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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

China has shut down every crypto asset activity in China that they can find.[1] The hammer came down in 2021. Mining farms had their power cut, and several hundred people were arrested. (There's a "digital yuan", but that's a payment system run by the People's Bank of China.) So a big part of the world has already ended crypto as an asset class.

[1] https://coinpedia.org/cryptocurrency-regulation/cryptocurren...

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Isnt this just one of those headlines that isnt really true though? Like that China banned video games for kids?

From the same comic sansesk article you posted:

"Even though crypto-mining cracked down in China many miners have come out with several ways to continue the operations and escape detection. Twenty percent of the bitcoin network remains in China according to experts’ report."

Doesnt exactly seem like they have ended crypto if 20% of the bitcoin network remains there. It sounds like they cracked down on some and let others keep running.

It's not clear that the mining is still in China. It may look like mining is in China based on where new Bitcoins enter the network, but the mining farm may be elsewhere with the control hub still in China. Or the mining may have moved to other provinces. The big crackdown was at the provincial level, where the electrical load was substantial.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/china-is-second-biggest-bitc...

I'm not convinced by this without some additional context.

China has banned a lot of things that continue to exist outside China. For example, gambling is officially banned in China. Yet we wouldn't predict the end of gambling worldwide as a result, since we don't think of gambling as being dependent on China. Is there reason to believe cryptocurrency is?

I think this is a major contributing factor in why crypto isn’t going to work.

I can’t think of anything else that China is attempting to restrict that the rest of the developed world is open to.

Edit: perhaps need a /s tag here.

Being an Uyghur? Freedom of speech? Encryption? The coronavirus (still)?

I believe that was sarcasm.

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