miners leave China and controversy in El Salvador over Bitcoin Law

Among the highlights this week are the recent events in China, where the People’s Bank met with banks announcing new restrictive measures for the cryptocurrency sector. It therefore prohibits them from processing Bitcoin transactions.

Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin continues to fall. This week the cryptocurrency lost more than 2% and came to trade below $ 30,000. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $ 35,032, as reflected in the price of the Latin American and Spanish market, according to the Crypto News price calculator.

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These are the most outstanding news:

• The People’s Bank of China asked various banks in the country stop the provision of services for transactions in virtual currency and identify customers trading bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. In a statement released on June 21, the body substantiated its decision by pointing out that cryptocurrencies and other digital assets generate risks of illegal international transfers of assets, money laundering and other illegal and criminal activities. All banks agreed to cooperate with the request and assured that they will multiply efforts to combat bad practices in this sector.

• The restrictions that are being imposed on the cryptocurrency ecosystem in China, they are generating a mass exodus of companies. BIT Mining, owner of the mining pool BTC.com, announced that it has already mobilized part of its Bitcoin mining teams to Kazakhstan. So did Canaan, who already moved a fleet of their teams to the same country. For its part, Bitmain revealed that part of its staff will move abroad. Mining manufacturer ASIC temporarily suspended the sale of mining equipment. Demand is expected to focus on second-hand equipment, now held by miners seeking to leave the country

• The impact of the new Chinese regulations covers other areas, as graphics card (GPU) prices begin to show a decline. During 2020 and in recent months, the lack of stock had generated significant increases in its value. Now the price of these units has fallen more than 65% on e-selling platforms. In addition, Bitcoin’s hash rate has fallen to one of its lowest levels in a year, after falling below 100 EH/s.Estimates put the hash rate in a range between 91 EH/s and 98 EH/s between June 20 and 21.

• Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding the recently approved Bitcoin Law continues in El Salvador. President Nayib Bukele announced that the government’s wallet will be available next September. Salvadorans will be able to download the application from Google Play or Apple Store and each citizen will receive a reward of USD 30 in BTC. In addition, the ATM operator, Athena, will assume the installation of 1,500 new equipment. Meanwhile, Jack Mallers, executive director of the platform for sending and receiving funds on the Lightning network, Strike, denies that his company has a commercial relationship with the Salvadoran government.

• The deputies opposing the government of Bukele, Anabel Belloso and Dina Argueta, requested to reform the Law against money laundering, so that cryptocurrency exchanges report all transactions that exceed the equivalent of USD 10 thousand. This is a new request from women parliamentarians after Legislative Assembly deputies denied their request to repeal Bitcoin Law. The idea has also been supported by Salvadoran lawyer Óscar Artero, who filed a complaint of unconstitutionality of the Law, before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.

• Despite the fact that the price of the market’s main cryptocurrency has lost more than 50% of its value since it traded on the order of $ 63,000 in April, analyst “Plan B” estimates remain bullish by indicating that bitcoin may close the year 2021 above $ 100,000. However, his followers on Twitter claim to be stop believing in their predictions. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy makes a new investment in bitcoin, bringing the amount of your cash to more than 100,000 BTC, and the Bank of International settlements published a preview of its Annual Economic Report, in which it qualifies the criptomoneda as an asset of little public interest.

If you want to know the meaning of several words of crypto world terminology, you can check them out in the extensive Crypto News Glossary.

ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit): it translates to “Application-Specific Integrated Circuit”. It is a chip or hardware component designed to fulfill a certain and unique computational task, without the possibility of changing its configuration later. In many cryptocurrency networks it is used to solve the hash puzzles necessary to add verified transactions to each network’s blockchain and put new cryptocurrencies into circulation, which is known as “mining”.