Chinese yuan dominates global bitcoin trade

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Chinese yuan dominates global bitcoin trade

scmp.com / By Patrick Boehler / Tuesday, 03 December, 2013, 1:10pm

The yuan accounts for most of the trade in bitcoins as trading of the unregulated digital currency soars in the world’s second-largest economy.

By noon yesterday, about 58 per cent of the global trade during the preceding 24 hours occurred on exchanges trading the mainland currency, according to open-source research project BitcoinAverage.

According to the aggregator of market data, China’s trading volume in the period reached 827 million yuan (HK$1 billion).

Trades in US dollars account for roughly 37 per cent of global volume. Trades in euros account for slightly less than 2 per cent. No other currency accounts for more than one per cent of trade, according to BitcoinAverage.

Fortunes have already been made in China via the virtual currency. The value of a bitcoin in China soared 861.02 per cent from 844.75 yuan on September 3, the earliest data available on BitcoinAverage, to its peak value last Friday of 7273.47 yuan.