reminds me of scene in Mr. Robot where E-Corp exec is proposing a deal to a govt official: "With eCoin we control the ledger… and the mining servers. We are the authority! I will make sure you have visibility into every single wallet that’s open, every loan, every transaction…"
Sure that defeats satoshi's original intended purpose. But surely a nefarious govt and corp might be interested in colluding to pervert that original purpose.
I say the writing on Mr. Robot is quite good...in fact I would say it ranks as the top quality of hacker speak of all popular modern TV.
Eh, there have been plenty of "blockchain, but controlled by one entity" projects proposed. The fact they make no sense and have negative benefits doesn't stop them from being deployed. Also see zCash's trusted setup which possibly allows them to mint unlimited money.
The Zcash trusted setup was decentralized: multiple persons/entities/third-parties participated, including Peter Todd who generated his part of the parameters while driving across Canada with a laptop that was destroyed after the process... http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/the-cr...
I don't see the mention of BTC anywhere in the app that is released or in the announcements from that twitter log. They talk about using "blockchain technology", which I assume means a new coin.
It's pretty trivial to convert from BTC to Monero and back. There are even services that will send a specific address BTC automatically if you send them Monero. So unless the exchange is going to ban mixed coins and Monero-based sources, that won't lead to Orwellian-style undodgeable monitoring of every transaction.
It's an option to do that, of course, but it would be precedent-setting. No one else bans BTC that came in via a Monero service.
Considering people in China are using Bitcoin to skirt Chinese capital controls, this would be the "right" move (in the mind of the government.) If China were to hamfistedly crack down on bitcoin and centralize exchanges under government control, bitcoin would collapse (imo.) I honestly think such measures are inevitable from Chinese officials. Though the problem I'm sure is that there are some officials or people tied to them that now holds coins, which gives them some conflict. Bitcoin as an industry is sort of baffling to me.
People are acting exactly like people that participate in pyramid schemes. Denied, saying it is fake, searching for stupid reasons. That is just pathetic and horrible for the future of cryptocurrency.
Things like this will happen and need to be discussed. It appears that the ban will be for the trade of fiat for Bitcoin. Everything else, including p2p trade, will be allowed. So, the price of Bitcoin will fall a little more, but, eventually, they will find ways to get crypto currency.
Maybe a new coin, maybe more regulations or maybe people2people trades will be the future. There are already several great products emerging that do not need exchanges to trade crypto like 0x, Kyber.Network and even Ethertrade.
Given the history of strong government control of economy in China, I am kind of surprised this didn't happen sooner. Personally, I think the recent ICO fever is likely the final straw.
In Chinese society, the citizens expect the government to protect them from harm, whether the government is responsible for them or not. On the other hand, the government values stability above everything else, in order to maintain their regime. Now, there's this ICO thing, which has the potential to scam millions of Chinese (and trust me, it will happen), who will inevitably protest until their money is returned, you wonder what's gonna happen…
People have received DEATH SENTENCE before for scamming investors[1]. Let that sink in.
edit: someone mentioned capital control. While I agree this is probably one of the reasons, I doubt it's the biggest. Sure, having money flowing out of the country gives the government headache, compared to having thousands of people on the street holding signs, it seems like a rather minor one. Plus, if you want to move millions of dollars, you probably won't trust whatever-coin to do the job. There are tons of ways of doing that, and the government has bigger fish to fry.
Isn't this a bit contradictory? If the government really wanted to protect people from harm they wouldn't allow ponzi schemes that urge people to invest in boxes of ants to advertise on state television. Oh, and:
> “The company was endorsed by Chinese government officials, and Wang, now the chief executive, was photographed with the former Minister of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, Bo Xilai.”
I would take this with a huge grain of salt. This appears to be a rehashing of news from last week that China planed to ban trading of ICO tokens. The news was thinly sourced and it seems like people misconstrued the rumored ICO ban to mean a general crypto-currency trading ban.
Historically there have been more stories like this than I can count where some random source claims the PBOC is going to "ban Bitcoin" and it has always proven to be false. The worst that has happened is the tightening of regulations on Bitcoin exchange providers. There is even a common meme that has been going around for years.[0]
Sorry, Caixin and WSJ and Bloomberg are not "some random source". I know "China bans Bitcoin" has been a joke meme in the community for years, but this time it's the real deal.
One of my favorite questions to ask about this topic is:
"Given what you know today (and how blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized networks work), would you still design the financial system and other systems (ex. identity, currencies, etc) the same way they are designed today?"
My answer is no, and that's why I'm still bullish on decentralized technology and systems winning in the long-term. In that case, investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum are merely call options for an entirely new financial world and a risk still worth betting on.
There's only 3 mining pools, and the dev team has acted anything but democratic.
The reason for the fork to cash was because the dev team wanted to keep the network inefficent to benefit miner rewards at the expense of users, along with justifying the lightning network, with Blockstream having 9+ bitcoin core developers on their payroll.
And? You retain control because you can exit, this is the point of having cryptocurrency. It is a voluntary process. And for "democratic" development process... I'm amazed that this point is being brought up. Show me successful software project that is being "democratically" controlled.
The the dev team intensionally cripples their product's service efficiency when the user base adamantly calls them out for doing so, and meanwhile several of the core devs are being paid by a company which is developing it's own fix for the crippled transaction speeds of bitcoin.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Ultimately their technical vision is different from opinions of large group of outsiders, such as you. Allowing you to input your opinion into the dev process would effectively block it. Fortunately there is a solution. Bitcoin Core is their software. You, however, are free to use Bitcoin Cash (exactly that everyone wanted, am I right?). You are free to contribute to Bitcoin Cash. You are free to start your own cryptocurrency. Don't like it? Exit.
How is something defined as distributed and decentralized when it is regulated by each country? If China tanks the value of the major cryptocurrencies by 20% with just 2 regulations is a week, isn't the rest just academic?
As everyone saw one day the founder of Ethereum was meeting with Putin and sending out press releases of potential partnership, the next Putin is putting out his own press releases questioning why he would ever embrace any foreign blockchain/crypto, that Russia will launch its own.
If cryptocurrency can be regulated by individual countries like we saw with china this last week, then I expect the underlying blockchain technology can be regulated too, and we will begin seeing countries picking winners, basically who can be a node on the blockchain and who can mine.
People think/thought blockchain equivalent to an automated unregulatable technology, but once you are talking about billions you impact people with power, they will raise and lower price at their will and take the people's technology from them through regulation.
Some government actions drive it up (like what happened in Cyprus for instance). It seems market participants have got rather attached to this whole ICO thing as a way to make a quick buck and have lost sight of the original vision. The wall street-ization of the blockchain.
I don't follow BTC news often but it seems like anytime the price goes up or down it is somehow tied to an event in China. Makes me wonder how much of bitcoin's skyrocketing value is actually based on China's market rather than natural growth. I guess we'll find out soon. In more positive news, it looks like Russia is on path to legalize Bitcoin [1]
Eh, people were saying the same thing about silk road. Surprise: silk road got shut down and BTC's price didn't drop at all.
I believe BTC's price is inherently a weighted random walk driven by speculation rather than rational reasons. Not everyone shares this belief, and it's human nature to look for explanations when there aren't any.
It did not. I was there, and I watched specifically for this. These articles always get published in response to what people want to believe. If you look at the data, there was a temporary drop followed by an immediate recovery.
The article even says this:
On Wednesday afternoon the price of one Bitcoin (BTC) was $145.70 on Mt Gox, one of the largest exchanges for the currency.
After the news that Ross Ulbricht had been arrested and the Silk Road site seized, the exchange rate plummeted to a low of $109.76, before recovering to $124.00 late on Thursday.
Translation: "BTC went from $145 to $124 and then continued to go up."
I was there as well. People were freaking out on r/bitcoin and elsewhere. There was an immediate response. The price recovered, but a drop from $145 to $110 (a 25% drop) shouldn't be hand waved away.
Sure, if you pick the price point of $124. I agree, Bitcoin is filled with tons of swings and volatility. I was merely addressing your comment "silk road got shut down and BTC's price didn't drop at all" which is quite inaccurate. I'm a big Bitcoin proponent myself, and don't think we do anyone any favors by painting a false picture. (or to be more generous, keep moving the goal posts)
The price dropped for one day. That does not count as a drop. Pull up the data and show that it dropped longer than a day and then I'll agree that it dropped.
How far are we going to zoom in to say that BTC dropped? An hour? A minute? A day is not a useful time interval.
Using the lowest point of the day also isn't useful. Traders typically use a moving average. Neither the lowest nor the highest peak is a useful way to compute the price of bitcoin for the day.
If you're going to wag your finger and say "Nu uh" and trot out data saying that it went down to X price, well, yes, you're technically correct. But I think most people would agree that the price over the next week is a far more useful way to know whether the price truly dropped or not.
In other words, if China's ban results in BTC dropping for a day, who cares? No one.
The price didn't fully recover for about a week. (Not sure how to share it, but go to https://www.investing.com/currencies/btc-usd-historical-data and enter 10/1/2013 to 10/9/2013 - based on the prices, it looks like they use Bitstamp for pricing data). I assume they are using an interval similar to what you're desiring - perhaps start of day in UTC or the like
Here's a chart of the immediate drop and rebound, where you see it didn't recover to the price pre-announcement:
I think you'll agree there's a huge bias in Bitcoin dialog. Peaks are indelible truths, but dips always have asterisks. Let's flip your comments around:
"The price went over $5000 for one day. That does not count as a peak."
"Using the hightest point of the day also isn't useful. Traders typically use a moving average. Neither the lowest nor the highest peak is a useful way to compute the price of bitcoin for the day."
"If you're going to wag your finger and say "Nu uh" and trot out data saying that it went up to X price, well, yes, you're technically correct. But I think most people would agree that the price over the next week is a far more useful way to know whether the price truly went over $4900 or not."
"In other words, if BTC went over $4900 for a day, who cares? No one."
Yet in any conversation of price, that $5000+ ATH is the watermark.
Peaks have never been a useful benchmark of Bitcoin health, and I don't know where you're getting that from. Your thoughts on Bitcoin are basically being driven by popular media, and popular media is a terrible way to judge anything.
I've already responded to your points, but let's rehash it again: Silk road closed, and everyone expected BTC to completely fucking fail. It did not. In fact, it barely went down. It also recovered swiftly.
If you want to call that a drop, go ahead! Personally, I'd save that classification for when BTC dropped from $1100 to $300, for example. But sure, a 15% decrease for one day followed by a recovery over the following week could count, I guess.
> Peaks have never been a useful benchmark of Bitcoin health, and I don't know where you're getting that from. Your thoughts on Bitcoin are basically being driven by popular media, and popular media is a terrible way to judge anything.
Most of my thoughts are driven by what passes for dialog at r/bitcoin and elsewhere in the community. To the moon! This is gentlemen! rollercoaster.gif! I would definitely agree that listening to hyperbole, wherever it comes from, is foolish.
Recent growth has been coming more from South Korea and Japan. This news has already hurt the price, but it's likely priced in now, and there are plenty of other markets out there. Speculation will continue.
For anyone wondering how BTC is used as a way to evade Chinese currency controls, I just came to this realization today: people aren't buying bitcoin locally to send it out of the country: they're buying cheap coal electricity, using it to mine bitcoin, and then liquidating that in foreign exchanges.
This realization is incorrect. The amount of BTC generated globally[1] per day is minuscule compared to CNY/BTC volume[2]. Besides, they're selling the BTC they mine for more yuan.
[1] $7M
[2] OKCoin.cn alone does $100M a day on the BTC/CNY pair.
There's only around $8M a day in mining, at today's prices. So half that a month or so ago. Minus actual costs for ASICs and electric (a significant amount!). It's some flow, but can't justify the trade volumes right?
Power is fungible. Hydro power capacity is capped. Any amount of energy derived from hydro power increases demand from coal from someone else by an equal amount.
"The country’s central bank has led a draft of instructions that would ban Chinese platforms from providing virtual currency trading services, according to people familiar with the matter. The move comes after months of scrutiny by Beijing, including a ban last week in China on initial coin offerings, a kind of fundraising via virtual currencies.
Regulators in China have been investigating the domestic market for bitcoin and other virtual currencies since the beginning of the year. For a while, officials considered enacting antimoney-laundering rules on exchanges, even circulating a draft of such rules for them to follow."
OkCoin prices are still going up. The only "important" person that has said this would happen was the VIABTC CEO on twitter. Nobody believes, but now, I think is true
Forcing users to Subscribe or Sign In to read the content while allowing the search engine crawlers without any barriers should be considered as malpractice.
This was exactly the kind of stuff Quora was doing but at least they had the decency of doing this on users coming from internal links.
Good luck banning or controlling Bitcoin - especially when there is a satellite streaming down blockchain. I understand their motive though. Large sums of money can be used for anything. Including regime change or coup.
I think you're underestimating China's ability to "ban" something. They don't need to make it technically impossible, they just need to make it very dangerous and burdensome. And they've basically mastered the art of internet surveillance at this point.
I think they have very few options to control or destroy btc:
1) Force chinese miners to perform 51% attack for them
2) Use their own super computers to do so
At the worst btc will fall and another might take its place. I would see these developments are exciting because the decentralization part hasn't been tested much. certainly not by a nation state actor. If BTC survives this, it will truly shine.
> I think they have very few options to control or destroy btc: 1) Force chinese miners to perform 51% attack for them 2) Use their own super computers to do so
Or imprison/execute those found participating in cryptocurrencies. China does both fairly often for other crimes.
I agree. That would be the easiest to do. But in a country as big as China, underground will always flourish despite strict penalties. Even then the punishment can be heavy handed if they perceive crypto currencies as an existential threat to the regime. People forget that Chinese government is the largest and probably last such dictatorship in existence today. It is easy to forget with all the capitalism sugar coat on the top :)
Do you really think comparing interactive web apps, which require a bunch of complex di-directional traffic, with a blockchain, which just needs to be routinely copied from a uni-directional source, is fair?
Because to verify a blockchain entry, you only need to download it. To use G,FB or NYT, you need two way traffic (actively sending out a request). Verifying independently this way is important because you wouldn't know if the government has forked the chain otherwise.
Well, the entity who needs to verify an entry is typically a miner who'd also be interested in contributing their own entries and being compensated for those contributions. What's the incentive for a miner to stay online in a read-only environment?
It is not just the miners. Say I buy BTC in gray market using local currency. How do I ensure the seller transferred BTC to my wallet. I will have to check the block chain to be sure of the transfer. Assuming great firewall is blocking all the BTC wallet clients in china through normal routes, satellite feed can still be used for verification.
There's really 2 aspects to Bitcoin regulation: 1) the technology itself (hard to regulate, possibly filtered at firewall level however) and 2) the intersection of Bitcoin and fiat (ie, the exchanges). #2 is much easier to regulate, and in the end, far more effective
One of the touted benefits of bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies is the fact that transactions on such networks cannot be easily censored, even though not many people experience this kind of thing directly with classic currencies. Therefore, I find it amusing that a prime example of why we need non-censurable currencies is provided by the difficulty of exchanging them in the first place.
Analysts say more activity is moving underground, where individuals can send virtual currencies to each other using private addresses, which serve like safe-deposit boxes.
Regulators will likely to have to tolerate noncommercial trading of virtual currencies. “The government also doesn’t have the power to control” that.
---
Centralized exchanges have always been the achilles heel of cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Better to keep it distributed with (a) smart contracts and (b) lightning network.
It would be interesting to see how this unravels from a game theory perspective. Right now the crypto coin market cap is at around 150 billion USD (up from 15-18 bn in january this year). Not a huge amount by any means when compared to a big country's GDP. The daily traded volume is about 5-10 billions.
If China bans the exchanges now, they basically opt-out from the value created by the flow of some of these billions. Sure, the prices and daily volumes would drop on the short/medium term, but this would only give one last chance to people left out to join and buy crypto at low prices. When the market cap and prices would grow back, China would be left out. Who would trust them anymore to start a blockchain business there?
It is also possible that a component of Bitcoin's value is transferring money out of China, in which case prices may start to reflect this decrease in utility.
The Chinese state does not need money, not even "billions" - power and influence are much more important, and exerting that influence to gain control is much more valuable than any amount of money unless you're talking in trillions. And even then...?
There is no "win" for China (the state) by letting its population freely speculate and trade in crypto that they don't control... much better to shut it down.
What we need is a fully decentralised and uncontrollable Internet. It can't be wireless, that's too slow (limits of physics), and jamming it too easy. We need to actually dig our own cables, those are untraceable, and they'd have to cut one by one. OR we could probably leverage power lines, as much as I hate introducing noise into those. There is no 100% foolproof software solution given the current state of the net.
Are outline.com links something that the WSJ provides? Something that users submit? Given that WSJ paywalls their content, I'd be surprised that they'd provide it to outline.com themselves, but stranger things have happened.
> If they shut down Chinese exchanges, many savvy Chinese will just use international exchanges and trade IRL with paper-wallets.
Except Chinese who are merely savvy, but do not have political connections won't be allowed to transfer significant sums out of the country. Part of the reason for Bitcoin's popularity in China is that it allowed a way around those capital controls.
Chinese system is a top-down system, once something becomes 政治任务(Political Mission, meaning the top level agenda), they are basically in a obey-or-die situation and of cause most of them will comply.
Indeed, the Chinese government cannot ban EVERY individual, but they can make it scary enough that most people, unless desperate, will not attempt it. Like, put some exchange owners into prison to make an example, restrict the access to foreign exchanges, or they can even go as far to detect bitcoin protocol and kills it on packet level. That is what they usually do anyway.
They're not banning mining. Miners will be inconvenienced because they will have to sell for dollars overseas and move the money back into China, but it won't be the end of the industry.
I think much of what the WSJ is reporting was reported over 24 hours ago, and there was a bit of a dip at that time. Most movements in BTC happen before MSM reports on it.
