Why China is leading the global rise of Bitcoin

Much of the world is trying to get away from the USD as a global "reserve" and trade-settlement currency, without the masses jumping into gold and without pissing of the US (govt, economy, Wall St).

Bitcoin is so much more "tolerated" by Germany and China than it is by the UK and the US, it's pretty obvious.

You don't really want the masses to rush into gold -- it needs to stay cheap so oil can stay cheap for whole economies, and central banks can acquire more of it for a future when intra-national trade imbalances may be settled in a proven, timeless, globally-accepted (at the central bank level) reserve asset that's not subjected to any one nation-state's (or state union's) wims or woes. You also don't want the savers to store their excess savings or retirement funds in USD or even your own currencies, because they'll be screwed over. You also don't want all the excess liquidity printed over the last 5ish years to end up as real-world price inflation on store shelves. Something like Bitcoin solves all these beautifully, and carries no diplomatic concerns because it's something that citizens are now just free to adopt as they see fit.

You think the Chinese want USD long-term? Why on earth would they? They wanna convert them into other wealth assets, even BTC if they like, asap. Think about the situation today or more so the last decade or three: they export something, take in USD. The producer takes those to their bank to convert into spendable yuan. Their bank takes those to the central bank for yuan. Their central bank doesn't wanna sit on them either so (traditionally) they buy treasuries for those USD, which sends the USD back home to the US where Americans go on the next shopping spree of buying Chinese (in our example) goods (circle repeats), and when the treasury is due, freshly printed USD plus a small interest "gain" go to China central bank and they're left holding the bag once again. What to do with those homeless USD? It's called reserve-currency privilegue and really the world would be happy to abandon it, but you can't just flip the switch or madness would ensue. Similar situation for the majority of producing-and-exporting countries.

Food for thought!

Gold is hardly that; Chinese reserves of gold right now are unknown, but they are currently the largest miner and buyer of it (the government, consumers also buy). Given that we aren't sure what the real supply is (China's biggest state secret), the price of gold will remain volatile.

> You think the Chinese want USD long-term? Why on earth would they?

They want to continue to sell us stuff without overheating their economy, which is why they are happy to buy treasuries at a loss (the interest is not high enough to cover inflation). No one is really unhappy, even the Chinese, that USD is a reserve currency as long as the American economy is robust enough to be the largest consumer as well as a debtor of last resort (via treasuries). Bitcoin does nothing here: the US is a safe entity to lend to, Bitcoin doesn't magically create a similar entity.

Put it this way: money simply can't be saved without someone else spending that same money at the same time. China couldn't just sit on all of their USD, gold, or bitcoins even if they wanted to. Buying and sitting on gold doesn't magically create or even preserve value that you can call on to use in the future.

The fix for China is simply to promote more domestic consumption so they need to save less, which would also balance out the export/import deficit. Given that consumption can only be increased gradually (too much inequality in China), this isn't going to happen with a switch flip and in the meantime the Chinese would definitely prefer stability.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423