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Bitcoin Falls 6% After PBOC Shanghai Inspects Trading Platform

This article by Linly Lin for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here it is in full: 

Bitcoin drops 6% after PBOC Shanghai says it conducted on-site inspection at Shanghai-based BTCChina.com to check for any violations of market manipulation, money laundering and safety of customer funds.

Bitcoin prices have plunged 20% from record high of $1,091.7 on Jan. 4

Current trading price at BTCChina.com, platform tailored to Chinese clients, dropped 9% from 24-hour high

Trading volume was 1.5m bitcoins on BTCChina as of today, 1.2m on Huobi.com today, 1.8m on OKCoin.cn

NOTE: Bitcoin trading could only accommodate a small fraction of funds leaving China, Bloomberg Intelligence says

NOTE: BTCChina, Huobi.com, OKCoin.cn are major bitcoin trading platforms providing services to Chinese clients

NOTE: Jan.9, China to Study Bitcoin Custodian Platform: Securities Journal.



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Yuan Pares Record Rally as Goldman Says Now's the Time to Sell

This article from Bloomberg News may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

The offshore yuan is sinking because there is some recovery in the dollar, perhaps the unwinding of short-yuan positions has mostly been done, and it’s closing the gap with the onshore currency,” said Roy Teo, senior currency strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV in Singapore. The yuan is likely to weaken this year as capital outflows continue and the U.S.
Federal Reserve increases interest rates, Teo said.

China’s central bank raised its daily reference rate by 0.92 percent to 6.8668 per dollar on Friday, following a 1 percent drop in a gauge of the greenback’s strength overnight.

The offshore yuan was trading 0.8 percent weaker at 6.8457 per dollar as of 5:23 p.m. in Hong Kong, paring its weekly gain to 1.9 percent, the most in data going back to 2010. The onshore rate slumped 0.6 percent. Friday’s fixing was weaker than Mizuho Bank Ltd.’s prediction of 6.8447 and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.’s estimate of 6.8456.

The three-month yuan interbank rate in Hong Kong, known as Hibor, surged to a record high, while the overnight rate jumped 23 percentage points to 61 percent, the highest since last January’s cash crunch. Rising interbank rates can make some short positions prohibitively expensive.

 



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Bitcoin Suffers Biggest Fall in Two Years Following China Currency Gains

This article by Martin Baccardax for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here it is in full:

Bitcoin's value suffered its biggest single-day decline in two years Thursday, just hours after China's offshore yuan posted its biggest two day gain and days after the cryptocurrency touched $1,000.

The price of bitcoins against the U.S. dollar fell 13% in London trading, changing hands at around $950 each by 13:45 GMT. Bitcoins traded as low as $880 during a volatile session which saw it reach as high as $1137, according financial bookmakers IG.

The moves follow the biggest two-day gain on record for China's offshore yuan, which trades more freely than the domestically controlled currency of the world's second-largest economy. Speculation of government buying led the gains as investors bet authorities are determined to stem capital outflows and avoid a sustained decline in the currency ahead of the inauguration of President elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to label China as a currency manipulator.

The connection is relevant in the nearly all of the daily trading in bitcoin is linked to the yuan, which has fallen more than 7% against the dollar over the past year, as speculators attempt to skirt currency controls and ensure value.

The offshore yuan gain 1% to 6.7989 against the greenback in Asia trading, putting downward pressure on the dollar index and boosting the yen in foreign exchange trading. The move whipsawed the dollar index, a measure of its strength against a basket of six global currencies, from a near 14-year high on Tuesday to three-week low of 101.74 by the start of European trading before it recovered to 102.10 by 13:45 GMT



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China Said to Consider Options to Back Yuan, Curb Outflows

This article from Bloomberg News may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

China’s currency stockpile has probably shrunk further after hitting a five-year low of $3.05 trillion in November, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey before data due as early as this week.

Capital outflows from China accelerated in recent months as the yuan suffered its worst year of losses against the U.S. dollar since 1994, declining 6.5 percent. About $760 billion left the country in the first 11 months of 2016, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence gauge. The yuan will decline 2.7 percent the rest of this year, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

“The policies, if implemented, can help increase foreign-exchange supply in the onshore market, and hence help defend the yuan in the short term,” said Carol Pang, vice president for fixed income, currency and commodities at Zhongtai International Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong. “However, it won’t change market expectation of further depreciation.”

 



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China Throws Out South China Sea Rule Book

This article by Andrew Browne for the Wall Street Journal may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

During the Cold War, rules of the road, diligently adhered to, prevented accidents that might have brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to war. China and the U.S. have been working on similar protocols. Last week’s apparently calculated act of lawlessness, though, changes the game.
Between Mr. Trump’s cavalier approach to China’s sacred cows, and China’s new disdain for legal niceties, expect regular eruptions. China is clearly testing U.S. resolve.

A shift in strategy assumes of course that the decision to snatch the drone came from the top rather than a rogue commander, though the latter possibility is just as ominous: It would raise questions about Mr. Xi’s sweeping reorganization of the armed forces designed to impose greater Communist Party control.

Mr. Xi’s administration has declared “maintaining stability” to be its top task for 2017 as the economy sputters. Now, the challenge from Mr. Trump to Beijing is forcing both countries into uncertain waters. Mr. Xi’s navy has just literally and figuratively rocked the boat.

 



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China Halts Trading in Key Bond Futures as Panicky Investors Sell Securities

This article by Yifan Xie and John Lyons for the Wall Street Journal may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

Some of these bubbles have burst dramatically over the last 18 months, with the crash in China’s stock markets last summer the most notable example. On Thursday, the pain spread to China’s $9 trillion bond market, which remains overwhelmingly driven by domestic investors, despite some opening up to foreigners this year. The yield on 10-year government bonds had reached as low as 2.6% in August.

“People woke up to the fact that the bond bubble is too large,” said Hao Hong, co-head of research at Bocom International, which is owned by Hong Kong’s Bank of Communications. “The bond market in China is under severe pressure, across the board.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates helped trigger the selloff. Chinese investors believe it increases the chance China will guide its own rates higher to stem the yuan’s recent decline against the dollar and heavy capital outflows from the country.

But the bond market slump also exacerbates the policy dilemma facing China’s central bank. It has tightened short-term lending in recent weeks in an effort to make it harder for speculative investors to borrow money. The problem is that such tightening moves—along with any future rate rises—could provoke market plunges and panics as liquidity dries up.

 



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China Warns Trump Against Using Taiwan for Leverage on Trade

This article from Bloomberg News may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

China warned Donald Trump against using the One-China policy regarding Taiwan as a bargaining chip in trade talks, a swift response that indicates Beijing is losing patience with the U.S. president-elect as he breaks with decades of diplomatic protocol.

“Adherence to the One-China policy is the political bedrock for the development of the China-U.S. relationship,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing at a regular briefing on Monday. “If it is compromised or disrupted, the sound and steady growth of the China-U.S. relationship as well as bilateral cooperation in major fields would be out of the question.”

Trump said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that his support for the policy --- which has underpinned U.S. behavior toward Taiwan since the 1970s -- will hinge on cutting a better deal on trade. He has repeated his accusations against China since election day, telling a crowd in Iowa last week that China would soon have to “play by the rules.”

Policy makers in Beijing initially had a more subdued response after Trump departed from diplomatic convention earlier this month and spoke by phone with Taiwan’s president. Now things are getting more serious: The official Xinhua News Agency warned that world peace hinges on close and friendly ties between the U.S. and China.

“For China, there is no balancing of trade and Taiwan,” said Wang Tao, head of China economic research at UBS AG in Hong Kong. “Taiwan is considered the utmost core interest of China, not for bargaining.”

 



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Hong Kong's Squeezed Money Market Sends a Sell Signal on Stocks

This article by Justina Lee for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

"Even with two expected U.S. rate hikes next year, the rate gap with Hong Kong won’t be wide enough to spur significant outflows," said Thomas Shik, acting chief economist at Hang Seng Bank Ltd. Investors also like Hong Kong because of its currency peg with the strong greenback and Asia’s higher growth potential, he added.

There are money market concerns on both sides of the Hong Kong-mainland border. The Shanghai Composite Index retreated the most in six months on Monday as concern about dwindling liquidity was exacerbated by a regulatory crackdown to insurers’ stock investments and Donald Trump’s remarks about the U.S.- China trade relationship.

Currency weakness, along with concern mainland assets are overpriced, has driven Chinese investors to put their cash in Hong Kong equities and homes. China is now stepping up restrictions on outflows to defend the yuan, including tightening curbs on its citizens buying insurance in Hong Kong.

The city has also raised its stamp duty to rein in its world- topping home prices. “Inflows from China may slow because of recent measures," said Steven Leung, Hong Kong-based executive director at UOB Kay Hian. "Hong Kong hasn’t seen outflow pressure, but next year it will be more obvious."

 



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China's Central Bank Is Facing a Major New Headache

This article from Bloomberg News may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan already has one policy headache with the currency falling to near an eight-year low. He could have an even bigger one next month.

That’s when a $50,000 cap on how much foreign currency individuals are allowed to convert each year resets, potentially aggravating capital outflow pressures that are already on the rise. If just 1 percent of China’s almost 1.4 billion people max out those limits, that’s an outflow of about $700 billion -- more than the estimated $620 billion that Bloomberg Intelligence estimates indicate has already flowed out in the first 10 months of this year.

Middle class and wealthy Chinese have been converting money into other currencies to protect themselves from devaluation, exacerbating downward pressure on the yuan. Outflows could intensify if Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes fuel further dollar appreciation.

That leaves Zhou in a bind identified by Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Mundell as the “impossible trinity” -- a principle that dictates nations can’t sustain a fixed exchange rate, independent monetary policy, and open capital borders all at the same time.

"At a moment like this, you have to compare two evils and pick the less-worse one," said George Wu, who worked as a PBOC monetary policy official for 12 years. "Capital free flow may have to be abandoned in order to maintain a relatively stable currency rate."

 



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A China recovery is coming

Thanks to a subscriber for this article by Simon Hunt in copperworldwide.com. here is a section:

China’s economy is recovering. Accommodating monetary policy is being augmented by expanding the fiscal deficit which might include tax cuts. Construction is beginning to recover since total surplus inventory has fallen to the key seven-month level. The NDRC has released 25 infrastructure projects most of which were frozen earlier this year because cases of corruption were detected. Both wages and consumer spending continue to increase. In some key manufacturing sectors inventories have been reduced. Many private sector companies are now managing cash flow appropriately so are improving profitability. Investment will follow in 2017. Against this background real consumption of metals has begun recovering and will gather pace in 2017.



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