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OKCoin Raises $10 Million To Become China's Largest Bitcoin Exchange
edibobb writes "Despite recent cryptocurrency crackdowns by the Chinese government, OKCoin announced a round of $10 million funding by three prominent venture capital firms and other investors. OKCoin is supposed to be the largest bitcoin exchange in China. From the article: 'Back in November 2013, the focus of the bitcoin community was on China – the world’s hub for bitcoin trading. At that time, BTC China was the biggest exchange in the world, having managed to raise a $5m Series A funding round from Lightspeed Venture Partners (Snapchat, Nest). There were even rumours that a bigger round was in the works for the young company. However, things change quickly. After the Chinese government began regulating bitcoin in December, trade volume plummeted and the world’s top exchange was no longer Chinese.'"
much wow
Exchanges are used to "exchange" from virtual currency to a different regional currency (cash out your BTC for some USD).
1) If you want to use bitcoins, you have to buy some bitcoins. Originally you'd buy them either from a miner who was producing coins, or from someone else further down the food chain. That person takes your cash and transfers some coins into your crytographic wallet.
2) If you want to make or receive a payment with bitcoins - transfer them to someone else, in other words - you simply send a transaction out onto the bitcoin network, transferring the money between the wallets as approved by both parties.
Both of these processes are slowed down by the fact that the bitcoin network takes time to verify a transaction, passing the transaction around until it has been cryptographically set in stone. It's more convenient to have a completely ordinary bank, that pays in and out and transfers money between its customers' accounts rapidly, then balances its books with non-customers and other banks on the bitcoin network on its own time. That is a bitcoin exchange.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Apparently it's to allow a third-party access to your private key, so that they can steal all of your bitcoins.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
To me this sounds like some guys thinking "Hey - that Mt. Gox Guy set up an exchange and almost got away with bajillions. I bet we can do the same thing without his mistakes..."
Or - they are dumb enough to want to become a Big Fish in a Small Pond with Poisoned Waters.
(I'm sure there's some Poison/Poisson joke in there somewhere)
"Newspapers: A tiny little part of the internet, printed out yesterday, and delivered to your house"
It would be interesting, if somehow the exchange functionality were built into the protocol and entirely P2P. Getting rid of these centralized exchanges seems like it would really stabilize the currency. I don't know how remotely feasible that would be, it is far too early in the morning without coffee.
Effectively, what you describe is the protocol(which is p2p as well), except that the protocol does not address the issue of matching prospective buyers and prospective sellers (a protocol that does this, without a central market-operator, would be neat; but bodging one into a protocol for transferring virtual coins without double-spending would probably be unwieldy, though clients that implement both would be logical).
Perhaps the more fundamental issue (aside from any empirically hairy and/or provably intractable issues with an authority-less market protocol and select classes of DoS attacks or something) is that the blockchain arrangement that bitcoin uses(while secure, even without an authority, exactly as intended) isn't particularly fast, and obviously is of no value whatsoever for cashing in or out between BTC and another currency.
The 'exchanges', since they (from bitcoin's point of view) are just one entity making internal, irrelevant, decisions about how many of its coins go in box #1 and how many in box #2 and so on can 'transfer' coins at near-arbitrary speed (since the 'transfer' is just an internal number-shuffling, not an actual bitcoin transfer in the architectural sense) and, if suitably set up, can also perform transfers between holders of currency and holders of bitcoins.
Really, I'm inclined to view 'exchanges' (and their generally atrocious track record on getting hacked, being outright scams, etc.) as one of the major symptoms of Bitcoin's fascinating, and slightly tragic, clarification of the virtues and limits of its concept: you can have a currency-like instrument, perfect in its crystalline mathematical security or you can have the features people expect from money; but getting both? That isn't obviously a problem that is in-scope for mathematics, much less solvable...
No, I think we're seeing an honest, untainted demonstration of true Laissez-faire capitalism at work.
It shows you that what's yours, aka what your wealth is, truly is only what you can lay your hands on right now if there's nothing to support your claims to wealth. At this exact moment in time that's a laptop computer and an open, half-consumed can of Mountain Dew, and a physical wallet with a few dollars in it.
It's regulation that says that I own cars, a home, the contents of that home, and the contents of my bank accounts. If someone tries to take any of those things then I either get them back or I get compensation for their value, because there's regulation that supports me.
I think that the bitcoin crowd is slowly coming to realize that this massively libertarian construct doesn't work due to a lack of true oversight. I don't care that people can look at the block chain, people cannot affect the blockchain when it's used improperly.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I thought about this for a second a while back but, it slams up against one really major...no...fundamental problem.
The exchange is a point where currencies/commodities/etc meet. No amount of messing with the details behind how you move money around in your accounts can actually cause food to move to your table or hand you dollar bills. At some point the rubber has to meet the road or else you are just spinning wheels.
The bitcoin protocol, or any such protocol can only deal with itself. In order to exchange cryptocurrency for dollars, you need to actually exchange them.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"