Comment by neuro_imager | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neuro_imager | Hacker News Reader

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I'm extremely skeptical. The Chinese aren't stupid. And they are corrupt. The typical mining operation in China likely involves every government official in the region. Profits that are made from mining and/or trading are no doubt moving through the hands of members of the government - why would they give up free money?

This is probably bullsh*t put out by the Chinese government to screw with the market for fun and profit.

Also realistically how exactly would you enforce this? If they shut down Chinese exchanges, many savvy Chinese will just use international exchanges and trade IRL with paper-wallets. Unless one of the commentators is right and this is all to make way for a government run super-exchange (which wouldn't surprise me).

> If they shut down Chinese exchanges, many savvy Chinese will just use international exchanges and trade IRL with paper-wallets.

Except Chinese who are merely savvy, but do not have political connections won't be allowed to transfer significant sums out of the country. Part of the reason for Bitcoin's popularity in China is that it allowed a way around those capital controls.

> why would they give up free money?

Chinese system is a top-down system, once something becomes 政治任务(Political Mission, meaning the top level agenda), they are basically in a obey-or-die situation and of cause most of them will comply.

Indeed, the Chinese government cannot ban EVERY individual, but they can make it scary enough that most people, unless desperate, will not attempt it. Like, put some exchange owners into prison to make an example, restrict the access to foreign exchanges, or they can even go as far to detect bitcoin protocol and kills it on packet level. That is what they usually do anyway.

They're not banning mining. Miners will be inconvenienced because they will have to sell for dollars overseas and move the money back into China, but it won't be the end of the industry.

Yes I know, but mining is an enormous source of revenue in China and the workarounds you mention are costly. So again, why give away money?

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