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Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi said it’s scaled back or suspended some of its services and products in certain countries and has stopped its miner hosting services in mainland China in response to the recent crackdown on crypto in that country.
News of the exchange’s pullback, which includes suspending some of its futures contract trading services, leveraged investment products, exchange-traded products (ETP) as well as miner hosting services in China, appears to be one of the reasons for the latest drop in the crypto market.
The price of bitcoin fell to as low as $31,816.14 before rebounding slightly to $31,905,.17, down 16.4% in the last 24 hours while ether is down to $1,793.08, down 24.3% in the last 24 hours after having been above $4,300 a few weeks ago. Bitcoin has now lost more than half its value from its all-time high of $64,829.14 set last month. Most other major cryptos are down anywhere from 15% to 30% and more.
Related: Market Wrap: China Breaks Crypto as Bitcoin Falls to $36K, ETH Drops $300 in Two Hours
“Due to recent dynamic changes in the market, in order to protect the interests of investors, a portion of services such as futures contracts, ETP, or other leveraged investment products are temporarily not available to new users from a few specified countries and regions,” according to Huobi’s statement shared with CoinDesk.
“Huobi always strives to abide by the evolving policies and regulations of each jurisdiction to adhere to risk and preserve the well-being of our users and their assets,” the statement said.
The exchange did not disclose the specific countries and regions where it will stop the trading services and investment products.
Huobi is also set to suspend the sale of crypto mining machines and mining hosting services in mainland China. The exchange said it will soon give its existing clients more details in regard with what to do with their mining machines.
Related: Why Bitcoiners Are Rooting for This Latest China Mining Ban to Finally, Actually Be Real
To be clear, Huobi did not stop the operation of its own mining pools but the co-location hosting services the exchange provides to anyone who wants to invest in crypto mining. The hosting sites operate their clients’ mining machines with maintenance services in their mining facilities, and do not own any of the mining machines themselves.
Huobi is a major crypto trading services provider for the Chinese crypto investors. Huobi has the eighth largest mining pool in the world with 4% hashrate of the entire bitcoin network, according to data from BTC.com.