Top cryptocurrencies suffered another major blow Monday after China further intensified its crackdown on the sector, cutting state power to Bitcoin mines in Sichuan province.
Bitcoin plummeted nine percent Monday morning--falling to its lowest price in nearly two weeks at below $33,000 a coin--while Ethereum and Dogecoin slid massively from six to nearly 15 percent in the last 24 hours, Forbes reported.
Ethereum is pegged at $1,967.27, falling 6.02 percent as EthereumPrice.Org noted. Meanwhile, Dogecoin made an even sharper fall to $0.22, a 14.78 percent drop in the last 24 hours and 32.16 percent from last week, Forbes Advisor added.
Ethereum Price Prediction: Freefall Below $1800 Feared
With the price reaching below the $2,000 level, Ethereum is seen to maintain key support at $1,985.79, Investing Cube said. If this gives way, however, a further drop to $1,844.20 is predicted, and worse a free all to $1,737.45. If things get better and prices would bounce from current support lines to $2,047.27 (which has been the lows of April 20 and June 20), prices could regain at $2,143.44.
Read also: Ethereum Price Prediction: Analyst Forecast Reveals Huge ETH Value Surge to Defeat Bitcoin
Beijing officials targeted Bitcoin mines in Sichuan, wherein huge amounts of electricity is used to paralyze the blockchain network. Last weekend's crackdown led to a halt of 90 percent of Bitcoin production, Forbes quoted Chinese state media Global Times as saying.
The disruption led to a steep decline in Bitcoin's hashrate, referring to the computational power in mining and processing Bitcoin transactions.
Forbes cited a 2020 study saying that China has accounted for 80 percent of global Bitcoin operations, with Sichuan as the second most intensive mining region. This is due to low cost of electricity in China, which made it a select location for Bitcoin mining.
But fossil fuels, most notably coal, has been running these power stations that run the Bitcoin mining operations, which go against China's climate initiatives. This also led to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's canceling of Bitcoin as a payment option for the company's electric vehicles, a development that likewise shed a considerable portion of Bitcoin value.
China's Widening Cryptocurrency Crackdown
China also shuttered Bitcoin mining operations in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, Forbes further reported. It has also banned cryptocurrency trading as a policy to prevent the volatile nature of the market from "infringing" upon financial order.
Initial crackdowns in mid-May led to a loss of trillions of dollars in the cryptocurrency market, which has yet to recover from the debacle. Currently, the cryptocurrency market's total value is now at $1.4 trillion, which Forbes said is about 54 percent of its value just before the China regulatory crackdown last month.
China's State Council, in a Reuters report, vowed to shut down cryptocurrency mining and trading to manage financial risks. China's central bank also convened local banks and payment firms, including China Construction Bank and Allpay to clamp down on cryptocurrency trading.
Agricultural Bank of China also complied with state guidance to put a stop to prohibited cryptomining activities and transactions.
