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China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

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Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#71

Post by 6nf »

samstave wrote: post #23
josu wrote: post #18

Earlier 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?

Money laundering: I have loads of money from selling drugs. I can't use that money to buy a house because I can't explain to the government how I got it. So I have to launder the money through legitimate businesses.

Capital controls: I have loads of money made legally but I want to move it offshore. The government won't allow large amounts of money to leave the country so I need to find a way around that restriction. For example by buying a bar of gold locally and shipping it out.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#72

Post by deepGem »

Animats wrote: post #27

So 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. B…

The situation is very similar in India. You can't just convert INR to USD freely. There's a limit of $250,000 per person per year. I don't know if anyone mines bitcoins in India (because of horrendously expensive power), but if they did, they'll be subject to similar scrutiny.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#73

Post by lazyasciiart »

aaron695 wrote: post #44
tinfins wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tank man wasn't crushed, FYI.

No one knows what happened to tank man. More troubling is you don't seem to know what happened in Tiananmen square, are you in China? https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jun/02/china.johngitt...

That assumption doesn't seem to be very well supported by the comment you are responding to - what makes you think they don't know what happened in Tiananmen?

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#74

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #59
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has exchange controls Bitcoin is irrelevant, compared to still-tolerated and massively-more voluminous alternatives, for capital controls. This is a red herring. Bitcoin was fine until ICO promoters started pilfering from the masses. In any case, China is currently loosening its capital controls [1]. This isn’t a problem that can be constrained to China. China is just reacting first. The rebranding of this ac…

How is it irrelevant? You can buy Bitcoin with yuan, transfer the bitcoin to a foreign exchange, and then buy another currency like the US dollar with the bitcoin, thereby circumventing capital controls.

> thereby circumventing capital controls

You can also invoice hundreds of millions in fake orders. This is how the bulk of exfiltration occurs.

Addressing the rounding error before the bulk means other concerns are at work. I am ignoring, in this argument, that recent policy—preceding these orders—calls for more capital export, to keep down the yuan.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#75

Post by ipince »

Twisell wrote: post #65
bdcravens wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 24/7 market; the price responds a lot faster than other markets. So looking at day-over-day price isn't a good gauge. Additionally, by the time a story is known at large, it's usually been known for a bit among those who follow Bitcoin, so you'll see it already priced in.

Are you sure? Doesn't the need to mine block slow down transaction to a bare maximum per block? And if miners in china close operations won't time between block increase? Thus maybe BTC is actually responding slower than other market... what do you think? I'm by far not a keychain expert so I will gladly be corrected if I'm wrong.

The exchanges don't typically create a blockchain transaction when you trade, so block mining times do not factor in here. It's just an open market with buy/sell orders that anyone can place at any time.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#76

Post by bdcravens »

Twisell wrote: post #65
bdcravens wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 24/7 market; the price responds a lot faster than other markets. So looking at day-over-day price isn't a good gauge. Additionally, by the time a story is known at large, it's usually been known for a bit among those who follow Bitcoin, so you'll see it already priced in.

Are you sure? Doesn't the need to mine block slow down transaction to a bare maximum per block? And if miners in china close operations won't time between block increase? Thus maybe BTC is actually responding slower than other market... what do you think? I'm by far not a keychain expert so I will gladly be corrected if I'm wrong.

Time to generate blocks isn't the same as what happens to price. They are loosely correlated, but not the same thing. Price is as much psychological as technical.

However to answer the question: If mining in China went offline, it would affect time to blocks. However, difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks (about 2 weeks), so if China has 75% of mining, at worst, it'd be 8 weeks before everything went back to normal in terms of block times. Bitcoin Cash actually has mechanism to adjust far more frequently, within a few hours if necessary. (but also subject to miner manipulation)

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#77

Post by trhway »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #21

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.

>no amount of bad news appears to affect the price of BTC.

This is what btc was created for, ie such government actions are fundamentally priced and architected in. At least that is what cypherpunk religion is about.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#78

Post by zeusk »

deepGem wrote: post #72
Animats wrote: post #27

So 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. B…

The situation is very similar in India. You can't just convert INR to USD freely. There's a limit of $250,000 per person per year. I don't know if anyone mines bitcoins in India (because of horrendously expensive power), but if they did, they'll be subject to similar scrutiny.

Solar power is really cheap though, I run a smallish scale operation near my hometown and solar is abundant with rare clouds and rain.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#79

Post by mosi88 »

EZ-E wrote: post #37
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

Is it just me or has China been doing some crazy regulatory stuff recently. Idk if there's an overall mosaic I'm missing or if these are unrelated.

Yes there has recently been : - promise to block all VPN services from accessing blocked website - law to hold chat group owners responsible to what the members say (controverse political talk or gambling for example can lead to arrests) - most of casual barbecue that were held in the streets last summer have been forced to close this year in my area - tightening and more scrutinity on visa applications for foreigner…

This a meaningless list of random things. Come to India and I can give you a list 10 times this size which will change every 10 days.

Re: China Bans Bitcoin Executives from Leaving Country, Miners “Preparing for Worst”

#80

Post by ShabbosGoy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55
Animats wrote: post #27

So 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. B…

> China has exchange controls Bitcoin is irrelevant, compared to still-tolerated and massively-more voluminous alternatives, for capital controls. This is a red herring. Bitcoin was fine until ICO promoters started pilfering from the masses. In any case, China is currently loosening its capital controls [1]. This isn’t a problem that can be constrained to China. China is just reacting first. The rebranding of this ac…

ICOs are a perfectly valid way to raise money. In fact, as long as you don't raise more than the cap specified by Reg CF ($1,070,000), it's no different than crowdfunding.

I predict that future startups will probably have a small ICO that is covered under Reg CF, and then a bigger token sale under Reg A.

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