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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

If you don't mind me asking...

how are average people in China buying bitcoins without the use of a bank??? How do they get the cash to the seller of the bitcoin I guess is my question?

Do they walk into a brick and mortar "bitcoin store" and make a deposit (with cash)... and then they can trade from that "bitcoin store"? (Provided they accept all the risk).

Is there some other user friendly way this happens that doesn't require the use of cards that flow through financial institutions?

Or is the trade really complex currently and relegated to just "people in the know" so to speak?

Just trying to get an idea of how these new rules would affect the average Chinese.

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They move their money from their bank to an exchange and then buy bitcoins. The announcement says nothing about not allowing banks to deal with bitcoin exchanges, only that banks can't deal in bitcoin directly.

This "news" (which is really just the official announcement of something announced unofficially a couple weeks ago) changes nothing whatsoever about the status quo.

Wait...

can't they just tell the banks that they can't deal with bitcoin businesses in the future???

In that case, they would tell it today rather than telling that the public should deal with the Bitcoin's risks themselves, wouldn't they?

Just playing Devil's Advocate...

but I wouldn't.

Those transfers to the exchanges from the banks are currently one of the few reliable monitors of this activity.

So I would first put the tech in place to monitor the bitcoin network... then I would say that you can't use banks to get to the exchanges anymore. (Monitoring blockchain changes on that scale is non trivial).

Anyway, if I was serious about impeding bitcoin usage... that would be the order I'd do things in.

In the U.S., I use:

https://localbitcoins.com/

I imagine they use that or something similar.

This wouldn't explain how Bitcoin gets into China in the first place though.

1. someone in China downloads bitcoin client or opens online wallet, and someone from another country sends them bitcoins for service or anther reason.

2. mining.

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