Bitcoin was trading at $34,495.92 at Coingecko Wednesday, down 4.1% in the past seven days, after China's clampdown on cryptocurrency mining forced several companies to close or relocate.
China's central bank and financial regulator ordered Wednesday a company allegedly providing cryptocurrency-related services in the city to cancel its business registration, Bloomberg News reported.
Authorities told software developer Beijing Qudao Cultural Development Co. Ltd. to suspend operations, the Beijing financial supervision administration and a department of the People's Bank of China said in a statement.
Financial and payments institutions should not directly or indirectly provide virtual currency-related services, the People's Bank of China and the regulator said, Reuters said.
Among the activities that PBOC and the regulator ban are marketing, promotion and display and location-setting, according to the report.
Many cryptocurrency miners have already shut operations or are trying to move out of China, and mining metrics have shown decreased activity.
On Tuesday, the International Blockchain Consulting Group responded to China's clampdown by shutting down all of its bitcoin and Ethereum mining facilities across the country, BeInCrypto reported.
"Whilst not directly affecting cryptocurrency, China's clampdown on technology companies is another example of it flexing its regulatory muscles against an industry whose oversight has been lacking," Antoni Trenchev, joint founder of cryptocurrency lender Nexo in London, said.
"Bitcoin too is caught in China's regulatory crossfire as it's seen as a threat to the digital yuan," Trenchev told Bloomberg.
According to Trenchev, bitcoin has been "trending sideways" between $30,000 and $40,000 for the best part of seven weeks now, and expects the cryptocurrency to remain "stuck in this trend for the foreseeable future" before it could go higher again.
Meanwhile, China authorities have already started shutting some of the most productive mining regions in the country. This crackdown has sparked a mass exodus of cryptocurrency miners, with some now setting up in Texas, BeInCrypto said.
