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China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

dailybusinessgroup.co.uk

391–400 of 699 posts

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#391
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you actually want Western nations to ban? The purchase and sale of digital currencies?? What if a nation adopts Bitcoin as its national currency? You can no longer buy and sell another nation's currency? What if you want to visit that country? (The what ifs will not end at these few examples.) I don't clearly see what you would actually propose banning. My opinion is it's technology, an idea, and that shouldn…

First we should ban giftcards. I never understood the idea of using my versatile, national, currency to buy a restricted, local, currency. Esp. without getting a discount for the risk I take.

You do have a point there

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#392

Excellent news for the climate.

Crypto eats the world now if you like it or not. The climate will be fine, because newer systems don’t burn excessive energy. But the CCP fighting the tide is great news, since communist regimes usually fall by trying to clamp down on things beyond their control.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#393
post #352

Blockchain, not specifically crypto currencies, are also a means to operate anonymously outside of an authoritarian government. Sure there are gotchas with remaining anonymous, but I am sure China wouldn't want a blockchain-based, mesh, peer-to-peer, or distrubuted network, that could operate outside of the Great Firewall's ability to regulate or censor it. High-power, long-range WiFi and mesh networks would be hard…

No part of that needs a blockchain.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have almost 0 community spread. A fact which many in the west respond to by saying that they’re faking their numbers, which completely ignores all of the counter measures they’ve taken. I have colleagues in China, and the Chinese lockdowns literally looked like a Zombie movie. It’s not surprising they were able to contain spread.

I think they do both. I mean, the gross misreporting of the numbers, AND the harsh lockdown measures.

Well if you think it, it must be true.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except crypto is less firmly anchored in the real world than in the digital realm. It's fundamentally harder to regulate it than a physical currency, which needs specialist equipment to generate.

Money as a concept is even less anchored in the real world. So is the law. The two have been dancing together since first human society. We have thousands of years of experience with this, and cryptocurrencies don't introduce anything new here, despite what some advocates may think. As long as you can use something - be it a coin, a bill, a SWIFT transfer, a blockchain transaction or a Nuka-Cola bottle cap - to pay s…

While I agree, all of the ways you mentioned to pay for something are fundamentally something that requires infrastructure to create (industrial, banking, or a mint), and has a physical anchor that can be plucked from you by physical force (including the SWIFT transfer - though usually bank's prefer to comply than shut themselves down).

A blockchain based currency will exist as long as there's someone with a sufficiently powerful computing device connected to a sufficiently low-risk network that can be accessed legally or illicitly. A blockchain wallet will exist and be yours alone as long as you keep the password in your brain, never write it down, and resist attempts to extract it from you.

This means that, in comparison to conventional currency (including Nuka-Cola caps), a blockchain economy is much easier to operate undercover when it's outlawed.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#396

Excellent news for the climate.

The idea that crypto mining is bad for the climate is short-sighted. It is based on the wrong assumption of a static universe. But this world is not static. Let's say for example, all goverments would become more strict in taxing energy consumption. (Presumably to help save the climate.) Now at some point there is a market incentive to develop mining techniques that optimize for less energy consumption above all else…

> Now at some point there is a market incentive to develop mining techniques that optimize for less energy consumption above all else.

There is already a market incentive for that (electricity is not free), and there is already a solution to this (proof of stake). Please stop advocating and using proof of work shitcoins.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a ridiculous and obvious lie. This kind of absurd nonsense can only be founded on bigotry.

I am a bigot for reading Wikipedia? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps

How dare China tries to stop jihadi networks in its country. One the Saudis, UAE, and the good ol CIA have every intention of using to destabilize China.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#398
post #392

Excellent news for the climate.

Crypto eats the world now if you like it or not. The climate will be fine, because newer systems don’t burn excessive energy. But the CCP fighting the tide is great news, since communist regimes usually fall by trying to clamp down on things beyond their control.

China is not a communist country, their economic system has been state capitalism ever since the official introduction of the 中国特色社会主义 theory in 1987.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#399

Wow, imagine living in a country where the legal financial assets you own can be turned criminal where accessing them is punished with hard labor. Sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

Imagine living in a country that allows you to destroy the environment for a fake currency.

Your worldview is ridiculous.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there's an "official" definition, but generally crypto(currencies) are referring to currencies that are setup on a blockchain, or distributed ledger. In addition validator models, such as proof-of-stake and proof-of-work are used to validate and maintain the ledger. A digital currency does not require a distributed ledger, nor does it require a validator model as it is not distributed or trustless to beg…

I agree there is a difference but nothing about a cryptocurrency or blockchain requires a distributed ledger or distributed consensus mechanism. In fact there are plenty of centralized cryptocurrencies out there today.

Entries in a company’s database do not a cryptocurrency make.

Maybe if they used an authenticated append-only list to store the state or state changes, and published a summary of the head periodically in a way such that users could at least validate that the state changes were valid, or at least not violate certain rules, that might count.

If cryptography isn’t used in order to make something verifiable, it isn’t really a cryptocurrency, I’d say.

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