Bitcoin Soars As China Launches Crackdown On Wealth-Management Products

After trading in a tight range for much of the summer, coiled within a $100 range around the mid-$500s, over the past several weeks bitcoin has once again started to push higher, closely tracking the decline in the Chinese Yuan as shown below.

However, the most recent burst in bitcoin activity, which sent it surging by over $20 overnight, has little to do with any moves in the official Chinese currency, which recently rebounded modestly tracking the recent dip in the dollar, and is likely attributable to a long overdue crackdown on China’s Wealth-management products, a key component of China’s “shadow banking” system.
As Bloomberg reported overnight, China’s central bank is finally conducting a trial monitoring of banks’ off-balance-sheet wealth-management products under its macro-prudential assessment system. A question one should ask perhaps is why the $1.9 trillion in asset locked up with WMPs had so far been exempt from regulatory supervision.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 26, 2016.