BEIJING, Dec. 7 -- The price of Bitcoins slumped on Friday, reacting to the move by the People's Bank of China to ban financial institutions from using the currency.

The price of the virtual currency dropped to 6,148.89 yuan ($1,010.62) on Friday at 5 pm from Thursday's high of 7,005.01 yuan on BTC China, the country's largest Bitcoin online trading platform by trading volume.

The PBOC said Thursday that Bitcoins have no "real meaning". Market players said the central bank's warning probably dented investors' confidence, and some holders of the currency sold their Bitcoins immediately after the PBOC warning.

"I read the warning and thought that in the future, Bitcoin might not be used and circulated in many cases. Its liquidity has been dented.

"That's why I sold all my holdings for about 12,000 yuan, with a profit of 4,500 yuan," said Zhao Qun, a Bitcoin collector in Shanghai.

Other investors, however, said people shouldn't read too much into the price slump, as Bitcoin trading is still active.

"Bitcoin prices are volatile because the outstanding amount of the virtual currency is limited, the current combined investment into the market is limited and any big capital moves can make prices gyrate," said Shen Yang, a Beijing investor.

"In the past, Bitcoin prices have sometimes doubled within 24 hours or dropped more than 50 percent within a day. Judging by the price change on Friday, the value is quite stable," said a Shanghai market insider who has knowledge of the real-time trading price and volume of Bitcoins in China and the global market.

The biggest one-day gain came on Nov 19, when the Bitcoin price surged from 3,226.01 yuan at the opening to 5,888 yuan.

Shen said Bitcoins are still accepted widely by some online e-commerce platforms and some brick-and-mortar retailers.

"Basically, you can live well without paying in cash and use only Bitcoins in China, thanks to the widespread acceptance of the virtual currency," said Shen.

China Telecom Corp Ltd, the largest mobile phone provider in the country, launched a promotion allowing a Samsung phone to be bought with Bitcoins, and Baidu Inc, the Chinese Google, is accepting payments for its firewall service in the currency.

Still, price volatility, combined with the PBOC's warning, led some businesses to change their policies on accepting Bitcoins.

In Shanghai, a realty developer said it had stopped accepting Bitcoins payment for apartments after the PBOC warning.

"We stopped accepting Bitcoins immediately after the central bank announcement on Thursday," said Luo Wen, a public relations manager at Shanda Interactive Entertainment, which is also the developer of a property project in Shanghai.

The company said in October that homebuyers could use Bitcoins to pay for its apartments near the Zhangjiang high-tech industrial park. But nobody ever actually bought a home in the project using Bitcoins, Luo said.

"We launched this campaign when the value of Bitcoins was around 1,000 yuan per coin, but then it surged to a peak of 8,000 yuan. We revised our accepted 'exchange rate' on a daily basis, but I guess no one would trade something appreciating that fast."

Financial regulators around the world have taken different stances on Bitcoins.

In the Netherlands, the central bank issued a cautionary note on Tuesday reminding people that there's no central issuer to be held liable for the virtual currency.

Depositors and investors who used Bitcoins could lose their money, the central bank said.

Germany's Finance Ministry in August recognized the Bitcoin as a "unit of account", meaning it can be used for tax and trading purposes in the country.

The virtual currency has been banned from trading in Thailand since July.