Bitcoin tumbled to 4-month low after crypto miners halted operations in China

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Bitcoin fell to a four-month low of $31,390 on Sunday, according to CoinGecko data, after crypto miners halted operations in China. The cryptocurrency had last traded below $32,000 in January of this year.

The fall marked a decline of 51.9% from bitcoin's all-time high of $64,829, which the cryptocurrency reached in April.

Bitcoin started to recover on Monday morning and rose by 2.5% to $36,604 in the 24 hours to 4:05 am E.T., but still traded 43.5% lower than its all-time high.

Major crypto-mining operators including Huobi Mall and BTC.TOP said they would halt and scale back some of their services and operations in China, after news of a continued regulatory crackdown in the country broke on Friday.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and the State Council called for limits on crypto mining and trading late on Friday local time. Bitcoin fell as much as 11% on the day.

Huobi Mall, part of crypto exchange Huobi, said that its custody services were suspended – meaning that it has limited the use of its products and services for third parties and they are no longer able to use Huobi Mall's hosting capabilities. Further, it will stop selling mining machines and hosting services to those based in mainland China.

Crypto mining pool BTC.TOP said it would halt its China-based mining activities due to regulatory concerns and focus on North America instead.

China is currently the world's largest bitcoin mining location, accounting for over 65% of mining according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. The country has previously stated it would target crypto as part of its pledge to reduce carbon emissions, as the mining process consumes extensive amounts of electricity – each purchase or sale drives up energy consumption. Tighter regulations are viewed as one approach to lowering the related energy expenditure as they limit the amount of transactions made.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies more widely have been affected by changing regulations as well as heated social media discussions and business developments, such as Tesla suspending bitcoin payments over environmental concerns, over the past few weeks. Bitcoin itself has lost 36.8% over the past two weeks, whilst the second largest cryptocurrency ether has lost over 40% in that time and Binance's bnb coin lost almost 56% according to Coingecko data.

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