China declaring all crypto transactions illegal sent shockwaves through Asia’s fintech market. It adversely impacted Hong Kong as well; not just crypto exchanges, but firms and stocks related to crypto were also feeling the bite.

On 27 September, Huobi Tech – an affiliate of the crypto exchange Huobi Global – saw its shares plunge by more than 30%. A day before this, Huobi Global had issued a statement which announced,

“To comply with local laws and regulations, Huobi Global has ceased account registration for new users in Mainland China, effective September 24, 2021 (UTC+8). Huobi Global will gradually retire existing Mainland China user accounts by 24:00 (UTC+8) on Dec 31, 2021, and ensure the safety of users’ assets.”

Huobi had its headquarters in Seychelles and was founded in China. But even companies with less obvious links to the crypto sector came under the radar. OKG Technology Holdings Ltd., owned by OK Coin crypto exchange founder Xu Mingxing saw a fall of more than 20%.

What about the most obvious targets? China’s latest crackdown didn’t come out of the blue for Binance, Huobi, and OKEx. Chinese search engines had previously blocked the three crypto exchanges and deactivated their accounts.

While Binance Coin [BNB] wasn’t greatly affected by the latest crackdown, Huobi Token [HT] saw a steep drop in price and its 24 hour trading volume fell by 23.94% at press time. OKEx’s OKB token also fell, but was recovering at press time.

While fear was dominating the market, as noted by the Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index, many traders saw the opportunity to “buy the dip” and obtain Bitcoin at lower prices.

One can argue that El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele helped boost the popularity of the trend. After the most recent instance of China FUD, Glassnode data showed that the number of addresses holding more than one BTC had reached a three-month high.

📈 #Bitcoin $BTC Number of Addresses Holding 1+ Coins just reached a 3-month high of 809,839

Previous 3-month high of 809,810 was observed on 21 September 2021

View metric:https://t.co/s7tx1xfXat pic.twitter.com/tVUkC8Fmct

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) September 26, 2021

This didn’t apply to just the king coin. Glassnode data further showed that the number of addresses holding more than 10 ETH had hit a six-month high for the second day in a row.

📈 #Ethereum $ETH Number of Addresses Holding 10+ Coins just reached a 6-month high of 278,357

Previous 6-month high of 278,342 was observed on 26 September 2021

View metric:https://t.co/6ggy1o2MKb pic.twitter.com/TDpwz1YyQS

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) September 27, 2021

Yet, it wasn’t just contrarian traders making the most of adversity. During the last weekend of September, crypto whales went into a frenzy, moving hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin and Ether through Huobi addresses or sending them into unknown wallets.

At press time, the price of Bitcoin was $$44,050.08.