Bitcoin's wild volatility continues with $400 swing in an hour

• Oscar Williams-Grut
 

• 3h
• 9,678

Digital currency Bitcoin is experiencing wild volatility on Friday, swinging from a more than 7% drop to a 5% gain on the day in less than an hour.

The cryptocurrency briefly fell below the symbolically significant level of $3,000 per coin for the first time in over a month around lunchtime in London. A crackdown on trading in China is the cause of the fall, with Reuters reporting that exchanges have been ordered to stop signing up new users and announce a trading halt. Bitcoin was down as much as 7.8% against the dollar at one point.

However, at 1.55 p.m. BST (8.55 a.m. ET), Bitcoin is up 4.08% against the dollar to $3,381.46.It represents a swing of around $400 on the day — you can see the wild volatility below:Markets Insider

Despite the fightback, Bitcoin is still around $1,000 below where it started the week. The Financial Times reports that Bitcoin is now on its longest losing streak in a year.

Bitcoin collapsed 16% against the dollar on Thursday after Chinese media reported that the country's regulators were moving closer to shutting down exchanges. Business Insider first reported that China was looking at a crackdown on all cryptocurrencies after the People's Bank of China banned "initial coin offerings" at the start of the month.

Things got worse after BTCChina, one of the biggest local exchanges, said it would stop trade at the end of the month. Bloomberg is now reporting that exchanges will be banned by the end of the month.

Regulators around the world have been cracking down on the cryptocurrency space since the start of the month. Chinese, South Korean, Hong Kong, and British regulators have all moved to either ban or reign in activity in the so-called "initial coin offering" space — where startups issue new digital coins to fund projects — and this has dented sector sentiment. The combined value of the crypto space, which includes over 800 digitial currencies, has declined by over $50 billion in the last week, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Elsewhere in the crypto space, Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market value, is down 0.21% against the dollar in early trade. Bitcoin Cash, which was spun off from Bitcoin at the start of last month, is down 1.4% against the dollar.

Get the latest Bitcoin price here.

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Trump blocks a Chinese private equity firm from buying US chipmaker Lattice

• Liana B. Baker, Reuters

• 20h
• 1,679

Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump blocked a Chinese-backed private equity firm from buying a U.S. chipmaker on Wednesday, sending a clear signal to Beijing that Washington will oppose deals that involve technologies with potential military applications. Canyon Bridge Capital Partners’ planned $1.3-billion acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor Corp was one of the largest attempted by a Chinese-backed firm in the U.S. chip sector and was the first announced deal for the Palo Alto-based firm, which launched last year with a focus on technology investments.

U.S. regulatory scrutiny grew after Reuters reported in November that Canyon Bridge was funded partly by cash from China’s central government and had indirect links to its space program.

U.S. defense officials subsequently raised concerns about the Lattice acquisition by a firm backed by the Chinese government. The Portland, Oregon-based company makes chips known as field-programmable gate arrays, which allow companies to put their own software on silicon chips for different uses. It no longer sells chips to the U.S. military, but its two biggest rivals, Xilinx Inc and Intel Corp's Altera, do.

Trump said in an executive order that Lattice and Canyon Bridge "shall take all steps necessary to fully and permanently abandon the proposed transaction," within 30 days.

Lattice and Canyon Bridge did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The announcement comes at a sensitive time for U.S.-China relations. Relations are already strained between Washington and Beijing over trade and North Korea, and the Chinese communist party is preparing to hold its once-every-five-years congress in October.

Trump’s decision chimes with the views of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which scrutinizes deals for potential national security threats. Canyon Bridge and Lattice spent eight months trying in vain to persuade CFIUS to clear the acquisition.

Both companies said the deal did not pose any security risks and Canyon Bridge had told CFIUS it would double the number of Lattice’s employees in a bid to make the deal more palatable, according to people familiar with the matter. They declined to be identified because details of the regulatory process are confidential.

(Reporting by Liana B. Baker in New York and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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More: President Trump Lattice Semiconductor