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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”

#171

Post by shanusmagnus »

thisisit wrote: post #135
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.

Here's another way to look at it. If I have a stock which has bad news, I need an exchange to panic on. No exchange? Then no way to dump the stocks. So if Chinese are thinking of dumping bitcoin on account of the bad news they need liquidity to do so. Currently with all (most?) exchanges gone where do they, if they really want to, dump their bitcoins? On that note it did go from 5k to current price.

This point is so chronically under-appreciated. And it doesn't even have to be "no exchange" -- it can be "high friction at the exchange" or "overwhelming tax burden to covert to fiat."

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

#172

Post by Nursie »

lmm wrote: post #154
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that work - I think the mining reward is 25 BTC, about 75,000 USD. So for 7.5million thats being the winning miner 100 times. I honestly don't know what setup it takes to be reasonably certain to be the winning miner these days - does anyone have stats on how many miners and how often one might be expected to "win"?

The stats don't really matter, because the market is designed to equilibrate the price: it costs 7.5 million to mine 7.5 million's worth (in expectation, net present value and all that), and always will. If you're worried about reducing your variance you can join a pool rather than mining directly.

But over what time period?

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

#173

Post by ue_ »

mirimir wrote: post #50
strathmeyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a totalitarian country, yes.

Well, for a country that doesn't want capital flight, anyway. I mean, you want those capitalist rats to know that they'll go down with the ship, after all.

This isn't driven by Communist ideology; if it were, we'd see a return back to Mao's vaguely Marxist policy, not a continuation of Deng; the Chinese are fine with capitalists.

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

#174

Post by brianwawok »

sitepodmatt wrote: post #165
Quarrelsome wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's refreshing that a country can act this quickly I'll remind you of how refreshing it is when I drag your family off the gulag without warrant. Its not "refreshing", its scary.

First off - no one has been dragged off, they are merely preventing the exchange operators (that are originally resident in China anyway) from leaving the country until they execute an orderly shutdown. i.e. No holidays for now, we don't want you doing a MarkK. Also, we are talking China here not NK, but don't let the facts get in the way of your point. Btw, you do have "temporary injunctions" in other parts of the w…

China sounds great, you should apply for citizenship?

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

#175

Post by ue_ »

bjshepard wrote: post #34
mincon4747 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's economy is crashing, and Chinese government is panicking.

If you understand the population distribution in the PRC, have spent time in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 city, and think deeply about economic growth, the idea that the Chinese economy could "crash" is laughable: there is a vast pool of emerging customers that will continue to fuel growth over the foreseeable future. The question is whether global trends, especially related to climate change driven instability, will interfere…

Although a Socialist (using this in the sense of lower-stage Communist, rather than as Marx used it as synonymous with Communism) market economy can be practicable, China does not have it - most notably because there is wage labour and private property is protected by the State. The State is also not in democratic control of the workers. These rule out China from being either a Socialist country or having a Socialist (market or not) economy.

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

#176

Post by ransom1538 »

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.

I view it more like the war on drugs. Cracking down on cocaine at it's source basically just increases the value thus price. If the mining slows, it will just mean there is more money in mining.

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

#177

Post by westmeal »

teknologist wrote: post #161
jondubois wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

The corporate brainwashing angle seems a bit far-fetched. I'd rather compare it with the endorsement of savings accounts with a 1% rate of interest and useless things like that.

Why does corporate brainwashing seem far-fetched to you? It happens all the time. Advertisements are all about brainwashing common people to buy things they don't really need.

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

#178

Post by le-mark »

sitepodmatt wrote: post #165
Quarrelsome wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's refreshing that a country can act this quickly I'll remind you of how refreshing it is when I drag your family off the gulag without warrant. Its not "refreshing", its scary.

First off - no one has been dragged off, they are merely preventing the exchange operators (that are originally resident in China anyway) from leaving the country until they execute an orderly shutdown. i.e. No holidays for now, we don't want you doing a MarkK. Also, we are talking China here not NK, but don't let the facts get in the way of your point. Btw, you do have "temporary injunctions" in other parts of the w…

That may all be true in this instance, but previously, executives have been executed for various things. The story I recall was some sort of fraud, but who knows what the real reason was. I don't have a reference handy unfortunately.

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

#179

Post by ubernostrum »

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…

I prefer the counterpoint of "They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, and they laughed at Bozo the Clown".

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

#180

Post by gtrubetskoy »

One would be naive to think that a government like PBOC would just let it be. But this is long-term positive news for Bitcoin.

It is good that China is taking steps to regulate the cryptocurrency world (starting with an outright ban, I guess) Especially the ICO's, which are mostly scams, and even those that aren't should probably be treated as securities.

Bitcoin (and other crypto-currency) exchanges also could use some regulatory oversight - if you watch the order books even on US-based ones like GDAX there's non-stop spoofing and other trading illegalities that would normally get you banned from any exchange and perhaps land you in jail in a jiffy.

It will be interesting to see what happens if we lose the China hashing capacity. If that happens (and it looks like it already is), we will have slow blocks until the next difficulty adjustment.

In general the more of this sort of thing happens, the better it validates the Bitcoin model. What doesn't kill it makes it stronger.

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