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China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

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Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#11

Post by rtpg »

Svip wrote: post #8
SwellJoe wrote: post #5

"Bitcoin prices plunged after the PBOC announcement." Where? It's still trading over $1000 on every exchange I follow. This announcement seems to have almost no perceptible effect on the price of Bitcoin. This is an interestingly biased article, actually. It quotes Alan Greenspan, whose history as a stubborn gold bug (in his Ayn Rand worshiping days) and whose pretty awful performance at the Federal Reserve make his…

> Where? It's still trading over $1000 on every exchange I follow. This announcement seems to have almost no perceptible effect on the price of Bitcoin. Well, the prices did drop about $200 on MtGox after the news. It's debatable whether this qualifies as 'plunged'.

in any other situation a 20% drop in value would be considered a "plunge" I think

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#12

Post by rtpg »

bobbles wrote: post #3

Difficult to understand at this point what this decision really means. Are bitcoins still able to be traded as a commodity but not currency? What does "The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves, it said" even mean? Are they saying people deciding to exchange goods and services for bitcoin is ok, but not exchanging it directly into currency? If anyone has actu…

A guess, but I imagine that chinese bank deposits are insured by the central bank, and that The gov't doesn't want to deal with bitcoins losing a bunch of value from one day to the next.

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#13

Post by nazgulnarsil »

bobbles wrote: post #3

Difficult to understand at this point what this decision really means. Are bitcoins still able to be traded as a commodity but not currency? What does "The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves, it said" even mean? Are they saying people deciding to exchange goods and services for bitcoin is ok, but not exchanging it directly into currency? If anyone has actu…

it might mean that currently operating exchanges need licenses, need to confirm IDs, or even get shut down. Shrug. Wild West.

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#16

Post by eof »

My read of this is that businesses are not allowed to price their goods in bitcoin which is a huge hit; beyond this nothing seems terribly surprising.

> "Notice" requirement, at this stage, financial institutions and payment institutions are not allowed to Bitcoin price for the product or service,

edit: from: http://www.pbc.gov.cn/publish/goutongjiaoliu/524/2013/201312...

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#17

Post by debugunit »

SwellJoe wrote: post #5

"Bitcoin prices plunged after the PBOC announcement." Where? It's still trading over $1000 on every exchange I follow. This announcement seems to have almost no perceptible effect on the price of Bitcoin. This is an interestingly biased article, actually. It quotes Alan Greenspan, whose history as a stubborn gold bug (in his Ayn Rand worshiping days) and whose pretty awful performance at the Federal Reserve make his…

The CNY price dropped from around 7000 to below 5000 briefly, as I was watching it on www.bitcoinaverage.com. That's a 28% drop in a few minutes, which surely qualifies as a plunge. It does seem to be recovering, which makes sense since the announcement wasn't particularly aggressive.

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#18

Post by rahimnathwani »

bobbles wrote: post #3

Difficult to understand at this point what this decision really means. Are bitcoins still able to be traded as a commodity but not currency? What does "The public is free to participate in Internet transactions provided they take on the risk themselves, it said" even mean? Are they saying people deciding to exchange goods and services for bitcoin is ok, but not exchanging it directly into currency? If anyone has actu…

Reading the original announcement (http://www.pbc.gov.cn/publish/goutongjiaoliu/524/2013/201312...), three things seems clear: 1) People may buy Bitcoins if they like. 2) People may sell Bitcoins if they like. 3) Banks may not sell Bitcoins as they are not 货币 (money). 4) Products offered for sale may not be priced in Bitcoin, as it is not 货币。

As far as I'm aware, no large ecommerce sites in China display prices in anything other than CNY, and none accept anything other than CNY (cash, bank transfers, bank-issued payment cards, CNY-denominated vouchers).

If I could pay for things online using Bitcoin, maybe I (and others in China) would start keeping some Bitcoin in an online wallet, in the same way we currently keep some money in 支付宝 (Alipay). From there, it would be easy to slide into mass speculation, which seems to be what the government doesn't want.

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#19

Post by ars »

Pretty disappointed in this statement from Greenspan:

“It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.”

All money has no intrinsic value, including gold. Things have value because other people want them. That's it. People want bitcoin, then it has value.

Pretty much the only thing with intrinsic value is food since people don't want it, they require it.

Everything else has value because people say it has value.

Re: China Bans Financial Companies From Bitcoin Transactions

#20

Post by SwellJoe »

Svip wrote: post #8
SwellJoe wrote: post #5

"Bitcoin prices plunged after the PBOC announcement." Where? It's still trading over $1000 on every exchange I follow. This announcement seems to have almost no perceptible effect on the price of Bitcoin. This is an interestingly biased article, actually. It quotes Alan Greenspan, whose history as a stubborn gold bug (in his Ayn Rand worshiping days) and whose pretty awful performance at the Federal Reserve make his…

> Where? It's still trading over $1000 on every exchange I follow. This announcement seems to have almost no perceptible effect on the price of Bitcoin. Well, the prices did drop about $200 on MtGox after the news. It's debatable whether this qualifies as 'plunged'.

It doesn't look particularly related to this news, to me. It's been bouncing around $1000 for days.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm2g2...

Someone else posted a chart of the price in China, which does look like a "plunge" though the scale on the image is somewhat misleading (it also only "plunged" 17% or so).

I'm having a hard time viewing this level of volatility as surprising for Bitcoin. It's had a number of much larger drops, including recently (when it climbed to 700 and dropped back down to 500, for instance, on no news). I believe one has to view Bitcoin in the context of Bitcoin, and right now it is an extremely volatile creature.

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