Live data from Hacker News

China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

dailybusinessgroup.co.uk

541–550 of 699 posts

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#541
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said the grocery store would take crypto. But you'd park your capital in places that are safe havens and convert out as late as possible to the (increasingly worthless) dollars. Arguably we're already at a place where keeping any non-emergency funds in USD is a terrible idea. My point is exactly what you said: that you'd see a flight of capital to hard assets like gold and bitcoin to shield it from inflationar…

Crypto is a delusion. It's a very bad idea to move money into an 'asset' that has no value other than to the degree other people share that delusion. Real-estate is valuable on some level, so are most other assets - even 'currencies', however poorly managed, are valuable because people need them to do stuff. The worst place to go is crypto, it's the bottom of the 'store of value' equation in almost every way - the fa…

Your opinion is duly noted, my opinion is that your opinion has little bearing on what the price of BTC will be if the purchasing power of a dollar drops quickly. My prediction is that demand for it will surge and so the price will go up somewhat inversely. I'll note that you're not taking the counter position, just stating why that would be a "very bad idea" for people to demand it. I'm guessing you've been saying the same thing as the price has gone up to $50k. At some point you'll either be proven right in a massive collapse or will have to capitulate that the market is not irrational. What is your threshold? (Year/price threshold where you'd capitulate.) If you're on your death bed and BTC is worth $1M, will you change your mind, or just presume you didn't live long enough to see yourself proven right?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Base demand" I get that this is working econ theory, but is that even meaningful? Do you honestly think people hold dollars because "someone can use it to.pay taxes"?

Yes, because if you dont pay taxes you go to prison. Not going to prison is in high demand!

Technically you don't go to prison. You go to prison for lying about what you owe or cheating. But if you don't pay you generally settle with the IRS and get put on a payment plan or something similar. I know people who have been through this process.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#543
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has "banned Bitcoin" dozens of times over the last decade This is a false narrative pushed by the Bitcoin cult. It's supposed to create an impression that nothing has changed, so the price should not change.

or it's completely factual? 2013: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-05/china-s-p... 2015: https://archive.is/Higoz 2017: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-china-idUSKCN1BJ1... 2018: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-eliminates-all-cryptoc... 2021: https://archive.is/s7nbw "China Has Banned Bitcoin 13 Times Since 2012": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-great-bitcoin-mining-mi...

A more informed history might be built like so:

https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=docs

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8A%A0%E5%AF%86%E8%B4%A7%...

This seems like another step on a journey to maintain control over assets. So not the same thing as you have linked but nothing that should effect the market as China has been clear on its intentions.

I would be more curious about the larger game. A few front runner governments will establish there own ways to deal with crypto and then others will copy from a, b ,c. China's methodology is becoming more formal and therefore more copy able. I think we can already see the larger pattern and we already know who copies who traditionally... Would love to see a write up from this perspective.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies a probably lack of understanding of what Central Banks do. "When the ships come into harbour, nail them to the dock" - not realizing that eventually, when the tide goes out - the ship will go down several feet relative to the dock and be damaged by the fixed boarding blanks. You have to use ropes to fix ships, because the water moves. Dumping the Central Bank and even using hard currency would lead to ec…

> Aside from that, anyone declaring monetary value on a crypto asset should have to declare it, and if they don't, they go to actual prison for tax evasion. I'm looking forward to those people replacing weed smokers in prison - that would be effective public policy. You're both pro legalization of weed and pro government? The war drugs is one the many fronts of the war on personal freedom. Ironically the thing you're…

I'm 'not' for people not going to jail because they smoke weed, and 'for' people going to jail for tax evasion.

The kind of straw manning that reveals itself here due to the complete lack of civic thinking in some circles is really disturbing.

There is no necessity for mass energy usage for crypto, there are any number of ways to distribute new units of currency. Again the use of the term 'necessary' here is a hint at the false understanding of currency through the lens of a particular form of crypto.

Crytpo, at least today, is a dystopia. Go and live for a few weeks in a country with weak civic institutions and see for yourself. This joke is less and less funny as time goes on, the experiment, in it's current form, has run it's course, it's long since over.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#545
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only PoW cryptocurrencies can be fairly distributed and avoid wealth concentration (although many fail to do so by concentrating most of emission in just the first few years).

Fair distribution is not only completely subjective, but also meaningless. Given enough time, any valuable asset's distribution will be heavily concentrated in the hands of the rich.

> Given enough time, any valuable asset's distribution will be heavily concentrated in the hands of the rich.

That reads like a tautology—they're called "the rich" because they have wealth, so naturally if you look at the distribution of assets most will be in the hands of the rich. One doesn't accumulate assets purely by being rich, however, as many a lottery winner can attest. Barring the occasional (and usually short-lived) windfall, for the most part those who attain wealth do so because they possess certain habits and preferences related to saving and investing. Even if you reset the distribution of wealth those tendencies would remain and bring about a gradual return to the original economic structure.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#546
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should educate yourself. Energy consumption is an old myth and cryptocurrency pushes a lot of innovations in this field. There is a great documentary on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc .

Energy is a zero sum game. Every watt you use for crypto mining is a watt not used for something more productive. Every watt of renewable power generated to power a crypto miner, is a watt not being used to reduce the use of non-renewables in the wider energy grid. I don’t care if your crypto gear is hooked up to a dedicated hydro plant, I care that the hydroplant is not connected to the wider grid and shutting down…

>Energy is a zero sum game.

Only from the view of the universe, not from the view of humans. It cost less energy to drill for oil than the energy you get out of the gasoline. It takes less energy to create a solar panel than what you can get out of it. It takes less energy to labor at the factory for an hour than the energy you get from the 150KwH of power you can buy for your house from that hour of motion you performed at the factory.

If I use some electricity to run PoW on an electronic litecoin transaction from me to my friend in Kenya, that's a hell of a lot lower energy than building and operating a Western Union in Kenya isn't it?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe you lack understanding of BTC monetary policy. I am so tired of people insisting that I simply don't know anything. The mining curve is monetary policy. For example, a 100% premined coin has very different properties than a coin with a fixed mining rate and no upper bound. The upper bound on the number of bitcoins is consistently pointed at by proponents as a means to prevent inflation. I can imagine no o…

You claim you're tired of insisting you don't know anythig, yet you beleive you have no democratic say in BTC monetary policy. You don't know what you don't know.

I do not get a vote in BTC monetary policy by virtue of being a human. I'd get a vote according to my hash rate if I bought a mining rig. That isn't democracy.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#548
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect what is triggering this crackdown is that the enforcement of capital controls is becoming more critical as more people are nervous of a financial crisis in China because of bad debt / bad banks. Need to make sure those depositors have no place to go. Though to be honest I don't understand how bitcoin can be used for getting money out of the country. Who would be willing to accept onshore CNY in payment for…

Someone who needs CNY, that can then buy real goods and export them.

OK, so that may have worked before the ban, but unless you have a way to export under the counter, I presume this route is gone after the btc transaction ban.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#549
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason why we have inflation and debt is to keep the value of our currencies stable A stable currency would have an inflation rate of 0%. Inflation does not cause currency stability, it decreases the value of the currency. By definition, its value is changing.

> A stable currency would have an inflation rate of 0% Sure, and if the government had centralized control of all prices, it could mandate that. Since it doesn't (even those that assert that power don't have it in practice), what it seeks to do, as far as stability, is try to acheive low short-term price volatility, and as it turns out, experience shows that low-to-moderate inflation helps with that.

A stable currency would have a stable Velocity. This is something both USD(which is inflationary) and BTC(which is deflationary) get wrong. We need a flationary currency.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You claim you're tired of insisting you don't know anythig, yet you beleive you have no democratic say in BTC monetary policy. You don't know what you don't know.

I do not get a vote in BTC monetary policy by virtue of being a human. I'd get a vote according to my hash rate if I bought a mining rig. That isn't democracy.

Like I said, you don't know what you don't know.
Post reply on HN