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China Cracks Down On Bitcoin, Cuts Off Exchanges' Bank Access
jfruh (300774) writes "Bitcoin has made many governments and regulators uncomfortable, and the Chinese government is responding to the challenge it poses with its usual lack of subtlety. Two Chinese bitcoin exchanges have found themselves cut off from the money economy, as Chinese banks, under pressure from the government, refuse to do business with them."
Or you know, a well known totalitarian government stamping out a black market currency, you know, to control their citizens, like they've been doing forever.
Or you know, a well known totalitarian government stamping out a black market currency, you know, to control their citizens, like they've been doing forever.
Funny how they can be all quiet on things like this, then go at them like a rancor beast.
Fear is a great motivator. Anything they can't control makes their fearful.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Anyone keeping coins in an exchange for any longer than necessary to exchange them is an idiot.
Bitcoin is more traceable than cash. The bitcoin chain contains a record of every bitcoin transaction ever made, anywhere. There are some randomizing anonymizer services which take money from lots of people and return it randomly so nobody knows exactly which amount came from which source, but that kind of services exists for other currencies as well.
Sure. When people are spending all their money building fake malls and fake cities, that's "totally working". [Thumbs up!]
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
So... sort of a money laundromat?
Well, this is it -- an early test of whether Bitcoin can stand on its own as an underground currency. The crutch of traditional currency exchange has been kicked out from under it. Will the bitcoins currently in China be abandoned? smuggled out? or actually used as money like Satoshi intended?
Communist economies are fake economies. Always. In the bad days of the USSR, you couldn't buy anything you really wanted with Rubles, but of course anything else was quite illegal. China today isn't nearly as bad, and they have a mix of genuine capitalist (owned by individuals, not the government) business and government business, so you can buy some stuff with the yuan. But they still have too much fake economy to allow people to legally buy and sell as they wish, and the black market is still a big deal and threatens government control.
Contrast that to the US, where the only large black market is for drugs, and it's arguable whether anything significant would change if the popular drugs were legalized. It certainly wouldn't bring down the government.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If the Chinese government had been unsubtle, the police would have arrested the owners and they'd be doing hard labour in a punishment camp in Tibet right now. Telling banks to stop doing business with them is a very very moderate slap on the wrist for people who've been slightly naughty.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Bitcoin is about as important as the Segway. Bitcoin works, and it does what it's supposed to do - allow one-way irrevocable value transfers between anonymous parties. That's a poor basis for practical commerce, although a boon to a broad range of crooks. It's especially bad that over half of Bitcoin exchanges have gone bust, despite the fact that they shouldn't be at financial risk.
It looks like Bitcoin will be around for a while, but it's not growing. The block chain transaction rate now is about what it was a year ago. Like the Segway, Bitcoin is kind of cool, and has niche applications, but it's not changing the world.
Communist economies are fake economies.
And just as often, Capitalist economies are as well.
Because Asset Backed Paper Commodities were basically a giant Ponzi scheme where garbage debt was laundered and passed off to other suckers by the very banks who gave out credit like it was candy.
Your example does NOT fit the "Capitalism" moniker.
True Capiltalism abhors ponzi schemes.
True Capitalism does not create money out of thin air.
True Capitalism does not engage in Quantitative Easing.
What America practices is very far from True Capitalism.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !