Bitcoin Forum

For those who don't know, Baidu (http://www.baidu.com/) is a Chinese search engine and according to Alexa.com, It's considered as the fourth most visited website in the World.

Whenever there is good news , bad news follows for some reasons. (Twitch re-adds Bitcoin as payment method and now Baidu stops everything related to it).

Cointelegraph gave two possible reasons since Baidu didn't make any statements.
- Because of Ponzi schemes which they can't control
- Because government asked them to.

Chinese probably have a better knowledge about Bitcoin then most of the Bitcoiners so I don't think they could fall for Ponzi schemes that easy s, In the other hand I don't think government asked them to do that either.


So , where Bitcoin is heading... for real ?

The Twitch news is great and something tells me the cat is already out of the bag in china "closing the door after the horse has bolted"  so it all good........ cup half full lol  ;)

Cointelegraph says Baidu invested in Circle two months ago, and stopping Bitcoin related advertising will harm that investment. Baidu might start a new Bitcoin advertising system that gives it more control over who can advertise, what they can advertise, and how much Baidu gets paid for adverts.

So what? How much business was lost? How big was BTC-related advertising on Baidu? I bet it's no big deal. A 5-digit figure at best. Correct me if I'm wrong but I've never seen BTC-related advertising on big media, only on small dedicated websites.

To be honest it probably has something to do with the Chinese government trying to combat money-laundering methods, one of them being Bitcoin; a prominent, valuable, easy to move and relatively liquid form of money that can be moved anywhere. Also considering that a lot of Chinese people are trying to get some of their assets out of Chinese banks, there might be some efforts being made by the Chinese government to stop people from easily moving their funds out of the country, or at least hiding them.

Since they've invested in Circle, they'll probably allow adverts from well-known bitcoin platforms like circle,bitpay and coinbase, which the baidu admins could verify.

If it's the second though, where they got pressured by the government, as cointelegraph says "It may be the Chinese government’s plan to censor out independent cryptocurrencies and push for the advertisement of state-owned and government controlled Blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies."

Let's hope it's the first one though.


*Yeah, haven't seen one on big-media yet, though just yesterday I saw some adverts on wuxiaworld.com (i was shocked, seeing as it reached the lightnovels/translation/readers crowd already) so just a matter of time. lol  

It won't have any impact on Bitcoin even though Baidu is a huge thing in China. The Chinese government sees Bitcoin as a tool that allows people to get money easily out of the country. I am fairly sure the government has a huge responsibility in Baidu removing their Bitcoin related ads.

Great news Twitch re-adds Bitcoin as payment method.This is really bad news for bitcoin that Baidu Stops All Bitcoin-Related Advertising.Every time we hear a good news beside bad news.Hope Baidu changed their mind and add Bitcoin as payment method for Advertising.

Bitcoin is better than search engine.
It's like gold, central bank don't talk about it ... but they have a good stock of it (for war).

Just waiting for a more information about the explanation from Baidu. maybe the factor is having a big chance cause Baidu stopping all of the advertising is related to bitcoin is an the intervention from the 3rd parties. :-\

Two possible reasons by cointelegraph could be the real reason behind this but if they don't like to have ponzi programs running in their network, why don't they just moniter every ad when it is created. If baidu have stopped than do you think google adwords also do same in future?

Let's just wait and see the effect of this on the bitcoin price. Let's hope the bitcoin price doesn't drop too much, eh?

EDIT: It dropped about two bucks :)

Makes sense.  I suppose it would be too much to ask that they stop the zillion dollar a year counterfeit industry that's flooding the rest of the civilized world with crap.  In fact, it makes me wonder why such a corrupt government would even care about bitcoin.  Glad I'm nowhere near there.

if their government really ask baidu to stops all advertising which is related to bitcoin,i wonder how's about the chinese miners in the near future?
but i guess it's have nothing to do with their government if those miners are now still mining normally without getting warned by their government

i think it's not right,even in china,i guess there'ss still exist a dumb people who still fall in ponzi

They must have thousands, If not millions of ads so monitoring them is probably not an option for them, Google do advertise for random stuff related to Bitcoin (like Bitcoin generators, etc... which obviously doesn't exist and contains malware as bitcoin is based on cryptography).
If a lot of people report them, they will probably get removed, though. (It's the same way as faucets, It's against the rules of Google Adsense, but people use them anyway, so unless someone reports that website, Google won't remove their ads from there)

its probably both

Even the very techie users got scammed by the trusted exchanges such as crypsy and the rest of the exchanges that could turn scam. polo seem to be acting weird and there could be a chance of hacked declaration. And so the government was alarmed so they asked not to advertise bitcoin related sites before the crypto money can threaten Chinese economy.

Chinese has been known to censor many things that they do not like and is not in favor of their views, so this is nothing new

In which ways ? They will be losing out on a lot of ad revenue.If they're fine with that,why should we bother ? :D

How many people even use Baidu?Don't think that will be doing any bad to the bitcoin world except for faucets.Do you think they will stop showing faucets as well? Faucet==Bitcoin adds==Against baidu's new terms and conditions?
 
Well,they can always check the businesses before advertising them ?Simply putting a ban on all the advertisements which endorse any bitcoin related investment procedures should have been a much simpler solution

That's a myth!Don't be surprised to know that Chinese are well versed in running biggest ponzi schemes.

Not sure where that is coming from.What any of these has to do with the future of bitcoins?You're blowing it out of proportions!
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The Baidu news is a non-issue for Bitcoin. BTC was fine before Baidu did BTC related advertisements and it would not make a difference if they decide to stop now. Maybe the writer of the article at CT thought it would make a good story or something.

Also be careful with most of the BTC news sites. Some of them write stories for the sake of writing and having something fresh and new at their sites. So take some of these stories with a grain of salt.

if it's because of ponzi schemes than this is bad for bitcoin since its bad reputation is hurting bitcoin. we need to do something about this.

if it's because of the government than i can understand it and it might be another point for bitcoin. maybe even bring some more clientele. 

as baidu are a big search engine and also said the fourth most visited website in the World ,
i think it is just make slower to introduce bitcoin to the world ,
even there only few bitcoin business involved ,
at least something bad happens out there and imo it is just internal problem, baidu can not handle it.

I think there are also another scenario:
if they stop to accept btc just because is not profitable?

I means, start to accept btc in a big company (like baidu) means:
- new employment(s) just to set up and run wallet, promo, website script, ads etc...
- pay "taxes"?
- act a first dealer for a new tech. and introducing this new payment system to a big country (the biggest population!)

Almost every Chinese out there use Baidu daily. (number of users of internet in China is +700,000) so I guess It will affect Bitcoin on one way or another and yes faucets will be affected as well. (anything related to btc or crypto currencies)

Yeah, was just going to say that Baidu actually has a global market share of 7.52%, so this is certainly not some small search engine.
Here are some more stats if anyone's interested: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/baidu-stats/

IMO BTCBTCBTC would be fine without that. It's a whole lot different and a far worse situation when Baidu would decide to censor all bitcoin related searches.

bitcoin is different than search engine. search engine give informations about something, bitcoin give investments to us. and when Baidu not using bitcoin like before, then bitcoin still going on to continue the long journey.

people which use Baidu as default search engine really don't care about Baidu stop all bitcoin related advertising, don't need this. all they need is information that Baidu can give to them. or if Baidu can not give the info, then they can use the other search engine.

bitcoin is heading to somewhere better than now, and in future, i think many people especially from government will know and learn and using bitcoin for their transaction.

Baidu stopping advertising on bitcoin probably may be because government regulations , as bitcoin still not legalized in many countries ,some organization may not opt for advertising such things , but as i know there is always growth on bitcoin ,now almost all the internet websites are using the bitcoins for transaction.

The matter of concern here Is not how much business is lost due to Baidu's this move but trying to figure out what made them took this decision as it indirectly affect entire bitcoin environment

The matter of concern here Is not how much business is lost due to Baidu's this move but trying to figure out what made them took this decision as it indirectly affect entire bitcoin environment.Do they have any inside information of Chinese government going to ban or put controls on bitcoin?

then why the government didn't give a warning to those chinese miners? they're still doing mining activities just like before

definitely not right,bitcoin still not that mainstream,bitcoin is now still trying to be accepted worldwide but not yet getting used for almost all of websites

How much Bitcoin advertising was taking place on there? Considering you can't use Bitcoin for anything in China there's no incentive for anyone to advertise it other than exchanges.

Correct.People these days make a deal out of such petty news.I wonder why would OP call it a bad move in the faith of bitcoin's future.As said,blowing it out of proportions. Btw exchanges are not the only bitcoin businesses out there.You can pretty much advertise a faucet/a ponzi that is.Good the site made the update.I'm happy they won't be telling me where to invest my coins anymore. *Was tired of that crap already.

My reaction:
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/glee/images/1/17/Bye_daniel.gif/revision/latest?cb=20110716235001

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Does it even matter? Baidu is just a search engine and not a Bitcoin community. Them stopping everything related to bitcoin cannot affect us significantly unless they start rumours and say bad stuffs about bitcoin.

They might be the 4th most visited website but I bet it's just because it's the default search engine on browsers on Chinese phones like XiaoMi, etc. Thus, the only audience that will be "affected" are Chinese people and I think Chinese people that are already doing Bitcoins will not leave this community just because of what Baidu did.

yeah there are a lot of ponzies in bitcoin right now unfortunately and it gives a bad reputation to it for sure, thats why we shouldnt promote them

i just used baidu and when searching for things related to bitcoin, i found them.
so users wanting to learn about bitcoin still can, the search function has not been affected.

the only issue i see is the baidu version of adsense being affected, which means faucets getting affected.

this is not a big deal because advertising usually only works by showing people what they are already interested in.
this means its not like bitcoin advertising was doing much to get new people to see bitcoin adverts, but just showing adverts to people already having browser history and cookie data that reveals a pre-existing interest in bitcoin.

to me i do not see it affecting bitcoins popularity or growth one bit, (apart from a few facuets dropping off)

i feel the reasons behind it are due to faucet raiders with fake clickbait webpages that dont earn baidu real revenue, and also alot of the adverts trn out to be scams and ponzi's.

all in all i dont see it negatively hurting bitcoin and dont see it as big news

Well, it would be nice if we knew why they stopped with Bitcoin. It's definitely not a good sign that big businesses like Baidu abandon Bitcoin after having implemented it.

Most likely it was some sort of test or trial period and it failed to live up to it's expectation.

It's a search engine. The only thing they stopped implementing was advertising. If they'd implemented Bitcoin itself they'd have had their arses shut down by the government.

1. Is unlikely... They can't control how many ponzis exist, but they can definitely control whatever is advertised on their website and even ask users to report scammy or malicious ads. I believe the second option would be more likely...

I honestly do not know how to feel about this. Even if Baidu is considered as the fourth most visited, I do not know just how much Baidu has a contribution to Bitcoin. I mean, would it actually be a big impact? I am honestly asking the question here.

Well we've had many online merchants stop accepting Bitcoin related payments, it's just all a trend and often very few turn back to use Bitcoins again like Twitch. I really don't mind much about Baidu, but the people in China would. In the first place it was really nice of them have Bitcoin-related advertising. Looking forward to earning from the Brave browser.

Have you ever done anything Bitcoin related through google advertising? I have not. Now if Baidu were removing all Bitcoin related search results, then it's time to cream your knickers.

You will be surprised. Baidu is 4th biggest site in the world. According to Alexa.com only Google, Youtube and Facebook are higher in ranking. Chinese internet is specific place.
Because Great Firewall of China most services used by Chinese people are local equivalents of global/western services - so instead of Google they have Baidu, instead of Youtube they have Youku
and Facebook is Renren

the effect will be minimal (if any at all). there are other ways of getting the message of bitcoin to people. however, ask yourself this. would there be a positive impact on bitcoin when google start advertising bitcoin? probably a bit, but not so much in the way that we'll feel it when google removes the ads again.

Google already is advertising bitcoins.Just type in the browser "Best Bitcoin Wallets" and you should see the sponsored adds on the left. ;D Matter of fact,no ponzi's/exchange sites are being shown at the ad results but sure they're doing on the independent adsense based add engines.Doesn't really help promote bitcoin or anything but helping the businesses with the right customers.

I think its not a advertise its just indexed by google because we say that advertise we will seen that the is a yellow ad in the top first page of google..  if we compare the baidu search engine i think it can not affect for bitcoin because many people are now using google.. or other search engine that actually advertise bitcoin or indexed..

I think baidu will reindex it again in their search engine..

It is bad news and it will make price of bitcoin will going down, and making popularity of bitcoin going down too. But this is not first time bitcoin be attacked by negative news and bitcoin was survived.

Until someone gives a public explanation, we will be speculating on what the reason behind this is. The Chinese government will never admit to having a role to play in this, but I will never rule them

out. The only reason I can think on why they still tolerating Bitcoin, is because they have total dominance on the mining side of Bitcoin. There are millions invested in mining farms and also the energy

spend at these mining farms.  ???

Baidu ban is not going to affect bitcoin at all.For one baidu is mostly china centric while bitcoin is universal.Second chinese love bitcoin more than they love baidu so they can dump baidu if they have to choose between two of them  ;D

of course it is not going to affect the bitcoin at all, in my opinion in the future it is going to grow only and nothing else will happen

This is my first time I heard about Baidu's included in the biggest site n the world because in my life Baidu just linked with fraudulent way, and I think I ever getting a malware on my desktop and that is always installing the Baidu add-on in my browser. in fact that's way is very effective.

Okay they're always trying for cloning and making the identity for their nations in digital world.

In terms of price, Bitcoin's actually gone up in the last few hours.
I completely agree with you. This will stop nothing, and Bitcoin will continue to grow, no matter who suppresses it!

I don’t know for what reason that Baidu doesn’t let bitcoin-related advertisement appear on their site but I don’t think it’s gonna cause much lost in bitcoin as well as affect much in the bitcoin world.

Because as I can see that Chinese is famous about these bitcoin stuffs and they seem to know a lot about bitcoin and in my experience of surfing the web, I’ve rarely seen an advertisement about bitcoin or anything deals with it, a stopping in bringing bitcoin to the Chinese on Baidu won’t be that serious.