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In July, Tama Churchouse, a founder of Stansberry Churchouse Research and partner at blockchain group block.one, made a big claim. “Asia is truly the epicentre of the global cryptocurrency boom,” he wrote.
He supported his argument with a chart, sourced to coinmarketcap.com, suggesting that four of the world’s top six cryptocurrencies by 24-hour trading volume were in Asia: Bithumb in Korea, Yunbi in China, OkCoin.cn also in China and Bitfinex in Hong Kong, with China’s Huobi and Korea’s Coinone also making the top 10.
“I’m not saying that Asia is churning out more blockchain-related startups than the rest of the world, because it’s not,” Churchouse wrote. “But it’s absolutely clear that Asian money is a massive force in cryptocurrency prices.”
Six months on, everything has changed.
Chinese exchanges have effectively been shut down, following a national ban on new initial coin offerings (ICOs) and trading that is rumoured to be about to take a more radical turn by depriving China’s market-dominating bitcoin miners of affordable electricity.
The Korean exchanges may not be long for this world either: just a week after they were raided by the government on suspicion of tax evasion, they were stunned to hear the ministry of justice saying it plans to shut down all cryptocurrency trading in the country.
