BEIJING, Dec 16 -- Bitcoin, the virtual currency, has created something of a frenzy in China, with its value surging more than 80 percent in a year. Until last week, that is, when it plunged more than 30 percent after the central bank banned financial institutions from involvement in bitcoin trading.

The majority of Chinese investors, who seem to love speculation, know little about the mechanisms surrounding the currency. They can’t hold one in their hands nor use bitcoin in their normal daily lives.

Therefore, it seems like the right time to damp down the heated bitcoin trade in China, which had accounted for more than half of the currency’s global trading volume.

“It’s a game of speculation (in China), and few people know or care what’s behind it,” said James Li, head of BTC360.com, a bitcoin trading platform which he founded this year.

Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 by a programmer, or group of programmers, under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. It was designed to become an alternative to government-backed currencies. There are 12.1 million bitcoins in virtual circulation, and their supply is strictly governed by rules embedded in complicated software.

Most of the early bitcoin investors or collectors were geeks or financial experts. Even as an IT journalist, I can’t explain the mechanism of the virtual currency in a few sentences.