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China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

dailybusinessgroup.co.uk

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Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#431

Post by nabla9 »

earthscienceman wrote: post #406
wcoenen wrote: post #339

I'm not sure why the title of the article focuses on mining. China had already banned mining. This was very visible as a drop in the hash rate over the summer[1]. What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned. [1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

There's a lot of vague language in these types of threads. What does "banned" mean? Does that mean illegal and punishable by death? Or does that mean, connections to identified crypto computing resources will be blocked by the great firewall?

What it means is that crypto is shut down from anything that involves bookkeeping. Banks, financial transactions, money transfers, buying stuff from kiosk, ... No legal commerce or finance.

Crypto is now purely black market currency in China.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#432

Post by space_fountain »

monological wrote: post #415
thirdvect0r wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do you think the dollar keeps its value? Do you understand that the reason it has value is because it’s backed by the US military, which provides peace and stability for industry to consume a vast amount of energy to produce goods that get shipped around using fossil fuel? Have you calculated the total energy expenditure of the entire US financial system, direct and indirect, and then compare it to proof-of-work…

Doesn’t that mean the US dollar maintain it’s price by providing useful goods and services?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#433

Post by gfodor »

hh3k0 wrote: post #398
gfodor wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haha.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-aims-to-rein-in-chin...

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#434

Post by newaccount2021 »

eggy wrote: 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…

are you ready to die for crypto? most people aren't

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#435

Post by LittlePeter »

htrp wrote: post #366
delecti wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ongoing crisis with Everglade What is this? "Everglade" is a common enough word that I can't find anything besides mentions of the wetlands in Florida.

> What is this? "Everglade" GP needs to learn to spell Evergrande is an indebted chinese property developer which is the current ticking financial time bomb this week in China.

What does GP stand for?

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#436

Post by nightski »

drdeca wrote: post #400
nightski wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

A blockchain is a database of blocks which are cryptographically hashed such that manipulating any previous entries would invalidate all future ones referencing it. That is pretty much it. This can be constructed on a single machine in someone's basement if one so desires. In fact, the entire point of Bitcoin is that the entire blockchain can be validated by any node which anyone can start with something as trivial as a raspberry pi. Now Bitcoin adds a decentralized mechanism on top of this using Proof of Work. But that is not inherent to blockchains.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#437

Post by newaccount2021 »

earthscienceman wrote: post #406
wcoenen wrote: post #339

I'm not sure why the title of the article focuses on mining. China had already banned mining. This was very visible as a drop in the hash rate over the summer[1]. What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned. [1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

There's a lot of vague language in these types of threads. What does "banned" mean? Does that mean illegal and punishable by death? Or does that mean, connections to identified crypto computing resources will be blocked by the great firewall?

"banned" as in, you get arrested, put in a van, taken away

don't be obtuse

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#438

Post by arcticbull »

monological wrote: post #415
thirdvect0r wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do you think the dollar keeps its value? Do you understand that the reason it has value is because it’s backed by the US military, which provides peace and stability for industry to consume a vast amount of energy to produce goods that get shipped around using fossil fuel? Have you calculated the total energy expenditure of the entire US financial system, direct and indirect, and then compare it to proof-of-work…

> How do you think the dollar keeps its value?

Base demand for dollars is created due to taxation. As the money supply is managed via fractional reserve lending, each new dollar that enters circulation is backed by the demand for repayment of that loan. When someone borrows money from a bank, the bank enters a negative balance in its ledger and the borrower gets a positive balance in their account. This is how money is created. As the loan is repaid, the money is destroyed.

Dollars are fully backed by demand for dollars. It's really quite elegant.

> Do you understand that the reason it has value is because it’s backed by the US military, which provides peace and stability for industry to consume a vast amount of energy to produce goods that get shipped around using fossil fuel?

This is utterly irrelevant. The US military existed for hundreds of years on hard money. World wars were fought on hard money.

> Have you calculated the total energy expenditure of the entire US financial system, direct and indirect, and then compare it to proof-of-work calculations?

Sure, and as a percentage of transaction count, transaction value, or basically any other metric it utterly pales in comparison. [1]

> Don’t just parrot what the current-day zeitgeist told you to think.

Ditto the crypto echo chamber.

[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#439

Post by creshal »

earthscienceman wrote: post #406
wcoenen wrote: post #339

I'm not sure why the title of the article focuses on mining. China had already banned mining. This was very visible as a drop in the hash rate over the summer[1]. What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned. [1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

There's a lot of vague language in these types of threads. What does "banned" mean? Does that mean illegal and punishable by death? Or does that mean, connections to identified crypto computing resources will be blocked by the great firewall?

From my understanding of the announcements, Chinese companies will be banned from performing any cryptocurrency related services, transactions or exchanges, including smart contract platforms like Ethereum. No firm mention of private individuals, or what particular penalties companies would face.

But either way, it greatly limits the value of cryptocurrencies (and related concepts) in China.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#440

Post by c0nducktr »

gfodor wrote: post #392
adrianN wrote: post #263

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.

The climate is unlikely to be fine, regardless of whether or not crypto mining is banned. At this point we're just affecting just how bad it's going to get.
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