Bitcoin surges past $4,000 despite reports of a wide-ranging crackdown on trading in China

Thomson Reuters

Bitcoin mining computers are pictured in Bitmain's mining farm near Keflavik

NEW YORK - Bitcoin has surged over $4,000 a coin on Monday, despite reports that Chinese authorities have decided on a plan for a wide-ranging crackdown on the cryptocurrency.

The plan, which regulators revealed to cryptocurrency executives on Friday, goes further than just a shutdown on exchanges, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal's Chao Deng.

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According to Deng, Beijing regulators plan to shutdown all channels for exchanging the cryptocurrency, not just commercial ones.

"The crackdown on the bitcoin ecosystem represents Beijing's possibly biggest effort so far to limit expansion of a system to rival the yuan," Deng wrote.

Bitcoin collapsed spectacularly last week as news of a regulatory crackdown in China broke.

The cryptocurrency dropped 16% against the dollar on Thursday after Chinese media reported that the country's regulators were moving closer to shutting down exchanges. Bitcoin recouped most of those losses on Friday even after two of the largest exchanges in China, OKCoin and Huobi, released statements saying they would shutdown all trading between yuan and bitcoin on their exchanges.

The digital coin continued to prove its resiliency on Monday, trading up near 10% at $4,080. It briefly dipped below $3,000 on Friday.

Bitcoin is up about 325% this year.

Read the full report over at the WSJ.

MI

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