By Wednesday evening, the Shanghai-based BTC was quoting Bitcoins at about 2,300 renminbi, or about $380, apiece. That was nearly 40 percent lower than where they had traded on Tuesday and less than half of their peak price of 7,395 renminbi on Dec. 1.

According to Chinese news reports, the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, met Monday with more than 10 of the country’s biggest third-party payment processing companies, ordering them to stop all transactions involving digital currencies. Alibaba’s Alipay service, the country’s biggest processor of online transactions, was among the companies represented at the meeting, according to the reports.

On Dec. 5, the central bank and the four agencies jointly banned dealing in Bitcoin, saying the government was acting to “safeguard the interests and property rights of the public, protect the legal standing of the renminbi, take precautions against the risk of money laundering and maintain financial stability.”

At the time, a spokesman for the central bank took issue with describing Bitcoin as a currency: “It is not issued by a central monetary authority, it does not have the properties of legal currency and it is not a currency in the real meaning of the word.”