Bitcoin Forum

I'm in China, English teacher, slow/poorish Ruby webdev programmer.

I'm wondering what can I do here to make use of the BTC I have and to earn some BTC?

I know that Chinese currency (RMB) is not traded on the markets (internationally at least). Is there something that I can do to earn BTC?

Idea's appreciated.

a straight-forward way to earn a few Bitcoins is to research Bitcoin related topics and contribute to the bitcoin wiki:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin:Contributors_Award

How about doing English/Chinese translations?  Tell everyone you know about Bitcoin; I would love to see it really take off in China.

Are you in mainland China, or Hong Kong, or Taiwan?

If there is no exchange in China open one NOW. Then just generate some Bitcoins and exchange them with a small fee like 2-5% + 0.5 BTC. You can make some money now that you are at it.

Also, there are many pledges and work you can do to earn Bitcoins. There is an app dev pledge for around 1700 BTC I believe. Good to have you around. :-)

Do you live near Shandong province? If so maybe we can work out something... PM me.

Mainland China

forever: Thanks I didn't know about the wiki,it's quite nice. It seems there are a LOT of bitcoin sites and services popping up(especially since I looked last) and it's not I suppose too easy to find out whats happening, it's a little all over the place.

Sure I will be spreading the word (the more people use BTC the more it's worth to everyone who uses it) but there must be something specifically usefull about me being in China. Maybe not but it would be nice.

I imagine bitcoin will be banned much earlier in China than in the US. Bitcoin is a subversive currency that will anger all the world powers.

We have an IM client/network here called QQ, by numbers I think it is the most popular IM network in the world, but it is mostly based in China (it is owned by TenCent, a Chinese company). You could by QQ coins which could be used to buy items for your or other persons QQ avatars. They became so popular that ordinary people were begining to accept them as currency for some goods (mostly young people). It became so popular that the government banned the use of QQ coins as a trading coin, that is to buy things outside the QQ network.

BTC will remain ignored by the government here until it becomes popular, and then it will be banned. All bitcoin websites and services will be blocked. Simply searching for the word may have your internet connection cut off for a few minutes. For those who have the bitcoin client installed they will be unable to connect to the BTC network as the IRC server that the client gets the network nodes IP's will be blocked.

This is the same problem facing Tor.

How? They are identifying and blocking each Tor relay?

Yes they are. :/

Exactly, the government here has a lot of manpower at its disposal. To get the ip of a Tor relay it need only send an email to bridges@torproject.org with the subject "get bridges". The torproject will then reply will the ip address of 3 bridges.

It will only reply once every 24hours and the email must be from GMail. But it only takes a 10 man team (including one script writer) a week to set up enough GMail email accounts and automate the process so that the majority of bridge node ip addresses can be harvested. Preventing most people from using Tor from within China.

From the way you describe how your government seems to block TOR I would think there would be more easy ways to do that. On the other hand, they don't seem to just block encrypted content. So, having 2 hosts (one in China, one outside) creating an encrypted tunnel and let bitcoin traffic going through that solves the bitcoin network issues (as long as they don't know what the two hosts are exchanging you don't raise any flag). You might want to have a few of these tunnels to prevent network splits in case one of the hosts goes down.

On the other side, things to spend the bitcoins on... that is a different thing. I think however that it doesn't relate to the QQ coins (I have Chinese colleagues seen using QQ and always wondered what it was), mainly because bitcoin isn't limited to China (the Chinese government hasn't any control about internet outside China) and as Bitcoin keeps growing, it becomes harder and more expensive for them to block it.

Anonygas, I created a project for you to consider:

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2505.0

We definitely need a BTC/RMB exchange.  Makes me wish there was open source exchange software...

I would work on one, if there were 5000 BTC pledged.  ;)

But I can't take on new projects at this time. I have bitpredict to finish, after all.

What are the specifications for this kind of thing? Doesn't seem hard to create the software.

Maybe there should be a site for people to register as escrows that allow people to do exchanges. Kind of like the facebook of mtgox's.

I'd be willing to write this (should be easy) and put the code out there. Could even be hosted by MagicalTux (he's willing).

When each person registers, the server generates them a random string ID which is used for their accounts. They can then choose to trade with someone using any escrow of their choosing.

However, how would you hook-up your own native currency? Is the format too restrictive? Maybe it's just better to provide exchange software and let others use it.

This is intentionally a bare minimum requirements list, not a "wish list" of features.

• per-user account system (username, password, all the standard stuff)
• maintains internal, double-entry accounting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_system) ledger of per-user accounts, where each transaction stores $Amount and $Currency
• supports calling a Web API via a plugin, to receive deposits in $Currency
• supports calling a Web API via a plugin, to send withdrawals in $Currency
• supports manual administrative entries (journal debits and credits)
• supports one or more order books of 'bid' and 'ask' prices, one per currency pair
• supports entry of new orders, and cancellation of existing orders.  when a new order is entered, attempt to fill order from existing order book entries.
• Consider your regulatory environment.  For example, it seems like limiting withdrawals to $1000/day for US citizens aligns with FinCEN regulatory requirements.

There are some currency exchange applications available but seem unsuported and out of date. Mostly for LETS type systems.

But this is not the problem, how is the RMB given to the purchaser? How can they use their RMB that they have bought with BTC? How can they get it? And how can someone who wishes to purchase BTC get their RMB to the exchanger?

This kind of system is entirely illegal here, even electronically there is no way to transfer RMB out of the country. From account to account (in China) you must use UnionPay, it is the only interbank transfer service in China. For online processing you must use ChinaPay.

BTC coming in is no difficult problem, but how to redeem your exchange, ok you know you have RMB, held for you in China, what then?

Oh! An idea! A purchasing service! That would also be needed.

I need to state again that this system would be totally illegal here, if it were to begin it would need to be in the black market. Otherwise it cannot operate. I think this is possible though if the trading/exchange system was available over i2p.

QQ/BTC exchange site could be made?

Tor bridges sold for BTC so china gov has to mine? :)

Yes, to be legal, this exchange would be limited to in-country, China-only RMB deposits and withdrawals.

This is similar to https://btcex.com/ which only permits deposit/withdrawal of Rubles in Russia, too, if I understand correctly.

Each exchange must comply with national money transfer laws.

Good idea. :)

I was thinking something like that recently. One problem of these anonymous p2p networks is the lack of monetary incentive for those who donate their bandwidth. Plus, with this China thing, not only you need to be willing to donate bandwidth freely, as you'll also have your IP blocked from accessing anything inside the Great Firewall.

If we could figure out a way to combine Tor and BTC in order to allow micro-donations to those who contribute with their bandwidth, this could create a better incentive for more Tor relays. If a protocol could be developed in a way that Tor relays would only redirect "paying traffic", this could bring professional, profit oriented players to the Tor network, and bust its bandwidth considerably.
But it's a bit hard to implement such a thing in a way that scales... paying for each data packet would create an immense amount of overhead to both networks, so there should be some sort of "long term subscription"...
Anyway, it's complicated... I might create a topic to discuss these better with all the clever people of this forum, but not tonight, too late already. :)

An idea I've just had (it's in another thread also) is some of my better students can translate some of the bitcoin.it wiki for a few bitcoins. which they could then spend on Tor bridges (are there private bridges? where the IP is not in any way publically shared?) that are rented out (for BTC). A simple web based "rent tracking" application could be made. The application lets you know if the rent has been paid, also it would keep the payment in escrow to ensure the service is delivered.

It wouldn't be too difficult to implement, as no actual Tor/BTC integration is required. The renter and rentee would need to keep track of their usage(aided by the web based application) which would manage the payments through an escrow.

Maybe they can help you with this: http://www.torservers.net/ (See under services)

At least they accept bitcoin as a donation method.

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/26981/?mod=chfeatured&a=f (http://www.technologyreview.com/web/26981/?mod=chfeatured&a=f)

Tor are going to start selling their own routers soon. Pretty awesome.

Maybe you could do some English tutoring and recommend clients pay in bitcoin ?

I run a bitcoin rebate program for Amazon and it would be great to have an associate from china who could represent amazon.cn

But citizens are ignoring this ban?

What violations of the law will be in your exchange business? How strictly are punished?

Most complied because the coins are created by the Tencent company, and all coins are for redemption on tencent servers so they would be useless otherwise. I'm saying this poorly, basically the company complied with the governments request.

Violation of this law would at first be ignored, until it crosses a line(in terms of usage numbers or value or bothers the wrong person) then punishment would be severe. Most small crimes, theft, pickpocketing go unpunished here even when reported. I think no one would even know this was a crime until it reaches a certain mass or the wrong person becomes aware of it.

hehe, maybe by the government, but not by the mob: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALXBlAk1wKw
This one is nice too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63xNCYrj7Vk

Sorry caveden, I'd like to have a look at those links but youtube is blocked and the ssh connection I had to the outside world has also been blocked. All the most useful sites on the web have been blocked and I don't have a credit card to buy a private vpn connection.

Does this help?
http://mullvad.net
They take Bitcoin.

Mhh, I don't see such an option. >_<
Do you know the current Bitcoin prices?

http://mullvad.net/en/bitcoin.php

24 BTC for 30 days.

Ni Tai Neng Hu You Le. Ha Ha.

Why don't try Anchorfree (http://www.anchorfree.com/downloads/hotspot-shield), a free vpn service.

Is there no way to smuggle the RMB out of the country?

For example hide it in a "hollow" birthday card or something?

Do they check every single package that goes out?

As far as anonymity networks are concerned, is i2p blocked? That seems to be the best one at the moment considering that the relay nodes are 'elected' by the network itself.

If there's absolutely no way to get them out of the country, the only real way is to trade amongst fellow Chinese, or if one of us decides to go on holiday in China, they would need to make a pit-stop to you to convert their moneys, I bet your exchange rate would be highly competitive anyway.