Bitcoin slumps as China bans cryptocurrency trading, mining

China's most powerful regulators on Friday intensified the country's crackdown on cryptocurrency with a blanket ban on all crypto transactions and mining, hitting bitcoin and other major coins and pressuring crypto and blockchain-related stocks. Ten agencies, including the central bank as well as banking, securities and foreign exchange regulators, vowed to work together to root out "illegal" cryptocurrency activity, the first time the Beijing-based agencies have joined forces to explicitly ban all cryptocurrency-related activity. China in May banned financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions, and issued similar bans in 2013 and 2017. The repeated…