Bitcoin mining companies face shutdown in southwest China
en.people.cn
en.people.cn
Also shutting down one miner just makes the remaining miners more profitable in the long term. In the short term though ~1 week it has the effect of reducing the rate at which Bitcoins are generated until the difficulty re-target is reached.
Which is why China is trying desperately to get control. They limit how much money their citizens can move around, whether it's Yuan, stocks or foreign currency, everything is limited and monitored. Bitcoin is no exception. Except, I think it's more nefarious than that. Bitcoin stands for everything China is against. A (mostly) anonymous currency which is decentralized? It's practically the opposite of China's ideology, a country which has strict controls on just about everything within their borders.
If I was the PRC, I'd move to damage, corrupt or if possible, destroy bitcoin. At the very least, I'd dig my claws in somehow, someway so I had some (even if it's just a little) control. But if I was China, how would I do it? I couldn't just create "The Exchange of the People's Republic of China". I'd have to do it through a proxy of some sort. There were some rumors on reddit about Chinese nationalist Jihan and his company Bitmain being such a front. I'm no tinfoil hat kind of guy, but the more I think on it, the less of stretch it seems...
Not that it's worth anything, but Jihan (although he has a suboptimally large amount of influence in/on the bitcoin community) has yet to demonstrate anything but a desire for it to succeed IMHO.
The big Bitcoin question for the last several years has been "what will the PBOC do"? So far, they've discouraged the use of Bitcoin for transactions within China, and stopped some speculative practices at Bitcoin exchanges, but haven't really cracked down.[1] Back in February, the PBOC announced a "study period" while they decided what to do.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-10/china-bit...
They certainly doesn't seem inhibited in banning things that may pose a threat to themselves. Bitcoin just doesn't pose much of a threat yet, not until it's generally useful as a payment system and for financing -- thus comprising an actual competition to the PBOC and their member banks.
Far easier to monitor than cash.
The US and other major "democracies" out there are already working on restricting access to information. I believe it's called "Fake News" ...
I read most of the DNC emails, I researched her as much as a voter should. Clearly couldn't vote for her (voted a write in "no confidence in candidates") But she never ate kids; that was John Podesta.
I may very well be paying less than cost because $1 outside is China is worth x%+ than inside of China.
If you want to treat it as a digital collectible and pay taxes when you sell some for a profit, great. If you want to treat it as a currency and not pay taxes, good luck.
It reminds of what some Soviet leader (Krushchev, maybe?) said when asked why he was against an "open skies" Treaty.
"We have nothing to hide. We have nothing and must hide it"
Even setting the political issues aside, Taiwan, Thailand and Macau are all pretty bad choices. They don't have particularly cheap power and they're hot, which drives up cooling and thus power requirements.
Iceland is still pretty much ideal. It has cheap Geothermal power and natural cooling.
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-iceland-bitcoin-eth...
Just sayin.
Sure, but what would the point be? It would only be a cryptocurrency in name. No reason to go through the trouble of using a blockchain if you're just trading credit. The selling point of Bitcoin is decentralization, and pegging requires centralization (a counterparty who will transfer national currency to your account upon receiving crypto-coins).
It could be used as a way for the government to tie its own hands and thus make a more credible promise about future the rate of money creation.
Ecuador did this in 2000 via dollarization, which introduces other problems which a blockchain would not.
If they have been into bitcoin for some time, "worry" might be overstated - they are probably well off - financially - as of now.
Not the government of Iceland, it should be noted.
The community is pushing to enable larger blocks among other functionalities that would cult down on the fees that miners (read: Chinese miners) collect.
Obviously the miners won't agree on that, but the network agreement depends on what the Bitcoin processing power decides, not on what the majority of the users do. At some point either the miners join, the users give up, or the chain forks in two (obviously with wildly different valuations).
I'm not familiar with People.cn, but my first reaction with the headline is that the piece of news has second intentions.
So many internet idiots just use acronyms all the time on the assumption that everyone speaks the same language as them. I wish more people would take your approach.
This is not true. Bitcoin price swings like crazy.
If China is really rooting out the bitcoin mining operations, it represents a huge change in the makeup of the mining/hashing industry
Bitcoin is as much as a ponzi scheme as gold is.
the only real value it currently offers, is it allows people to dodge tax and launder money. it also enables the criminal economy, with things like drug-ecommerce when the government does not approve (im all for legalisation, btw). so it undermines goverment authority and enables criminality.
i get that i get downvoted because people here believe strongly in privacy and tend to dislike their governments. but i don't. you have to think about how much of your life depends on government authority in order to understand the danger anything that undermines it poses.
And you obviously got upvoted. HN is full of libtards.
And how would they run a covert war against it? An open war or public attack would immediately raise the defenses of everyone involved, from miners to developers, to bitcoin holders. But what if they played nice while all the while poisoning the well or setting the stage to gain trust. They could do this through third party companies (cough bitmain cough) which could cause damage to bitcoin by delaying vital upgrades and sowing the seeds of uncertainty and doubt.
It's entirely possible that in an already corrupt environment, the dozen or so individuals on the crypto committee may be convinced to make decision that benefit them personally.
Make a few impactful decisions at your day job, block a few exchanges, short bitcoin personally, profit personally. Wouldn't be hard to make a million or two if you knew of a price fall coming up in advance, there are plenty of ways to get leverage on the bitcoin markets these days.
China is an oppressive regime. It's standard practice for oppressive regimes to ban what they feel they can't control. If Bitcoin ever becomes really useful, they will be forced to ban it -- if they want to maintain monetary control.