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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”

#211
post #187
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your US example I don't think you have to report anything. Buying a house in Switzerland wouldn't require paying any US taxes. If anything, you'd have taxes on the original source of the money (if it's income) but that has nothing to do with the house purchase.

Not sure about the US but in many countries you'd still have to report it. For statistical reasons (so that economic indicators can be calculated properly) and to avoid money laundering or terrorism financing rules (the Swiss hotel could be owned by someone on a black list).

(In the US), once you've got a million dollars of clean money in the bank, it's already been taxed and reported by everyone who has an interest in it. I'm sure that someone somewhere would take notice if you suddenly send a million dollars to Switzerland, but there's no reporting requirement here for something like that.

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

#212
post #155
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what this statement means?

I think their point is that while most investors in e.g. equities (stocks) regard out-of-ours trading as "not counting" because it's a much smaller volume than in-hours trading, the amount of money that moves into or out of stocks in out-of-hours trading is still much larger than the amount that moves into or out of bitcoin (at any time). So it doesn't really make any sense to say that stocks are a 9-5 market and bit…

out-of-ours = out-of-hours, for any non-english speakers reading^. (not criticising you lmm, only trying to help)

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

#213
post #209

BTC noob here, please forgive me. My understanding is that you can send from any wallet to any other wallet, right? So what's to stop me from having wallets on both Huobi and LakeBTC, buying a BTC on Huobi for $3524 then transferring it to my LakeBTC wallet and selling it for $4282? I understand arbitrage so I'm sure there's a step I'm missing, and I know there's often a delay between the order and fulfillment, fees…

Deposits are blocked. You can't deposit money in the exchange to start the arbitrage.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has exchange controls Bitcoin is irrelevant, compared to still-tolerated and massively-more voluminous alternatives, for capital controls. This is a red herring. Bitcoin was fine until ICO promoters started pilfering from the masses. In any case, China is currently loosening its capital controls [1]. This isn’t a problem that can be constrained to China. China is just reacting first. The rebranding of this ac…

>> 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…

When you use words like "enslaved" and "brainwashing" incorrectly (and extremely hyperbolically) like this, it dilutes what might otherwise be a relevant point.

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

#215

All comments so far have been pro-bitcoin... does nobody think this could actually be a sensible decision?

I think it is. Tulips, John Law and South Sea Bubble et all.

No serious government cannot allow it's monetary policy to get out of control. And no one will.

As long as bitcoin were an aberration it had been tolerated. Not anymore.

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

#216
post #209

BTC noob here, please forgive me. My understanding is that you can send from any wallet to any other wallet, right? So what's to stop me from having wallets on both Huobi and LakeBTC, buying a BTC on Huobi for $3524 then transferring it to my LakeBTC wallet and selling it for $4282? I understand arbitrage so I'm sure there's a step I'm missing, and I know there's often a delay between the order and fulfillment, fees…

It's still an option now, however it looks like they too will lose banking access in China soon.

>The impact of the Chinese ruling on LakeBTC is limited. The only major change is that our services to all Chinese citizens will be suspended. LakeBTC is a legitimate business which follows applicable laws and regulations.

Source: https://www.lakebtc.com/p/9352

The type of arbitrage you described has been going on for years, especially for ETH where 20% price differential isn't uncommon at all. The difficult part, however, is getting money in and out of China without raising suspicion. By the time you have paid off all middleman the margin isn't that great anymore.

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

#217

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 think it's worth remembering that Bitcoin is not a real currency or commodity yet and has little real value. The only value number we can put on it is the number that the hardcore loyalist place on it.

If the only people dealing with Bitcoin are the people trying to prop up Bitcoin then it makes sense why the price isn't affected much in the long run. The loyalist have no plans to dump their Bitcoin (and realistically couldn't if they wanted to) and there are not really any normal traders in the system who would buy and sell things like this based on actual value.

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

#218
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has exchange controls Bitcoin is irrelevant, compared to still-tolerated and massively-more voluminous alternatives, for capital controls. This is a red herring. Bitcoin was fine until ICO promoters started pilfering from the masses. In any case, China is currently loosening its capital controls [1]. This isn’t a problem that can be constrained to China. China is just reacting first. The rebranding of this ac…

China breakdown on exchanges has begun before the ICO rage. Top exchanges did hold crpyto withdrawals for all their users for a long period of time (several months). I think it is a little bit of 1. China understanding the risks posed by bitcoin capital flight and 2. bitcoin turning from a small community to $100bn+ market thing. Needless to say this is about all crypto and not just bitcoin.

There's also the rumour that the exchanges are fractional reserve to a huge extent. I suspect that plays a role.

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all sovereign debt, denominated in a token they can create at will. It's not like a household with an out of control credit card habit.

Sure. But it still can't grow forever without dragging down the real economy, at some point soon growth has to stop, and then what?

That's not how government debt works. There is no ceiling on the amount of debt you can have except in extreme cases like 2-3x debt to GDP ratio which China is nowhere near. Government debt is really just a record keeping system for funding and not really debt like you and me have. Look up US debt and how it works to fund the economy.

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a lot of debt building up as well as a huge real estate bubble that makes SF look tame. However, it hasn't crashed yet.

It's all sovereign debt, denominated in a token they can create at will. It's not like a household with an out of control credit card habit.

It's not all sovereign debt. The amount of debt owed by Chinese companies has also been exploding over the last few years. It's possible they're taking out all that debt to make productive investments, but the analyses I've seen suggest that there's way too much debt for that to be the case.

Now maybe the argument is that in a crisis this would all become sovereign debt (i.e. the government would bail the companies out and assume their debts). But that has its own issues, including the need for higher taxation to service the debt.

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