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China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

dailybusinessgroup.co.uk

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Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're a bigot for pretending to believe such obvious bullshit.

And you are choosing to ignore the most unsavory aspects that have been raised in the west because your local media has told you otherwise. Its absolutely true! There are very strong analogies here with Holocaust denialism, which some states see as such a problem they outlaw the philosophy!

It is not bigotry to stand up to authoritarianism and human rights abuses. You wield that term bigot to downplay the vast and monstrous human rights abuses occurring in Xinjiang. Its absolutely nothing to do with race or nationality. There is nothing intrinsic that would permit such actions to be attributed to this. It is not about bigotry. Connecting the two is all part of the metagame in pushing a state propaganda. Make your accuser seem less credible so you never have to address the actual substance of the complaint.

The reported incidents include Forced Labor and Sexual Abuse, Organ Harvesting and Genocide. On mass. This happened. This is happening. There is plenty of neutral international sources on this. Saying it doesn't exist is absurd. There is clear evidence of this!

These are not lies told by the western media, as the Chinese media claims. These are happening, they have been reported by people that have escaped, they have been raised to the UN. Most of the world has denounced this...

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but there is no other way to say this but that you are clueless on this matter.

Surely you have some citations.

Happily.

"Base demand for dollars is created due to taxation" [1]

Which of course completely contradicts: "The (mostly paid for by tax) army has nothing to do with the value of a dollar." [also 1]

[1] comment by 'arcticbull' on 'Hacker News'

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#593
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. There's a huge difference between one or several actions and habitual behavior. You can find a method to get away with anything once. Operating on a daily basis where the government only has to catch you once is far less practical.

This is true for lots of virtuous acts or acts of survival under authoritative regimes, such as hiding Jews from the Nazis or selling your surplus harvest under Stalin. It’s only if you are privileged (or, arguably, ignorant) to not consider on balance the counterfactual costs of undermining technologies which could de-risk such acts for those being oppressed. (Which may include a future-you.)

Whether it's morally worth it is a separate point. I was just stating that it wouldn't be especially difficult for the government of China to find, disable, and arrest the operators of large-scale long-range wifi networks.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a country rounding up a whole population of a religious minority and sending them to reeducation camps. A country that mobilized over a billion people to almost completely control covid. You are vastly underestimating the CCP, as most Westerns continue to do.

Stop spreading "opinions" please. a whole population means basically you have inflated the inflated 1 millions to 7 or 8 millions people. Use your brain.

You're trying to say that because the Chinese Government has only detained an estimated million+ Uyghurs, it's completely fine because it wasn't literally all of them? You must realize that these flimsy efforts to defend the Chinese Government only makes it more obvious that the government is increasingly detached from the reality the rest of the world lives in, to the point where it says 2+2=5 and without irony believes it.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#595
post #590
post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where I see “It’s only if you are privileged (or, arguably, ignorant) to not consider…” in your comment, that was written by someone else?

No, I wrote that, but it wasn't responding to anyone. I was making a general point that failing to consider counterfactuals regarding such technology is an error. You seem to think I was responding to someone who "pointed out holes" in an argument I made. You're imagining this entirely. It's a cool hallucination though, I wonder why you're having it. As best I can tell its utility rests entirely on it giving you an o…

From the HN guidelines: Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#596
post #575
post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'd have to do an off the books / private transaction of BTC-for-CNY, but there's presumably an infinite number of ways for someone to loan / give CNY for (to the government) nothing (and in reality, BTC, etc). And with the CNY, you can buy real goods. And with those real goods, you can export them. And with those exports, you can sell them for foreign currency. So as long as they're running an export-oriente…

But my point is any time you export some physical good, you have a transaction going under the nose of the authorities. That's where they can stop you and ask some questions on the transaction that paid for those goods.

Yeah so part of it is in CNY and part of it is in btc. Can gov really say "wow you payed too little for that!"

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#597
post #264
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every watt of renewable power generated to power a crypto miner," IS investment in renewable energy.. which he would rather was not invested in renewable energy. I don't see any other way to interpret that, unless you think that paying monies for renewables is somehow not 'investing' in renewables.

> "Every watt of renewable power generated to power a crypto miner," IS investment in renewable energy Yes, that is true... > which he would rather was not invested in renewable energy ...no, he would have used the generated electricity for something more useful, NOT make it so that it isn't generated in the first place.

So he is turning down real investment in renewables in the hopes that other more agreeable investment materializes out of thin air.. meanwhile his plan crashes the price of renewable energy endangering those industries and shrinking the market.. allowing established fossil fuel industries a bigger share. genius.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly do you incentivize anyone ever to abandon PoW coins rather than just adding non-PoW on the side? How exactly do you think you could dethrone Bitcoin, overcoming its gigantic first-mover advantage? I believe BTC could only come down with the rest of that "economy".

If you believe in free market capitalism, people should migrate from PoW to PoS coins, because PoS coins provide the same features with less expenses. In practice this won't happen, because PoS coins don't deliver the same features (security, decentralization, permissionless) or the market doesn't believe they do. Also the savings with PoS are not passed to the users of the cryptocurrency, but to the stakers, or big…

> In practice this won't happen, because PoS coins don't deliver the same features (security, decentralization, permissionless) or the market doesn't believe they do.

It's been what, 2 or 3 years since decent PoS designs were introduced to the market? The crypto market is still trying to tell the difference between their right foot and a private key. Give it a few more years and eventually the market will settle convincingly on a design it values the most, be it PoW, PoS, or something else.

In the mean time, it's silly imo to say that the market has decided. The crypto space is still a volatile bloodbath of old chains dying and new competitors rising.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#599
post #143
post #47

For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.

> they are mostly powerless to control it. What makes you think that? You do realise that they could easily outlaw 1) miners, 2) exchanges that convert to fiat, and 3) people privately exchanging to fiat, and (domestically) enforce that reasonably well, too. And sure, there could still be an underground market - you can get still get weed and cocaine in China or Singapore, but I wouldn't recommend participating in it…

They literally did this already (miners were kicked out/shut down, the exchanges were shut down or put in line, and now the broad legality of simply owning/transferring them), and Bitcoin is still doing it's thing, more or less unphased (let's be real, a 10% dip is hardly remarkable in the crypto world) - demonstrating in technicolor how even the most empowered state, with far-reaching and unilateral control of every domain that cryptocurrency requires to operate (law, finance and telecommunication), is relatively useless in it's ability to hinder the mechanics of cryptocurrency. Driving it more underground will not squash it.

Re: China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

#600
post #419

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.

But they said bitcoin was out of reach of governments, how is it possible a government is now banning it?

I am a bit surprised the Chinese government didn't secretly force the miners to collaborate for a 51 percent attack or more to kill it off, it would likely also destroy altcoins and the whole ecosystem.

But maybe someone from China can chime in and explain how serious the enforcement of these bans will be. I have seen countries with all kinds of laws, none ever enforced.

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