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Bitcoin Slides as China's Central Bank Launches Checks On Exchanges (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: China's central bank launched spot checks on leading bitcoin exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai, ratcheting up pressure on potential capital outflows and knocking the price of the cryptocurrency down more than 12 percent against the dollar. The People's Bank of China said its probe of bitcoin exchanges BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin was to look into a range of possible rule violations, including market manipulation, money laundering and unauthorized financing. It did not say if any violations had been found. Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to stem capital outflows and relieve pressure on the yuan. While the yuan lost more than 6.5 percent against the dollar last year, its worst performance since 1994, the bitcoin price has soared to near-record highs.
The last time I speculated on /. about the share of Bitcoin being used by Chinese citizens to get capital out of the bubble, guess what happened? I was called a Japanese shittalker.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
>The People's Bank of China said its probe of bitcoin exchanges BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin was to look into a range of possible rule violations, including market manipulation, money laundering and unauthorized financing.
Wait, the price of Bitcoin was pumped by Chinese fraud? If only this had been known earlier! If only we'd noticed that every selling point of Bitcoin has actually been thoroughly debunked, that every major player in Bitcoin has been caught stealing or has failed (or both). If only we'd notice that blockchains have fundamental flaws that make them useless on any decent scale.
Oh, wait, pretty much everyone did know, but the scammers and fools yelled a lot louder and more frequently in their efforts to draw in new suckers so they could cash out.
We're not your pump-n-dump engine.
How is saying, "The price is falling!" going to pump up the price? Perhaps it's a short-n-spread-fud scheme.
After you pump the price and dump your bitcoin, you want to drop the price so you can buy more low in preparation for the next pump.
Now, it's unlikely MsMash is a top-level player in that scam, but there are lots of people who want to participate in hopes of enriching themselves.
Since the market is more or less entirely driven by fraud, this is essentially a guessing game of how far bitcoin will go during its ups and downs, so if you're NOT actually one of the big players who is moving the market through exchange fraud or controlling large amounts of bitcoin, you're probably not going to do very well... which seems to make them try all the harder.
Last couple of years have seen the wealthy in China resort to more and more elaborate schemes to exfiltrate their wealth, which they are officially restricted to moving just $50K/yr.
Like suitcases of cash brought on "vacation" to Hong Kong
And buying a $170M painting on a credit card.
Bitcoin is just the current fad for circumventing foreign exchange restrictions. When China clamps down, the wealthy will move to some other method, and bitcoin pricing will probably collapse.
Fuck off with your bitcoin spam. We're not your pump-n-dump engine.
speak for yourself, keep the bitcoin FUD coming
There's nothing governments hate more than money outside of their control.
We might be. There appear to be more people with mod points voting to support the scam's narrative than those voting against it.
But then again, most people who aren't participating in the scam probably aren't interested enough to waste mod points here, or even read the discussion in the first place.
Either way, these posts are an embarrassing reflection on the userbase of this site. I can only assume they're permitted because they're generating page views and that's more important to the owners than not supporting a scam.
Wow. Modded 'flamebait'.
This is what bitcoin cultists actually believe. I swear it's like watching Scientologists attempting to interact with reality.
"SUPPRESSIVE PERSON!"
Allowing one to avoid taxes and capital controls is a very nice start.
In this case it is good for the whole world. When the Chinese bubble goes pop, there are going to be 1.6 thousand million pissed off people. Giving the smarter ones a chance to preserve some of their net worth will help.
How would you have felt, just after the .com bubble popped, if the US government had restricted your sales of .com stocks prior to the mess? At least you would vent your anger at the US government. I'm betting a large chunk of Chinese anger will be towards the 'foreign devils'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Avoiding taxes is a "very nice start"? Let me be the first to say, "Fuck you, leech."
I don't respond to AC's.
So good for the ones that have been telling us that bitcoin was good to protect capital against government fiddling on currency. Government just has to investigate to influence bitcoin value.
Impotent anger. Nice.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Wow, didn't Slashdot run a story just a few days ago boasting that Bitcoin is now "more stable than many of the world's top currencies?" Darn! How could I have been so silly as to believe them? If only I hadn't immediately moved all my assets into Bitcoin! Oh, that's right, I didn't. Well that's a relief.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
On the flip side, it's crypto. Is it legal to import/export, or am I likely to run afoul of government agents with water, rags and no sense of humor? If it's crypto and it's weak enough to import and export freely, what the hell good is it?
In order to short Bitcoin, wouldn't one need to be able to borrow them? That's how shorting works, and I'm not aware of any exchanges that will let you borrow them.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
It doesn't always work this way. Most fighters who want to take the belt from a champ would also post the first 3 lines. Most of them lose, as the typical champ has many career wins.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The arrogance and the hypocrisy...
- of those who criticise what they don't understand and can't be bothered to learn. One of the central duties of any government is to protect the nation against things that harm the economy, and sucking capital out of the country does harm the economy. That is why people everywhere are rightfully outraged when rich people do everything they can to avoid paying taxes, for example. You may call it petty if you wish, but when you have some rich celebrity racing down motorways they carefully avoid contributing to at twice the speed limit in toy cars that cost millions each, then it is no wonder that people feel something is wrong. This is true in UK - and it is no less true just because it is China. In my view, these parasites should be flayed and rolled in salt.
And tulips now cost $10 trillion each.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.