Why China is leading the global rise of Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: Why China is leading the global rise of Bitcoin

#41

Post by dualogy » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 1:03 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #37

dualogy wrote: post #23

What everyone needs to understand is that Bitcoin is a gift from heaven for every "productive" country's central bank. 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…

So the Chinese plan is to make the West poor by making vast quantities of cheap goods and sell them to us at discount rates, while manipulating their currency to make sure we get the best deal possible. In return we give them vast quantities of paper with IOU written on them. We're toast! The Japanese tried that back in the 70s and 80s. How did that work out for them? I also seem to remember they had a huge construct…

> So the Chinese plan is to make the West poor

Certainly not.. how about "net exporters west or east are increasingly uneasy about USD exorbitant privilegue" (to whit, trade deficits / imbalances).

Re: Why China is leading the global rise of Bitcoin

#42

Post by simonh » Tue, Nov 19, 2013, 2:41 PM UTC

nichtich wrote: post #38

simonh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native Brit but my wife is mainland Chinese. My wife and I have always shared our accounts anyway, and now we're completely plugged in to the family financial system. It's a little different with us. Her sister has a family in China (Hohhot) and her parents sometimes live with us (for several years at a time) and sometimes over there. Whoever they live with supports them completely, and get their pensions. So t…

This is the most important reason why Chinese family members don't love each other that much. You never know if your relatives are just nice to you or they are after your money. It complicates everything and when things go bad they go really bad. If managed well it can be great though. My college roommate has a "college sponsorship" program within his extended family which helps pay his tuition.

I've had to think hard before replying to this. I don't think that's fair at all. I would agree that the Chinese put a premium on loyalty, and don't have as much of a culture of open expressions of affection, but that's mostly a matter of appearance and I've seen it break down many times. I'm not down voting you, because I can see how you might think that and in the general for all I know it might even be true, but it doesn't fit with my experiences of my own Chinese family.

Re: Why China is leading the global rise of Bitcoin

#43

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Nov 20, 2013, 12:10 AM UTC

nunb wrote: post #32

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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 vol…

> Put it this way: money simply can't be saved without someone else spending that same money at the same time. Saving means keeping something aside that people will want in the future . Which means you can save without someone spending at the same time.

In order for the economy to be efficient, production must be consumed at about the same time it is produced; otherwise you have to expend resources to store produced goods, which may be perishable or deprecate in other ways (e.g. technology).

Money, gold, or bitcoin doesn't save any value in itself. If everyone on earth was thrifty and living below their means, the extra value they were saving would pretty much evaporate: bread would rot, clothes would pile up and become moldy, iPhones would become outdated before they were even used. Eventually, the will to produce goes away as you can't sell all of what you are producing, and an equilibrium is reached where you live about at your means: if you must save for future expenses, this is only possible if someone is spending more now via a loan.

This is why China being a country of net-savers is bad, and a push for social or mandatory health insurance is a good thing: people don't need to save themselves for medical emergencies, and can instead consume. But until then, the ability for the Chinese government to lend money to someone reliable (the USA), is quite useful as there is a good chance they can effectively draw on their savings later.