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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”

#111

Post by adrianratnapala »

warcher wrote: post #84
adrianratnapala wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is food safety. Not quite real food safety, but also not made up. Some European cheeses are not available in here Australia because of regulations about how dairy products have to be processed (Pasteurisation I guess). Not only might that logic work in China too, but the culture is less tolerant of a food-stuff what is after all curdled milk with a fungal infection. (And we in the west get grossed out by chi…

Food safety is a great way to backdoor agricultural import restrictions. Europe has been doing it for decades on GMO's.

True, and in Australia that could be somewhat plausible case that it is protectionism. But in China probably has no cheese-protectionism lobby. Though I suppose it might just be someone angling for baksheesh.

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

#112

Post by westiseast »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #58
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a lot of debt building up as well as a huge real estate bubble that makes SF look tame. However, it hasn't crashed yet.

It's all sovereign debt, denominated in a token they can create at will. It's not like a household with an out of control credit card habit.

That means they can't go bankrupt; it doesn't mean the debt isn't a problem.

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

#113

Post by voidz »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #49
adamnemecek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly it can't keep going up and up. https://www.google.com/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017...

AMP links? Really? Here's the non crapified link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/08/15/chinas-debt-b...

Thanks. People sharing amp links... it was only a matter of time, and really, really sucks.

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

#114

Post by koonsolo »

endgame wrote: post #45
siculars wrote: post #40

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Mahatma Gandhi

People always quote this for all sorts of causes, but the fact that you're at one stage doesn't mean you're going to move to the next: - First they ignore you. Nobody ever notices you. - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you. Nobody takes you seriously. - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you. You lose. - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you…

You have a very valid point here. But to me this quote is more of a "Hey, it's normal that you have setbacks, but keep going, it's part of winning".

So to prevent: "Damn, they are ignoring me, I might as well give up".

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

#115

Post by mirimir »

kobeya wrote: post #107
mirimir wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was some democracy in the late 1800s to early 1900s. But it didn't gel with the Confucian ethos. Stephenson's Diamond Age is actually pretty informative.

This is incorrect. There was no period of Chinese democracy during that time.

1909 - Provincial Assembly elections

1912 - National Assembly elections

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

#116

Post by jondubois »

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…

>> Pilfering from the masses.

Whenever big corporations drain resources from the masses and keeps them enslaved by essentially brainwashing them; somehow that's OK. But when something comes along which offers the masses a chance for a quick (obviously high-risk) escape from slavery, that's a scam?

I don't agree with how bureaucrats spin this; as though people need to be protected from themselves. Maybe the government should ban entrepreneurship too - that's very high risk and very random/unpredictable too.

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

#117

Post by westiseast »

Cookingboy wrote: post #42
siculars wrote: post #40

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Mahatma Gandhi

Except in China it goes like this: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you are never heard from again.

* then you appear on state TV apologising for your tax crimes 10 years ago.

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

#118

Post by voidz »

censoredforlife wrote: post #69
CamelCaseName wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has a fair amount of "Bitcoin is overvalued" people as well. Note that the type of thread to reach the top of HN tends to be something groundbreaking, which will skew the discussion to the extremes. Also, the comment you are responding to complained about all of three pro-bitcoin comments (Two top level) that were all posted less than 3 minutes before his. This seems a little unfair to me as it's possible that thi…

Agree. HN has a sizeable left-leaning and pro-state/pro-fiat population.

Not sure about the readership,though. But I think you're right with regards to the discussion - you only hear one side a lot which makes it appear that there is only one side which is the majority. But it's really not the case, however: opposing views are being bashed or brigaded to the point where expressing such views has become unsafe or too much effort. So instead of real discussion, people who are not left-leaning/pro-state/pro-fiat increasingly just use only karma buttons.

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

#119

Post by School-Cotton »

bjshepard wrote: post #35
strathmeyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a totalitarian country, yes.

In almost any category conceivable (police presence on the streets, incarceration weights, bureaucratic oversight), the PRC is significantly more libertarian than the US. It is true that the CIA has invested a tremendous amount of energy and money into political issues designed to delegitimize the CCP -- Tibet, Falun Gong, and Taiwan. Liberalizing speech around these topics would likely be more efficient counterstrat…

"Any category conceivable" here means "a bunch of categories I cherry-picked."

I can "conceive" of many categories in which the US is less totalitarian: freedom of speech and of the press, judicial independence, not having to show ID to buy train tickets or prepaid SIM cards, freedom of assembly, severity of punishment for minor drug crimes, ...

The US isn't perfect, but let's not exaggerate.

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

#120

Post by jondubois »

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #80
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…

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.

This comment only got down voted because the traditional VC crowd is upset that something has come along which can disrupt their tight funnel which gives them a monopoly on venture capital and the corporate acquisition pipeline.

My open source project is now receiving funding/sponsorship from a cryptocurrency company.

I had applied to Y Combinator and various incubators in my country many times over the years but was consistently rejected because VCs didn't understand what I was doing - The founders of many of these cryptocurrencies (especially the more popular ones) actually understand technology very profoundly and so I am having much more luck there. I think that some cryptocurrencies are literally 'smart money'.

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