China's diehard cryptocurrency fans lash out at scams, lament losses as price plunge bites
- Bitcoin is down 80 per cent from its peak and over 900 digital tokens have become worthless
There are many ways to measure the bursting of the cryptocurrency bubble last year: Bitcoin was down 80 per cent from its peak; over 900 digital tokens became worthless; the vaporised value of digital assets exceeded US$600 billion.
Some metrics are more personal and show the pain felt by those on the ground who helped inflate the bubble. Over the past year, Michael Zhang, a 26-year-old telecommunications engineer based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, put 40,000 yuan (US$5,964) into cryptocurrencies, only to see his investment shrink to one eighth of its original value.
At one point, he bought EOS, a popular form of digital money, when it was trading at nearly US$20. Now it is worth a little over US$2.
“Later I developed a Buddhist-style mindset,” said Zhang, a first-time investor in any asset category. “I don’t check on prices any more.”
China has a booming cryptocurrency space, with start-ups involved in everything from wallet apps to blockchain protocols. It is home to the world’s biggest makers of cryptocurrency mining rigs, like Bitmain Technologies, and top exchanges, like Huobi. Even after the government banned exchanges from targeting local users, cryptocurrency trading still flourishes in the country through channels such as online chat groups.
