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Beijing (CNS) -- The website of China's central bank was blocked intermittently Wednesday afternoon, and hacking by Bitcoin speculators was suspected.
About 5 p.m. Wednesday, the website was reported to be paralyzed, but it partly recovered one hour later. Although the website's front page could be downloaded, it still took much time to read certain statements as of 21:00. It took nearly 20 minutes to open a circular issued two weeks ago on preventing the risk of bitcoins.
Some researchers inferred that the crash might have been the result of overreaction by bitcoin speculators, as the central bank banned domestic third-party payment companies from providing clearing services for bitcoin trading platforms earlier this week.
The value of bitcoins plunged in China on Wednesday, falling nearly 50 percent, after the country's biggest trading platform BTC China and OKCoin banned deposits in yuan following the restrictions.
However, staffers at the central bank on Wednesday didn't confirm they were attacked by hackers, nor did they say the hacking was related to bitcoin speculators. IT technicians will investigate the problem, they said.
On the same day, btc38.com, a bitcoin website in China, issued a notice condemning hack attacks on the central bank, saying, "It is unreasonable and illegal."
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