China Bitcoin trading pushes price towards $700

The weakening Yuan is continuing to drive Bitcoin trading in China, pushing the cryptocurrency's price towards $700. Bitcoin's price reached a high of $686.80 on 27 October.

Three major Chinese exchanges - Huobi, OKCoin and BTCC - have reached approximately 7m Bitcoin in a 24 hour period - although this should be taken with a pinch of salt, as there are accusations of trading bots at work to inflate volumes, says Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare.

Hayter said: "The People's Bank of China's attempts to halt the slide have seen foreign currency reserves dwindle and a large leg up in the price was due to ceasing of market operations on behalf of the Government that saw the Yuan breach the psychological CNY 6.7 barrier.

"China is also seeing continued regulatory crackdowns on its off balance sheet Wealth Management Products, again pushing people to look for avenues to extricate and hedge - where Bitcoin fits the bill adequately."

As reported earlier this week, the closing remarks at Bitcoin event in Chengdu about making the block size bigger so Bitcoin can scale up and handle more transactions per second, caused a flurry of interest on social media, and may have also given the price a pop. The event was hosted by Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain.

"More fundamental to Bitcoin is the feeling in China that there is a solution to the scaling debate in the form of Bitcoin Unlimited - but sorting the propaganda, vested interests and long term implications is like unravelling a Gordian Knot," said Hayter.

Other news such as AT&T looking to patent a Bitcoin server has lent weight to the future potential of Bitcoin in microtransactions, and interest in other avenues beyond a simple digital gold.