How China Took Control of Bitcoin (nytimes.com)

Slashdot reader Rick Zeman quotes the New York Times: In its early conception, Bitcoin was to exist beyond the control of any single government or country. It would be based everywhere and nowhere... Yet despite the talk of a borderless currency, a handful of Chinese companies have effectively assumed majority control of the Bitcoin network. They have done so through canny investments and vast farms of computer servers dispersed around the country...there are fears that China's government could decide, at some point, to pressure miners in the country to use their influence to alter the rules of the Bitcoin network. The government's intervention in 2013 suggests that Bitcoin is not too small to escape notice.