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A comment on Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings Illegal.

Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by gruez on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:03PM (#15170848)
why does it feel like every time bitcoin goes up, the chinese government has some sort of announcement to bring it back down? see: last time when they prohibited banks from buying/selling cryptocurrencies. does someone there hope to earn some quick $$$ from shorting bitcoin (profit motive), or are they doing it to cool down a bubble (protect chinese investors motive)?
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by chinathrow8 on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:11PM (#15170881)
Because Bitcoin and ICO are the main mechanism to get money out of China, with overseas cash withdraw very limited for Chinese citizens, with 50% of millionnaires in China wanting to leave (http://bit.ly/2uzYLyu) (and the other 50% already having left probably), and with Chinese government cracking down on real estate/insurance tactics to move money out.

But it's really doubtful they can prevent bitcoin from transfering money out of China altogether (unless they ban bitcoin)

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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by IIAOPSW on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @05:58AM (#15173763)
>Because Bitcoin and ICO are the main mechanism to get money out of China

No bitcoin and ICO's are a mechanism to get money out of China. Shady HK pawn shops, "family" vacations with strangers (the limit on money moved is per person) and straight up smuggling in bodily crevices are still far more popular. Right now China makes more on bitcoin than it loses because 70% of mining happens in China. So long as this remains true China will not ban bitcoin. Everything else is just noise and FUD.

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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by chinathrow8 on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:14PM (#15170894)
btw if you want to make real money, figure out how to help Chinese millionnaires move money out of China
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by gnaritas on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:15PM (#15170900)
That's crypto's primary use case already.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by chinathrow8 on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:18PM (#15170906)
...until China bans bitcoin, which might happen soon, after the october national congress
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by narrator on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:47PM (#15171053)
I think China likes Bitcoin because money flowing into it does not strengthen the dollar thus putting pressure on their foreign reserves. If people are sneaking their money out of the country, they'd rather be trading it for Bitcoin than dollars.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by seanmcdirmid on Monday September 04, 2017 @06:12PM (#15171154)
Unless there is also lots of demand from bitcoin to RMB, if not then foreign reserves have to be tapped at some point.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by narrator on Monday September 04, 2017 @06:57PM (#15171352)
The government doesn't care what the bitcoin/rmb exchange rate is because they don't buy oil or imports in bitcoin nor do they hold any bitcoin reserves.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by seanmcdirmid on Monday September 04, 2017 @07:12PM (#15171416)
I'm not disagreeing with that: Bitcoin isn't a sneaky way of doing forex unless the RMB used to buy bitcoin is being converted into dollars (or another convertible currency), which most definitely is cared about.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by maxerickson on Monday September 04, 2017 @07:30PM (#15171483)
Mining operations can convert Chinese electricity into bitcoin.

So use RMB to purchase electricity for mining bitcoin, convert mined bitcoin to currency outside of China (or sell for RMB to someone that wants to do that and use RMB to buy electricity to mine more bitcoin).

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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by seanmcdirmid on Monday September 04, 2017 @08:11PM (#15171630)
Ya, ok. I can believe that, but it isn't very direct.

China does have cheaper electricity than the west, especially since most of it still comes from cheap dirty coal.

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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by bduerst on Monday September 04, 2017 @09:23PM (#15171889)
Aren't the bitcoin miners in China siphoning electricity off the grid for free?
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by cerved on Monday September 04, 2017 @06:07PM (#15171125)
If your using btc to launder money you're likely converting it to other stable currencies
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by narrator on Monday September 04, 2017 @06:55PM (#15171346)
Except if they leave the money in bitcoin they don't have to explain where they got it. If they turn it into a foreign currency they have to tell a bank where it came from. Come to think of it, that's probably where all the ICO demand is coming from. These guys have money stuck in crypto and are desperately looking for a way to invest it.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by atomical on Monday September 04, 2017 @09:53PM (#15171976)
Exactly. The bitcoin millionaires have a lot of unrealized gains. That's where the term whale comes from.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by gnaritas on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:37PM (#15171011)
If China could effectively ban bitcoin, they'd have done so long ago; they don't because they can't enforce it and they know it and it's better to look like you don't care that to show that you don't have the power.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by flunhat on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:45PM (#15171044)
China bans a great many things, even if those bans can be circumvented (access to certain political websites being a notable example).
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by seanmcdirmid on Monday September 04, 2017 @06:10PM (#15171149)
Uhm, you are a bit late, there is already an entire industry devoted to just that primarily in HK but everywhere....
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by gruez on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:19PM (#15170915)
but why not ban it outright? why go through the routine of acting tough on bitcoin every time a bubble comes up?
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by whytaka on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:35PM (#15171001)
Apart from this ICO ban, how has the Chinese government acted against Bitcoin? If anything, the large presence of Chinese miners in the blockchain space should suggest that they have the government's blessing.
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Re:Bitcoin Tumbles as PBOC Declares Initial Coin Offerings I... by Animats on Monday September 04, 2017 @05:58PM (#15171088)
"Mining" looks like an export business from a Chinese perspective. Mining companies build facilities in China, hire people in China, make something of value, and export it. That's encouraged by policy.

"Exchanges", though, are iffy. Those are financial institutions, and the PBOC can regulate them if they want. They've done a little regulation, clamping down on margin and accepting credit cards to buy Bitcoin.

Bitcoin used to be down in the noise as a way to get money out of China, and was tolerated in the way that putting all your relatives on the train to Hong Kong loaded up with 20,000 RMB each is tolerated. The numbers for Bitcoin are getting bigger, though, making PBOC action more likely.

A few years ago, it looked like yuan convertibility was on the horizon, but that didn't happen.

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