Baidu, China's largest search engine, announced this week that it would no longer accept the digital currency as a form of payment, triggering a steep drop in the price of bitcoin. The announcement, which was posted on the Baidu website, followed a decision from China's central bank to prohibit financial institutions in the country from processing or insuring bitcoin transactions.

“Baidu’s website-acceleration platform decided to suspend Bitcoin payment acceptance from Friday, as recent large fluctuations in Bitcoin’s value makes it unable to safeguard users’ interests,” Baidu said in a statement on its website, translated via Bloomberg.

The price of bitcoin, which hit $1,000 for the first time at the end of November and peaked at $1,200 on some exchanges shortly after, has since plummeted to the low $700-range. Its fluctuations can be seen in the chart, below, from Blockchain.info, which aggregates prices across exchanges: