OKCoin, Huobi, BTCChina and Yunby will state taking an extra fee on bitcoin and litecoin operations since 24 January, shortly after the central bank found “abnormalities” in their work.
The leading Chinese exchanges announced the introduction of a new commission on Twitter. In addition, BTCChina published a message on their English website:
“To further curb market manipulation and extreme volatility, BTCChina will start charging fees for bitcoin and litecoin trading from 12:00 p.m. (noon) UTC+8 on Tuesday, January 24th. Market makers and takers will both be charged a flat fee of 0.2 percent per transaction. Please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have any questions.”
The new fee is likely to affect the global bitcoin market. According to Bitcoinity, on 22 January, more than 90% of bitcoin trade in the world took place via BTCCHina, OkCoin and Huobi.
According to cnLedger, the related messages on BTCCHina, Huobi, and OKCoin site are nearly identical.
OKCoin made almost exact same ANN about considering charging trading fees. Now all 3 of the exchanges PBoC inspected are reaching consensus pic.twitter.com/Pk74UBYdlH
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) January 22, 2017
Many bitcoiners connect the introduction of the fees with the Chinese regulator’s recent actions towards domestic cryptocurrency trading platforms.
On 7 January, the People’s Bank of China announced it would carry out inspections at major bitcoin exchanges looking for a possible breach of current financial regulations. The news resulted in a short-term collapse of bitcoin price, which by that time had reached its historical maximum of $1,153. A few days later, BTCC and Huobi stopped margin trading, while OKCoin reduced leverage to 1x.
On 19 January, the central bank reportedly found irregularities in the work of BTCChina, OKCoin and Huobi. In particular, the regulator quoted an evidence of margin trading on crypto exchanges, the practice currently under suppression nationwide. The flaws in the operation of the trading platforms, they claimed, had been the reason behind the recent “abnormal fluctuations” in the bitcoin market.
If the initial move of the People’s Bank of China had caused bitcoin price to drop temporarily, there was no sign of a panic among bitcoiners afterwards. According to CoinFox Index, currently, the price of the digital currency is hovering around $920.
Roman Korizky
Image via Flickr
