It does seem that consistently this year, every time Bitcoin hits an ATH or psychological price, that the PBOC issues some edict or warning that causes the price to drop. There's even a meme for this phenomena:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry6PpRXk0dQ

This is from 2014! (I know the link goes to content not typically found on HN, I'm doing it for the purposes of illustrating that this is such a seemingly common occurrence.)

It's helpful to remember that BTC has had strong upwards pressure for several months now: http://imgur.com/IWwOgm9

A graph like that was going to correct, one way or the other. PBOC's decree seems incidental rather than the root cause.

> China's announcement was probably a trigger that caused people to sell, rather than being directly responsible for people selling.

So you're agreeing with the title - the announcement (directly or indirectly) is what caused the fall in price.

True, Bitcoin was already reversing before the announcement. However, NEO was definitely impacted by the news.