The People's Bank of China issued a banning order for the initial offers of coins (ICO) in the country. This is reported by Silicon Angle with reference to the local edition of Caixin.
The People's Bank of China released a statement saying that all ICO's should be stopped immediately. $ETH #Bitcoin https://t.co/x3Ip2nJffY
— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) 4 сентября 2017 г.
The prohibition concerns not only the new initial coin offering. In addition, organizations and individuals who have already conducted an ICO by now will have to return funds to investors.
China not only bans new local ICOs but orders liquidation of existing ones. Order issued Sept 2. ETH -10% since thenhttps://t.co/bV4N6QzSoj pic.twitter.com/IIG1PxYh5F
— Yuji Nakamura (@ynakamura56) 4 сентября 2017 г.
The decision to ban the ICO came into force last weekend. As a consequence, the large-scale conference on the ICO, which was to be held on September 2 in Beijing, was canceled. Also, the authorities warned all major trading platforms about the official ban of ICO as "illegal financial activity."
The market reaction was not long in coming.
Top 10 cryptocurrencies
As you can see on the screenshot of CoinMarketCap, all cryptocurrencies are losing their positions. Ethereum, Litecoin, IOTA and Ethereum Classic lost over 10% in 24 hours.