Bitcoin Forum

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1512113/li-ka-shing-boosts-bitcoin-investments-amid-currency-crackdown-china

Some other investors: Charles Branson, founder of Yahoo Jerry Yang, and PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

Hope that such news will encourage others. Enough bad publicity for BTC already!

I also think this is good news. Lets hope more will follow.

30 mln dollars - well, I hope it won't pass unnoticed by markets. More BTC-oriented people --> more transactions --> faster revolution. ;)

More good news:
http://www.coindesk.com/ebay-ceo-actively-considering-bitcoin-integration/

Very very old news...

Oh wow, bitcoin is here to stay!

he's probably just investing a small amount, trying to diversify his assets.. it doesn't necessarily mean that he will use his weight to protect bitcoin's development, but maybe it is.

I'm inclined to believe that this is the case much more. After all, his overall personal wealth is well over 5 times the amount of the Bitcoin market cap.

Of course though, he could just quietly buy for a little while, further the already existing infrastructure and end up with even more wealth. Admittedly, that wouldn't be bad at all for the long-term of Bitcoin.

This news has attracted wide spread publicity in the Chinese language mainstream media. Let's hope that more and more mainland Chinese will learn about the Bitcoins as a result of this hype.

Interesting, and glad that Li Ka Shing is in support of Bitcoin. I don't think China's impact is that strong. Already, with a restriction on putting money into support Bitcoin by the Chinese government, the impact no longer pushes Bitcoin's price down. It will be a matter of time when there are new ways to circumvent the rules, and Chinese demand continues to grow.

not anymore at least. china's been yanking on bitcoin so much that its effect has been muted - the price is already calculated in considering the fact that china is so wishy washy.

i don't know how much china's effect has brought down bitcoin value, since the mtgox crash has also had a big impact on price.

What Li Ka Shing has to do with China? He is a citizen of Hong Kong. Bitcoin is not banned in Hong Kong, and actually the authorities there are very supportive of the digital currency.

You are right, however in my opinion the amount of his investment is not as important, as the information for wider public that goes beneath - another successful enterpreneur thinks that Bitcoin is here to stay - in the aspect of good publicity it's priceless.

This is the correct way to look at it. General public always takes inspiration from established players to invest their hard-earned money. If some bear hears about popular investors investing in Bitcoin, he would be less reluctant to invest his own assets.

True.

More good news from another enterpreneur, this time from eBay's CEO:
http://investorplace.com/2014/05/bitcoin-paypal-ebay/#.U3nst1PLciA

Hope Chinese Government won't go after him for investing in bitcoin...but this is good news for bitcoin,we gonna see some rise on bitcoin  value!

Well this news is quiet old now, and yes, these people encourage a lot of others to invest in bitcoin, i have myself seen many people investing in btc just because they found some big names investing in btc.

Bitcoin2014 in Amsterdam, 30mln $ for Bitpay, few "yays" from people connected to US government and we have BTC at circa 500$. Hope this trend continues, and if it does, it would be nice to avoid another speculation bubble. Let's just crawl to the top with a good amount of corrections. :)

A lot of Chinese learned about bitcoin with the PBOC announces , and that did a great job ;).
I'm not so sure a lot of hype will actually come from this announce , more like a pump with no actual support.

I'm just hoping the current 50$ rise isn't based entirely on this.

This is very good news for BTC. People see potential in BTC and crypto, soon others will open their eyes and profit.  :)

li ka shing

is very popular in asia

he is like the warren buffet in north america

when he moves he influences the news papers in asia and will bring followers into bitcoin

Bitcoin is already very popular in the asian country's
Just look at http://fiatleak.com/ (http://fiatleak.com/)
And you will see china is already buying bitcoins like crazy.
China has a lot of people, so even more buying bitcoins is great!

Who Branson?  :P

Charles Branson.  He was in Death Wish  ;D

Posting from Vietnam, and I can confirm that cryptocurrencies are getting a lot of interest here. I walked into a coffeeshop in the center of Saigon yesterday and there was a German guy giving an impromptu seminar on Bitcoin to a bunch of guys in suits.

Nice. Glad I finally have some coins in this exciting time. Now I just need to decide if now is a good time to buy more..

What about Richard Branson? He has been supporting Bitcoins for some time now.

Richard Branson: Not dollar, euro or pound but bitcoin

http://www.eturbonews.com/46122/richard-branson-not-dollar-euro-or-pound-bitcoin

That's why he' worth $32 Billion! He makes smart investments. He always wanted Bitcoin, but saw the value was inflated. Now that the price is right, he's buying low, and going long with it. Smart cat!
The aforementioned Peter Thiel, The Don of PayPal, and also a billionaire from investing in Facebook early on, also has thrown millions into Bitcoin.

not in to Bitcoin itself, but in the Bitcoin infrastructure (Bitpay, Coinbase...)

venture capital going to a lot of Bitcoin ventures these days  ;)

Venture capital really does seem to flow more and more into the BTC ecosystem in recent times. It will be exciting to observe all the new ideas and developments

Bitcoin passed the $500 mark for the first time in weeks. It has been climbing steadily since 20th May A number of positive developments over the past couple of weeks helped reverse the bad course. And people are scared and liquidating their assets into something that is a hedge against inflation.

Exactly. Li Ka Shing is not hoarding any significant amounts of Bitcoins. Rather he is investing in Bitcoin-related businesses such as Bitpay. And I believe that it is the right thing to do as well, at this stage.

The infrastructure is not something that can disappear - if Bitcoin crashed down to $0, the computers and hardware themselves have some salvageable material cost to them and you'ld still have the network of professionals.  If Bitcoin was replaced by another coin - all it would take is weeks (months) to patch in new code and move onto the next coin.

The merchant argument is a poor argument - some of the 'high notice' merchants for Bitcoin are starting to accept Litecoin and Dogecoin.  In a hypothetical scenario where Bitcoin is supplanted by an alternate, all the merchants and infrastructure would follow ~ there's more loyalty to $Fiat (profit) than to any particular coin.

Although this thread deals in a lot of hypotheticals.  Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, Dogecoin is a fork $hitclone meme.  NxT has terrible distribution.  Darkcoin is supposedly 50% premine by the developer and it's a 'pump of the month' (flavour of the month). So I forsee Bitcoin remaining King but it still makes an inferior investment compared to investing in infrastructure.