Bitcoin Forum

I am in china right now and cannot get on either BTC Guild, bitminter or Slush's pools.    But when I use a vpn and connect through HK, it works fine.
Can miners in china tell me if this has always been this way or if this is a new happening?
Many other bitcoin sites (like bitcointalk you can get to without VPN).

is this real? anyone talking about this on chinese subforum or on reddit?

^ yep.

Would like some confirmation on this from people in China.

I should get a VPN there for the lols. "Fuck, now I can't do anything."

i don't like the sound of china doing sweeping blocks of btc-related sites. yes we all know they can be got around, but will the average user bother in tightly regulated sphere?

sure, that sounds all well and good.  :)

but i think average user there is here to make ¥

I would not panic, it is 430AM here.   Posting is to see if the locals can tell us "it has always been this way"  OR  "no, this is new".
I am hoping it has always been this way (like they block google and any press that is bad for them).

Call me crazy, but I DO like the sound of this. A government actively fighting bitcoin really makes a better story than what we have right now; A lot of hmming and hawinging, generalized statements twisted into endorsements or rebuffs against bitcoin, talks of regulation, legal grey areas, etc. Plus we can't really win without a fight. The fact that it's a very large government who may be the first to engage means garaunteed fireworks. If (when) bitcoin takes off while the battle rages on, the government will clearly be the bad guy, as they blocked their people from prosperity under the guise of  ensuring "safety".  We know they can't stop it. Why wouldn't you want to see them try?

can be just a normal DNS bug and get resolved in some hours

maybe for one site, but all three?

if all three are on the same anti-ddods-cloud-provider or something which puts them on one provider

china government can control there isps didnt you know

are the sites down for everyone, or truly blocked? I suppose the great firewall isnt new to Chinese folk, i couldnt imagine needing to mine over a VPN tho.

edit: http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=btcguild.com

Bitcoin in China is over.  I think most of us have already baked this into our price.

If this is true it will bring down the difficulty a lot,  right?

http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=btcguild.com
http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=bitminter.com
http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=mining.bitcoin.cz

All up

I don't think so.

i believe that site only tests port 80 & 8080 (standard http ports). mining uses other ports

I do not believe that site does crap because at the office, where they comply with local internet rules, I cannot still get on these pools.   But at the hotel I can and the hotel is using a VPN to HK.

this has been an issue before, or no?

That is the whole purpose of the post.  I wanted some locals to say whether it has always been this way or not.   I do not know because we have never tried to point at a pool until now (we wanted to get some good reads on HR and errors).

I wouldnt get too excited about site X or site Y being blocked in China.

Every time there is a bad story on CNN about China, CNN gets blocked for a couple of days.  Same with BBC etc.  This is normal.

Locals learn to live with it and work around it (VPN, proxy tunneling etc) or use lower profile sites that arent blocked.  The CCP only tends to block the most obvious sites.  It also changes from day to day depending how on the particular party official is feeling that day.  Of course Tianemen Square, Tibet, Falun gong are perma banned.

Looks like Bitcoin mining hardware sites are blocked too... I tired to access Bitmine.ch while on holiday here in China and can't get through.  Thank goodness bitcointalk isn't banned (yet).

It's a pain not being able to check up on my mining pool while here... oh well.  I can actually VPN back to a machine I have running at home, which I am doing, but it is inconvenient, and I need my laptop for it - can't use my smartphone.