Bitcoin.

This comes as no surprise to readers here...its developmental ontology recapitulating the phrenology of other actors who dare to challenge the authority of currency backed by "taxes and men with guns" (to paraphrase a popular economist) and instead offer something that can circumvent Government.

Bitcoin prices took a big hit on Wednesday after China’s regulators ordered the country’s payment processors to stop doing business with the country’s Bitcoin exchanges.

BTC-China, the world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange, said it would no longer take deposits in Yuan, effectively putting an end to the exchange’s pipeline of new Bitcoin buyers.

Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency, which had been trading at about $700 on worldwide exchanges, dropped 35 percent to around $450 on the news. But then it did gain back some of that ground. At press time, bitcoins were trading at $575. That’s about half what a bitcoin was trading at two weeks ago.

China’s central bank met with payment processors on Monday, ordering them to “stop giving clearing services to bitcoin, litecoin, and other cryptocurrency exchanges,” the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday, citing the financial news site Yicai. The payment processors were told to sever their relationships with Bitcoin exchanges by the end of January, the Post said.