Bitcoin Forum

I only got into the Bitcoin scene in Oct '13 (Mining and Trading). While I understand that China "owns" most of the USA's economy, I'm not talking about the USA here; since this is more of a WORLD economics question. Why does China reign the most influential when it comes to the Bitcoin market? 

I'm no expert either but I would guess it that the fact that their population is just under 1.4 billion, which is almost 20% of the entire world population, is a pretty significant factor.

I'm sure that helps as well. Just as an example though...You can have 1 billion people in a population who contribute nothing to an economy and you can half of that population somewhere else who contribute 50% to an economy.....Sooo.

The most important factor is that people elsewhere think that China is the most important market. Because of that, it is.

The volume is the thing that captivates people. The volume there is either likely to be fake or the same coin being sold back and forth thousands of times a day because of zero fee exchanges that don't exist anywhere else. If the only one was in Papua New Guinea that would probably be where everyone was focusing on.

They're not innovating, developing or contributing much, if anything, to the Bitcoin infrastructure.

There are a lot of people in China involved in Bitcoin. If something happens in China that causes many of them to buy or sell bitcoins, then that is going to affect the market. I don't think China is the most influential country, but the number of people there make it at least a major factor.

China has the biggest exchanges by volume. When an 800-pound gorrilla goes on a rampage, you begin to notice; when it calms down, you begin to notice it too.

china was the reason btc so expensive in first place

China is pretty irrelevant for the price actually.
What was relevant though was the "believe" china would be a big a market/user. Actually i consider it a surprise that BTC still has "pre-China-believe" prices. Sure, acceptance has grown, more and more retailer are (indirectly) accepting BTC. But consumers arent buying into it.
While transfer of BTC might be cheap, actually buying BTC turns out to be more expensive and more complicated than established payment systems.
Probably still quite a while till utility value catches up with price.

If fiatleak is correct, then the majority of the bitcoin activity is in the Chinese exchanges. I sat there the other day and watched as the Chinese were trading 50-150 bitcoin every minute, whereas the rest of the world combined were only trading about 1% of that. They are the most influential because they are bitcoin's biggest investor (by far).

The China Bubble fueled much of the move from ~$400 to ~$1200 late last year.
China still has influence today, but...
BTC is so low that all bad news will have much less effect.
Soon enough, the market will respond mostly to good news, from any country.

China controls the large trade of Bitcoins,that is why the rise or fall truly depends on China

BTC can break free from the China Drama.
Digital currency will win no matter what happens to China.

Regardless of volume, China is the 2nd most important country to the Bitcoin economy. If the USA were opposing BTC, prices would be far lower.

true , China has only FUD to offer .

Remember the price rise from $150 to $1300? China is helping the pump..

China was definitely responsible for a large share of the rapid rise in the most recent bubble. However, the non-China publicity, development, and investment in BTC has increased dramatically over the last 6 months. The fundamentals of Bitcoin are drastically stronger than they were pre-China, so we should expect the value to be significantly higher than [Peak price - Chinese investment].

nostradamus is correct, and the market is due to start responding to good news and tending to ignore most bad news as the trend turns Bullish.

I think a lot of the asics were produced in China as well, so they probably mined a fair bit of coins over there. A lot of speculators seem to think that the Chinese are the biggest players due to their trading volume, and they make trades based on the latest news/rumors that come out of there.

Hopefully China will get out of the market soon and stop becoming so influential. We need these coins more dispersed around the globe, and not just concentrated in China.