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China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions
quantr writes with this excerpt from Bloomberg: "China's central bank barred financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions, moving to regulate the virtual currency after an 89-fold jump in its value sparked a surge of investor interest in the country. Bitcoin plunged more than 20 percent to below $1,000 on the BitStamp Internet exchange after the People's Bank of China said it isn't a currency with 'real meaning' and doesn't have the same legal status. The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves, it said. The ban reflects concern about the risk the digital currency may pose to China's capital controls and financial stability after a surge in trading this year made the country the world's biggest trader of Bitcoin, according to exchange operator BTC China. Bitcoin's price jumped more than ninefold in the past two months alone, prompting former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to call it a 'bubble.' 'The concern is that it interferes with normal monetary policy operation,' said Hao Hong, head of China research at Bocom International Holdings Co. in Hong Kong. 'It represents an unofficial leakage to the current monetary system and trades globally. It is difficult to regulate and could be used for money laundering.'"
"The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves,"
that should actually be a green sign.
any method that can be legally used to turn yuan into something else that can be turned into money - and can be moved electronically - is in big demand...
(no, I don't have any bc)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yeah, btc took a momentary dive, and people jumped on it and it shot right back up above $1k. This all happened while I was asleep so *shrug*
It's not banned at all, it's said that bitcoin can be freely buy and sell by the people but it's regulated like a commodity (gold, silver, oil) and there is no guarantee or protection from the standard financial institution. Bitcoin will actually benefit from a statement like that. Governments and Banks stay away from my bitcoin and leave the real free market work!
It is difficult to regulate and could be used for money laundering.
translation
we can't tax it, and that is bad
It means it's attracted the attention of the big players so they'll be the only ones making big profits from now on.
Anybody with enough capital can manipulate the bitcoin market (just like any other stock/share) - creating artificial shortages to drive the price up, dumping it into the hands of greedy individuals when it peaks, buying back when it crashes down. Rinse, repeat.
No sig today...
How come we only see bitcoin stories on slashdot?
How come there's no stories about Litecoin, Namecoin, etc.? They both have "billion dollar" values, too.
No sig today...
How come we only see bitcoin stories on slashdot?
How come there's no stories about Litecoin, Namecoin, etc.? They both have "billion dollar" values, too.
Yeah, but Bitcoin is the new Honey Badger. I saw the sign along the Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale, California, so it must be true!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Did they also ban financial companies from tulip transactions?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Fear the unknown !!
The reality is Bitcoin is stateless so China can't exert influence on it. Scares them, it does. Yes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We all know the US is now run by crook like Wienerstein et. al. & they legalised shitcoin so it can be pilfered and pillaged in the customary rape-minded fashion as we saw in Denmark.
That China is banning their use for serious transitions, and is the most responsibly run economy on the planet right now, speaks volumes.
I don't think it has anything to so with control as attack minions/apologists will claim. China does nothing much to stop illegal pirating of movies, OS's etc.
They just don't want their economy bloated with fake wealth. Chinas' in the resource business. Together with Russia, and India (other responsibly run countries) they have the largest stockpiles of gold (a real com commodity) they are growing and will be the new 1st world together with Brazil (BRIC) maybe even South Africa.
They will all oppose bitcoin no doubt. Well done China, though it's hop real surprise or news to a sane person that China wouldn't use something even less trusted than paper money. It's also FaR more easily co-opted than paper money (which is regulated directly by China and won't suffer serious deflation or inflation like shitcoin). Wake up and smell the ponzi coin people.
... & they can't have that, now, can they? The push here seems to be to decouple the yuan in any big way from their own currency markets & see how that goes. As long as it means a low yuan, that might be fine by them. But then one yuanders: who really has the pretend currency?
that current Bitcoin rally is over?
I for one wonder if this'll be the last big rally.
I've been absolutely terrible at predicting when this train will end. An unstable currency that is not suitable for the vast majority of merchants and individuals is doomed to fail eventually, but since I've been beating this horse Bitcoin has risen by 5000%. Rally #1 was the American public, rally #2 was from Greeks and other troubled European nations and now this rally is from the Chinese.
I wonder if anything significant is left? Regardless, it's way too high for me to even consider playing this game. I do hope something similar comes along in the future, perhaps it'll follow a similar pattern and I'll get on board early...
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
All money is nothing more than an abstract representation of value. It was created to ease trade (to overcome limitations of barter). And the only value in this abstraction we call money is the agreed upon use of it. Problem is, all of this abstract value representation has been abused so badly that it no longer is a genuine honest representation of the real values its supposed to represent. The proof is obvious, once its realized that with all the bankruptcies there is not a single person that can show me the less than zero real value that is supposed to be represented by the less than zero numbers of bankruptcies. Furthermore for a perfect example of how this abstract tool of money can be and has been so wrongly abused and manipulated against the real values its supposed to represent, google "trillion dollar bet" and educate yourself of how much was stolen in real value via abstract representation of real value.
Because other alt-coin are only copy/paste of Bitcoin, have no infrastructure and are less secure because they there is less miners. How many merchant accept Litecoin or Namecoin?
I'm not sure how that's supposed to mean anything... you do realize that the USN makes the PLAN look like a handful of plastic boats in a kid's bathtub right? Compare fleet compositions someday. We have so many carriers we can't even field them all, and the PLAN just barely manages to field one, which has never even seen combat.
The PLA and PLAAF are sizable, formidable forces, and a land war with China would be a nightmare, but the PLAN is a joke, at least to the US. To the small navies of its neighbors, it's serious business, but then they all ultimately depend on US intervention for defense anyway. SEATO4EVAR
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Like I said, "similar", not "exact". Bitcoin is the poster child of the inflatable, independent currency experiment, but it shares traits similar to the stock market and limited quantity physical goods. It's not impossible for something which shares the traits that guided the valuation of Bitcoin to emerge. It'll likely be a long way off and possibly too difficult to identify in time to profit from it.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
I think China is more worried about people circumventing RMB exchange controls than who owns Bitcoin. They don't seem to particularly care whether people use Bitcoin. All they care is that Chinese financial institutions don't allow RMB to be converted via this route.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Oh, and just to fully recap my many posts ranting about Bitcoin, aside from what I've said already in this thread...I'm waiting for something to come along that provides the benefits of Bitcoin but without the price instability. Its stock-like nature is going to doom it because consumers (and more importantly, merchants) need more "familiar" price stability to become comfortable with and actually use a currency for currency purposes. The vast majority of current Bitcoin users are still speculators and unwitting individuals, along with some merchants who would probably prefer something more stable but need the anonymity to conduct business...and a few outliers here and there.
Anyone who's been burned once by previous crashes won't ever want to get back on board the Bitcoin train...
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
...and it's still higher than what I sold the last of my BTC for.
or what they think is their control?
Bitcoin exists because many people don't trust a) the major world governments or b) the major banking institutions.
So it is a *good* thing for some of those banking institutions from being prohibited from using Bitcoins. And really, banks do not need to be dealing with Bitcoins - do you really want a bank to be taking your money and "investing" it in Bitcoin?
Classifying it as a commodity, like gold or silver, for regulatory purposes makes sense, and much like there are few regulations on gold and silver themselves, these are regulations on the banks, not on Bitcoins.
Now, the anti-money-laundering stuff may be a cumbersome burden on Bitcoin exchanges, and tries to defeat the entire purpose of Bitcoin's pseudonymity, but the US already has similar restrictions, and they're not restrictions that are completely unreasonable. In fact, wouldn't regulations on converting Bitcoins to and from other currencies make people more inclined to use Bitcoin as an actual currency, instead of just a carrier system for other currency (the buyer buying BTC to immediately spend, and the seller immediately converting it back to a "usable" currency)? Even their attempts to undermine it seem likely to strengthen it.
/CSB: October of last year, 2012, I bought ~55 BtC at $12 each ($650). Just cashed out 20 ($20,240) for Xmas vacation and gifts and have a remaining 25 (~$27,500), that if they dropped back to $12 or completely disappeared overnight, I'd still be waaaaay ahead of what I earned at my 8-5 or would have gotten from any other investment. *Past results are no indication of future performance.
While you were beating your anti-BtC drum, how's that 401k doing for you? How's your market stability? Returns over time? How much "full faith" do you have in the companies in your portfolio? Any oil stocks in there? Who's gonna have the next major spill and fine from the EPA?
BtC is still REALLY early in it's run. We're still talking about buying and selling actual WHOLE BitCoin! My god! The whole design of BitCoin is that by the time the mining runs out ~2020, most transactions will be in Satoshi... that's 0.00000001 BitCoin. When 1 Satoshi = $1, the BtC economy will be (I've heard, but not calculated) multiple times larger than the sum of all other currencies in circulation. It'll also mean that 1 BtC =~$100,000,000. As far as the reality of those prospects, do some research on deflationary currencies. As long as there is a market, the value can't help but go up.
As far as a market being available, since almost anything can currently be purchased directly with BitCoin, including Gold and Silver, Porn, and just about any major retailer's gift cards, including Target for groceries, I think it has a reasonable chance at a long run. The biggest question has always been if the big financial institutions (FI) would see BtC as a threat or opportunity. If it's a threat, then they will have their government minions crack down on it and it'll go away. If it's an opportunity, (and the testimony before congress last month seems to indicate this is the way the FI want it played by the Fed Reserve), then they will keep it alive as a market to milk to and manipulate for a long time to come.
LOL. One US Navy carrier group > entire Chinese navy.
You realize Namecoin isn't a currency, right? It's a replacement of DNS...
First number is USA's count. Second number is China's count. Third number is world-wide total.
Aircraft Carriers: 10 [55.5%] / 1 [5.5%] / 18
Amphibious Assault Ship: 9 [39.1%] / 0 [0%] / 23
Landing Ship: 21 [43.8%] / 26 [54.2%] / 48
Cruiser: 22 [78.6%] / 0 [0%] / 28
Destroyer: 62 [36.3%] / 24 [14%] / 171
Frigate: 24 [6.1%] / 45 [10.9%] / 411
Corvette: 2 [0.7%] / 8 [2.7%] / 301
Patrol Boat: 209 [17.6%] / 236 [19.8%] / 1,190
Anti-Mine Ship: 14 [3.2%] / 107 [24.2%] / 443
Missile Sub: 14 [28.6%] / 5 [10.2%] / 49
Attack Sub: 57 [14.3%] / 55 [13.8%] / 398
All Ships: 445 [14.5%] / 507 [16.5%] / 3,074
Tonnage: 3,415,893 / 659,578
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
A lot of nootropic (supplements for better mental function) purchases are made with bitcoin in China. I hope this doesn't ending making things more difficult.
If you think bitcoin will reach 100,000,000 would you cash any out for a vacation?
I agree with you completely.
Let's put it this way... if you were about to start a long term contract for a big project, would you rather get paid in dollars (which will likely be worth at least 95% of what they are now at the end of the contract), or in Bitcoin (which may be worth anywhere from $10 to $10,000 each a year from now, depending on who you talk to)?
Bitcoin might work for buying a bag of weed or some cookies, but you would never use it to do real business until the currency stabilizes.
Since you're a market expert you should quantify this prediction, short bitcoin, and make a boatload of money in 10 years or so.
There's people out there who'll let me short Bitcoin over a ten year period...?
PS: It dropped 40% since you wrote that.
No sig today...