What's interesting to me is that no amount of bad news appears to affect the price of BTC. I'm not a professional or amateur trader (I've got no position on BTC at all) but the price fluctuations really seem dominated by sentiment over any sort of fundamentals.
China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
21–30 of 270 posts
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#22China's fast descent into totalitarianism is fascinating and scary. One can easily replace 'bitcoin executives' with 'foreign executives' or 'foreign assets' and see where this is going. I wonder if those companies that choose to outsource all the jobs in their country to China realized what they've done.
This is more totalitarian than crushing a citizen in a public square with a tank?
Tank man wasn't crushed, FYI.
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#23China is a closed economy, it makes sense that they would put a ban on a technology which outside of speculative investment is largely used to facilitate money laundering.
Money laundering is currently not an issue, it has more to do with capital controls.
Serious question: how are capital controls vs money laundering different from the perspective of the one with the money?
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#24China's fast descent into totalitarianism is fascinating and scary. One can easily replace 'bitcoin executives' with 'foreign executives' or 'foreign assets' and see where this is going. I wonder if those companies that choose to outsource all the jobs in their country to China realized what they've done.
I think by outsourcing to China or entering the Chinese market, those companies are making a conscious decision to accept the risk, which is that what is perfectly legal and fine today can suddenly be illegal and hated tomorrow. Also, you can't expect any fair fight in China. Quanxi and lobbying the established politicians and tycoons is just part of any business.
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#25China's fast descent into totalitarianism is fascinating and scary. One can easily replace 'bitcoin executives' with 'foreign executives' or 'foreign assets' and see where this is going. I wonder if those companies that choose to outsource all the jobs in their country to China realized what they've done.
honest question, hasn't it been totalitarian for like the past 70 years?
More like 2000 years of totalitarian.
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money laundering is currently not an issue, it has more to do with capital controls.
Serious question: how are capital controls vs money laundering different from the perspective of the one with the money?
Depends if you obtained your funds legally or illegally? With former you are betting against Chinese economy with latter you are looking to leave less traces of activities that got you those funds.
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#27So the PBOC is taking further steps to plug the leak. Not unexpected.
China has exchange controls. Internal yuan cannot be easily converted to euros or dollars. There are limits on capital outflows. The controls are leaky; the classic leak is to send all your relatives to Hong Kong loaded up with the maximum allowed amount of yuan in cash. The current limit is about $50K/year/person. Small leaks are thus tolerated. Big leaks get plugged, eventually. Bitcoin has apparently been moved to the "big leak" category.
(The US does not have exchange controls. If you want to wire transfer a million dollars from the US to Switzerland and buy a house in Geneva, the US has no objection, provided that you report it for tax purposes. Some Bitcoin enthusiasts are unclear on this. Why China has tight exchange controls is beyond the scope of this discussion.)
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#28What's interesting to me is that no amount of bad news appears to affect the price of BTC. I'm not a professional or amateur trader (I've got no position on BTC at all) but the price fluctuations really seem dominated by sentiment over any sort of fundamentals.
It does seem to have some effect. Bitcoin "crashed" last week quite a few pecentage points (see https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts click 1M or 3M and see September 15th). Like stocks though, it is always hard to pinpoint why, because it's a market with lots of different opinions.
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#29All comments so far have been pro-bitcoin... does nobody think this could actually be a sensible decision?
For a totalitarian country, yes.
Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”
#30All comments so far have been pro-bitcoin... does nobody think this could actually be a sensible decision?
Why would it? The govt let's you go to casino, I should be allowed to do what I want with my money. Totalitarian and Aldo totalitarian govts are scared of bitcoin.
Governments can trace the money you win and lose at a casino.