China Dominates Global Bitcoin Trade

MOSCOW, March 13 (Sputnik) — The Chinese yuan accounts for up to 80 percent of transactions in everyone's favorite crypto-currency Bitcoin, according to world's leading investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The report, published Tuesday, is titled "The Future of Finance: Redefining The Way We Pay in the Next Decade." It has dubbed Bitcoin and other online currencies a new "megatrend" that is reshaping the technology of transactions.

The second most used currency was found to be the US dollar with 19 percent, while the euro accounts for only 1 percent of all transactions.

The survey has again highlighted China's influence on the Bitcoin market, which has been documented by various financial organizations.

According to the Washington-based US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, China's expanding online community has been rapidly adopting online payment services. It also expects the country's e-commerce to grow by 32 percent this year.

China's central bank PBoC (People's Bank of China) previously tried to curb the use of Bitcoin for what it described as speculative currency exchange. But the crypto-currency has shown remarkable resilience in China, despite PBoC closing Bitcoin-trading ATMs and Bitcoin sites' bank accounts.

A reason for this is that China has become a major mining hub for crypto-currency, which may contribute to the country's high transaction volumes, according to the US-China Economic Review Commission.

Mining refers to the process of creating Bitcoins by performing mathematical calculations. The number of Bitcoins awarded for successfully solving algorithms is programmed to halve every four years to mimic the production rate of commodities like gold.

Bitcoin allows online users to send payments to one another. The crypto-currency can also be traded for conventional currencies without participation of governmental financial institutions. It was created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, a person or a group of people who designed the original software.