto mining and transactions in China – the most wide-ranging clampdown yet.
Rival token ether rose 3% to $3,163 and has recouped its Friday losses.
(Reporting by Tom Westbrook in Singapore and Alun John in Hong Kong; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Jacqueline Wong)View Less
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