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Let alone the psychological damage to the society that any kind of speculation and a flood of "get-rich-fast" schemes incur.

Strict measures are not always bad. If China did not handle the SARS epidemic years ago the way they did, things could have been more similar to the Ebola epidemic.

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The likely reason Bitcoin has been taking off in China is because the available traditional investing options for people there are terrible as a result of government meddling. In particular, the whole country's economy is in the middle of a terrifying debt-fuelled bubble in which bank lending has effectively become an arm of the state, leading to a rather terrifying debt-to-GDP ratio and a banking system that may well collapse the moment the growth pauses. Combine that with increasingly strict capital controls that restrict the ability of most people to invest their money outside of China and a lack of trust in the government not to seize less favoured people's businesses for the benefit of insiders, and you have a strong recipe for Bitcoin popularity.

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