Bitcoin Forum

http://bitebi.cc/?p=1112

PBC = the People's Bank of China = Chinese Central Bank

1.政府和中央银行应正视比特币的存在，主动出击，动用国家巨大的计算能力，抑制私人挖掘的动力，将绝大多数比特币集中在国家手中。

1.Government and central bank should face up to the existence of Bitcoin,
take control of most bitcoins by using the computing power of supercomputers all over the country.

 :o :o :o

I'd like to see them try. They'd need a lot of computers to do that.

That would be so cool if true.

If China wanted to, they could easily outhash everything working on bitcoin.  You really want to see them try?

Parasites, the whole lot of them.

I dare you all of you to try! You can have the Bitcoin network and just as quickly we will start another!

YES! Then Bitcoin will be taken seriously. It wouldn't be long before there is a Bitcoin Cold War.

It'd make the network stronger ;)

Retweet if you know what's good for you:

Tweet (http://twitter.com/#!/HarveyAlpha/status/145699731732054017)

China should hire The Manipulator to buy up as much Bitcoin as they can using bots that won't raise any alarms.

Oh wow... but which one do they want to do, a 51% attack or just mine a large amount of bitcoins?

I think he suggests mining.  ;)

I just did it ;D

If this happens, difficulty will be in the tens of millions soon :O

http://www.feedzebirds.com/8zksj

Alright, I am out of Bitcoins but if somebody is willing to get a mass FeedZeBirds campaign going for this with a donation, you will have my reverence.

What was the context of the statement? Is that their official website?

It's a paper from <<Chinese Credit Card>> magzine,
the author is working for PBC,  low-level class officer.



http://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-XYKZ201110018.htm

Courtesy of Google translate:

I wonder if "suppression of private mining power" is an accurate translation. I also wonder if he is suggesting an alternate block chain.

I think that's exact translation. And i bet he has no idea what alt chain is.

Let's put this in clearer English!  I hate it when google translate's crappy output makes me read more slowly. :P

Section 6. Recommendations
1. The government and central bank should acknowledge the existence of Bitcoin and deal with it proactively.  Using the top-notch supercomputers at its disposal and using state power to ensure a monopoly on mining power, the central bank could acquire the vast majority of bitcoins.
2. The central bank should set up a Bitcoin bank and an official Bitcoin exchange and become the middleman in Chinese Bitcoin transactions to eliminate Bitcoin's relative anonymity and ensure that Bitcoin commerce can be regulated.
3. The government should push for international acceptance of a Bitcoin-backed currency, establishing a non-sovereign monetary system, to challenge the supremacy of the US dollar and to make the international financial system more harmonious and stable.

Notice: "deal with it proactively" in the original Chinese: "出击."

出击 means "attack," according to Google Translate.

Very well researched paper for an outsider but he made 2 obvious mistakes:
1. He repeated stressed that Bitcoins offers total anonymity and is completely untraceable.
2. Failed to mention GPU mining and failed to realize that CPU mining, even with super computers, is not cost-effective.

It's clear that he has a good grasp of the economics behind Bitcoins, but he has little technical background.  

The article was published in some lowly credit card journal. It is not like the people's daily. This is just the view of a staffer at the Nanjing branch of the PBC. It is extremely unlikely to lead to concrete action.
As for the translation, 'attack' is more correct than 'deal with it proactively'.

Reading more of the article. The author seems to suggest co-opting the technology rather than destroying it. Goals are for China to control most computing power and to create a bitcoin bank which 'deanonymizes'  the technology. Maybe the bank idea is to register all public keys with personal data, it is not laid out explicitly. The author proposes that governments issue bitcoin rather than permit anonymous entities to do so.

Sounds great! This is what I would do if I was a government.

btw everyone, the title is "Bitcoin is potentially a great challenge to the US dollar," or something like that.

What makes a government so wise and virtuous enough to be the only issuer of a currency?  What is wrong with anonymity?

Doesn't really matter... the PBC does what it wants.

Yes, yes. I just want to know what is going in the head of this guy.

Who said wise or virtuous? I'm just talking about self-interest. I prefer the co-opt choice to the destroy choice. I was pretty sure that they would go with destroy. It's great that they didn't. Especially given that trading bitcoin for cash or physical goods is already illegal in China.

Thanks for the clarification.

So they want to become the largest miner and control the bitcoin exchange/banking industry within China to deanonymize it.  This precedent may be followed by other countries, and we'll quickly come to a vastly more traceable system than we have today.  Sure, current bitcoiners all get rich, but the governments won't hurt one bit.  Yes, there will be winners and losers in the bitrush, but in the end we've just delivered them exactly what they've been looking for.  They just don't know it yet.

They could offer us only a fraction of our holdings for *registered* versions.

Yeah, with all that mining power, they could do anything to us.

Yes, this is what I mean by great. However, remember, this is just a lowly credit card journal article by a lowly Nanjing bank staffer. It should not be used to predict real world events. The article is from october and we haven't heard anything more.

If a lowly bank staffer is thinking about it, I can only imagine the thoughts higher up.

As with any monetary system, greed, false authority and abuse are encouraged. Luckily, bitcoin makes it more difficult to perform, but the incentive is there.

Why all the gloom and doom. Bitcoin will only get stronger the more it is promoted even by a "evil" government such as the Chinese is.  This could be the catalyst that puts the US behind.  Besides the few ramblings of some ludacris reps 6 months ago, there has been absolutely no talk of Bitcoin regarding US economy with in the current government reps. They should be looking how this plays within our current economy before China gets the drop on us again.  China:Stealing US/World's technology since 1976 and proud of it!

Delusional rantings of communists don't concern me.  They think they can control it like they think they control everything else.  Yawn...

Wow, this is really interesting.

I think about unspeakable things at work, so I can only imagine the thoughts my boss has. Oh wait, that doesn't really follow at all :)

For all we know this guy could be trying to increase awareness of bitcoin and all his colleagues think he's crazy for thinking it's viable, or his article could be indicative of broader interest on the part of PBC as a whole. We don't have much information, so I wouldn't bother speculating much about things like that.

Why not have someone who speaks this language really well contact the guy and find out more?

@harvey

Yes, context is similar to taking paper from Microsoft Research as official statement of Microsoft's interest in bitcoin. Go ahead and tweet out a distorted news item though.
Propagating false messages is much easier when the source material is Chinese. Any trumped up story you come up with might be picked up and re-reported elsewhere.

Regarding contacting the guy, here is some info. Couldn't find telephone or email, but maybe someone else can.

Name: 洪蜀宁 Hong Shuning
Address: 中國人民銀行,南京分行,營業管理部,南京,210001 People's Bank of China, Nanjing Branch, Operations and Management, Nanjing, Postal Code 210001

It'll eventually turn into "Chinese Government Abhorred by Virtual Currency - Plans to Take it Over Within A Week"

Which arguably is true if you take proper precautions (mixing your coins, tor, etc).


Actually China already has a few supercomputers with GPUs. IIRC the current ones are all nVidia based, so I dont know how effective they will be,  but as a forward looking statement its certainly true that its feasible for a state player (particularly one like China). Also the cost of developing an asic for bitcoin mining is on the order of a few million $, thats pocket change for a country like China (and perhaps useful for other stuff too); if they do that, they could outhash the rest of us in a blink of the eye.

I dont expect anything of the sort will ever happen, but its an interesting thought experiment to imagine a scenario were nation states are competing for control of bitcoin :).

What else is discussed in that article? It seems quite a bit longer than just those few statements.

It's an intro to bitcoin. Overall, one can thank the writer for some good press. I just hope next time he? finds a more prominent outlet than Chinese Credit Card Magazine.
Here are translated headings.

一、比特币概述 Outline of Bitcoin
1. 什么是比特币比特币  What is Bitcoin
2. 如何获取比特币 How to Get Bitcoin
3. 如何消费比特币 How to Spend Bitcoin
 二、比特币基本原理 Basic Principles of Bitcoin
1. 节点查找机制 node lookup processing （someone help me here)
2. 货币供应机制  System Controlling Currency Supply
 3. 交易支付机制 Exchange and Payment System
 三、比特币的主要特点 Special Characteristics of Bitcoin
1. 无中央控制 No Central Control
2. 完全匿名 Completely Anonymous
3. 交易成本低廉 Transaction Costs are low
4. 不会通胀 No Inflation
5. 易损性 Easy to Lose
 四、比特币的货币属性 Attributes of Bitcoin
1. 价值尺度： Measure of Value
2. 流通手段：Means of Circulation
3. 贮藏手段：Means of Storing Value
4. 支付手段：Means of Payment
5. 世界货币：International Currency
 五、对金融体系的挑战 Challenge to the Financial System
[tl; dr]
 六、相关建议 Related Recommendations [these are the three points discussed by previous posters]
1.政府和中央银行应正视比特币的存在，主动出击，动用国家巨大的计算能力，抑制私人挖掘的动力，将绝大多数比特币集中在国家手中。
2.研究成立比特币银行，在比特币交易中推行中间机构，以消除其匿名性，使其可以被监管。
3.国际联合发行比特币本位的信用货币，从而促进非主权货币体系的建立。通过这种新型的国际结算货币来挑战美元霸权地位，使国际金融体系更加和谐、稳定。

Tor isn't part of bitcoin though.

Using your argument I could say "The internet offers total anonymity and is completely untraceable" because I can browser the internet through tor.



Yes, most of us already know about what you're saying. But the Chinese author didn't. That's why I pointed it out.

And well you have even less than him

GPU supercomputers exist.

In our case, we need an ATI supercomputer and in China? There we go, it ALREADY exist http://www.dvhardware.net/article38967.html


Of course nothing stop them from making another one with more recent cards or FPGA

Sigh... read what I wrote, please.

Yes I know China has supercomputers with GPUs. But the author doesn't know about GPU mining was my point.

He just spoke about supercomputers, never said "only cpu supercomputers"

He doesn't know about GPUs at all. So if you throw two supercomputers in front of him, one with GPU and one without, he'll start CPU mining on both of them and then go home.  

He won't start mining, he will hire someone who knows what to do.

And that would be close to the truth. But while browsing with Tor might be untraceable , there is nothing untraceable about using your credit card over Tor. The point is you can use bitcoins with something like Tor; you cant use Tor to anonymize bank  or paypal transactions or any other payment processor Im aware off, besides crypto currencies.


Thats your assumption, but unless that somehow refutes the author's point, who cares?

Obviously, yes. But my original point was that A. the author doesn't know about GPU mining and thus B. the author isn't technically inclined.

Look, this whole "bitcoin is completely anonymous" thing is well covered in the FAQ. If you wanna argue about it do it on the wiki. I'm just pointing out the author's mistake that's all.



The author didn't mentioned a single word about GPUs. That's a fact.
Based on that fact I made the observation that the author isn't technically inclined and is simply looking at Bitcoins from the economic prospective.

A fail observation. There is nothing there telling you that he doesn't know gpu and that he will cpu mine.

The article speak about bitcoin in an economic point of view, of course it doesn't go in describing all existing supercomputers

Wrong again, this article is about bitcoin in general. He specifically mentioned mining, so it's not an economics paper.

Trolling attempt detected indeed

Protip: speaking about cpu, gpu mining etc etc would have made the article LONGER

I translated part of the article and offered an insight on it, in a thread that desperately in need of some translations. What have you contributed to the discussion so far?

Deal!
How do I make a donation to PBC?

After extensive research, I've discovered that that lowly bank staffer has a name. A name he also uses on several forums in China: 地图集

This author is only a geek working for the PBC, and it's meaningless for us to speculate what China government is thinking about bitcoin from this paper. It's more likely a personal opinion. This geek published several articles about how to transfer financial transaction information with the help of satellite or something like that

All good.  China really gets into this and starts mining, buying and hoarding, price goes up, more miners come on board, more security for the chain.  Price goes up more.  More publicity, etc.

I like the path this is going down.  :D  I hope China DOES "take" the network.  Watch the value drop before their eyes as everyone jumps on Namecoin, Litecoin, or hell, even possibly SolidCoin.    Then when another country tries to take a dip in this pool, watch the hydra of digital currencies fly.    I love it, go for it China.

The bitcoin mining network currently has about twice as much power as the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world combined. And that's with half our machines turned off due to the current price.

I don't think we have to worry about hostile takeovers as long as anyone thinks we have something worth taking over.

Right now, yes.  However, a mining farm built for a takeover would not cost very much (to a government).

True, because they have the control of their own fiat currency supply. They can fabricate as many yuans as they want, out of thin air, and buy real Bitcoins to buy real GPUs. 

I firmly believe that this guy--地图集--needs to be stopped from spreading fud in forums in China.

If it's not too much trouble can you please post some links to his postings? I'd like read what he's spreading (economic takeover or mining takeover).

It's one thing to be trolling the intertubes, but it's another thing altogether if he abuses his (albeit minor) position at the PBC to influence bitcoin.

Pointless comparison. The 500 supercomputers are all CPU supercomputers.

While we use GPUs

Why waste the time and effort mining? They can buy every single btc in existence for what
is to them a very small sum... and continue buying till the last of the 21 M...

Basically any goverment or reasonable sized entity  could do  it if they wanted to kill Bitcoin.

Did you bother to check the list? Because you're wrong.

Successful troll is successful.
http://translate.google.com/

False. Buying every bitcoin is impossible as price would approach infinity. They could buy a few million, but doing so would make Bitcoin the number 1 financial news topic and instead of "killing bitcoin" it would almost guarantee its success.

Just a guess, but I would imagine that most GPU's and FPGA's are cultivated in fields which are distinctly in the Chinese sphere of influence.

FPGA's, at least, have been at one time contemplated as a device who's use had national security implications (although not for hashing.)  In the (seemingly unlikely) event that hashing became a matter of national security, I have little doubt that availability of GPUs, FPGA's, and eventually ASICs could and would be controlled to the extent which would be as effective as deemed necessary.

I don't even think anyone could buy a few million right now.  MtGox only has 190,000 or so on offer.  There's undoubtably a large stash sitting in exchanges off the order books, but I'd be very surprised to discover that there are a few million sitting in the exchanges counting what's on the books and what's not.

China will not stop the flow of semiconductors OUT of China, they export goods - that is what they do.  If they ever did stop the flow of any of these technologies the price would go up and fabs in other countries would start making them.  China could only temporarily stop these things from being make.

True, Evor, but if they time it right, and do it in a calculated way, they could control enough of it, even as the price shoots up, to make it worth their while. And it would guarantee them that control on pretty solid fundamentals on how the markets work, as opposed to having to take over the network.

It would be silly for China or any other government to attempt to "own" Bitcoin, when all they really need is to control it. Plus, in the specific case of China, it would give them control over a currency that isn't being kept artificially devalued, freeing the Yuan for their domestic needs.

They'd have to be fools not to even be looking at BTC

This is super good news if true! A war on the Bitcoin network is all we need to really push it into acceptance. If China joins, then the US wont like to see them taking over, thus adding hash power. And since they will try to control the network they will purchase coins, and at the end of the day, we will be the winners!

If I were running a mining pool, I would strongly consider "branding" my blocks now with a digital signature in the coinbase, so if down the road, a 51% attack ever took place, my reputation might count favorably towards the possibility of the resulting countermeasures including increasing the priority or importance or value of the blocks I created (as well as all of those who did the same thing and built up the same sort of reputation).

I would disagree with this...  you cannot buy something if it is not for sale.  I am not selling mine.......cheaply

wouldn't they just fork the code and make chinacoin?

that way, then can change the code in such a way as to make it easily regulated.

oh, and

italycoin
iraqcoin
rucoin
indiacoin......


I can see a future full of alt currencies.

Sure they can do that. Who will support their network?

they will. they and any chinese that want to be able to use a crypto currency in that country.  at least that was my thoughts,  but now that I think about it..  if they do that, people will still just use bitcoin..

next time i have a thought..  I'll just let it go

Or search the forums first. This has been discussed

The taxpayers.

Sorry, all. Just a little humor. It's funny once you translate it.

So taxation will prevent a 51% attack?

The state will have 100%. They know what's best.

Has noone posted this yet?:

By Hung Shu Ning, working in the People's Bank, Nanjing Branch, Department of financial instruments as business management research and development center chief of Jiangsu Province in 2010 was awarded the Labor Medal.

Originally published in the "China card" magazine, October 2011

A bit coin Overview

1 What is a bit bit-currency coins (BitCoin, BTC) is an open source, web-based, point-of anonymous e-money, the Chinese and the Satoshi (Satoshi Nakamoto) design and development in 2008, is the world's first A distributed anonymous digital currency. Currency issuance and payment of bits without a central control center, money transfer from the collective management of network nodes, the parties can hide their true identity.

Bit by ordinary people rather than money by the central bank or government-created money, electronic money, such as ordinary different Q coins, currency system is not a simple bit-payment system, but the real currency system. It is created by people, rather than from an ordinary currency exchange.

2 How to get bit money

Bit of money through an open complex algorithms. Anyone can download the software bit-currency manufacturing, but requires high computing power. As a special algorithm currency bits, with bits of money involved in the manufacture of more and more people demand for computing power is rapidly increasing. July 2010, when the bit-currency software release V0.3 version, a report declared: energy use analysis shows that the market value of the currency bit more than they need to produce energy costs. In December 2010, for an ordinary personal computers, to create a 50-bit coin about a year. 50 bits can be exchanged for money at that time about $ 15.

Another way is to get bit by mtgox.com coins and other currency trading center bit to buy other currencies. Bit currency exchange rate is determined by the market, since 2011, the rapid appreciation of currencies bits, as in June 2011, each bit has reached $ 20 coins offer more than six months ago, added a 70-fold.

3 bits of money to consumption

Businesses currently receiving bit less money, but is rapidly growing. People can, but not limited to the following bit coins used in several ways.

⑴ buy network services. Such as VoIP Internet phone service Link2VoIP and Lightbox Technologies Inc.

⑵ game prepaid. In the massively multiplayer online role-playing game A Tale in the Desert IV, Facebook's Minesweeper Minesweeper, anonymous gaming TAABL other use.

⑶ buy physical. ranked 13th on eBay bookstore Qugelmatic Books to accept bit money.

⑷ money donated to a number of institutions receiving bits. If wikimedia.org.

 Second, the basic principles of money bit

1 node lookup mechanism

Bit currency using point to point the way to communicate, there is no central server, not directly to find other nodes to communicate. Currency using the following three bits mechanism to solve the initial run-time problem of how to find other nodes.

⑴ in default, the run-bit client to join a currency IRC chat channel, and join the channel can be informed of the other client's IP address and port. The name of the channel and IRC chat server name is written on bits of currency software.

⑵ some "famous" bit node is also written in currency software, to prevent the IRC chat server for some reason can not access.

⑶ currency can manually add other bits to run the client's IP address.

Once connected to a node, it sends the message will contain the address of other nodes, so the money then you can network through the bit to find other bits of their own currency nodes, and no longer need any of these three mechanisms in a the. This mechanism ensures that the network can not be bit-currency government or other agencies isolation, destruction, protect the currency system reliability bits.

2 money supply mechanism

Bit currency is created by software, this process is known as the Mining (Mining), because the money supply mechanism and the gold and silver and other precious metals money supply mechanism is similar. Mining software by addressing "the hash to find a minimum value" of the specific math problems to create a forum (Block), the current value of a new 50-bit coin forum, and to solve this problem requires strong computing power ( repeatedly run the hash algorithm). On average, about every 10 minutes throughout the network will be a new forum. To create a bit money, we should strive to become the first to create a whole network of people new forum, and this new

Forum announced to the entire network. Everyone on the network can check and see if you really solved the problem. If the first 10 minutes by others, in front of the calculation would become void, only to re-create a new forum. Therefore, the difficulty of making money with a certain bit of time into making the whole network, the average computing power of work-related. A single individual "discovery"

The possibility of a new plate is based on his wide network of computing power and computing power of a comprehensive comparison above.

Currency network in bits, computing the difficulty is adjusted automatically. In the first four years with 10 million coins were produced bits, this value is halved every four years, and ultimately, the amount of money will be bit close to 21 million, which will occur in 2140 or so, then bit money have all been dug out, then no further increase.

 3 transaction payment mechanism

Bit-currency transactions on their own machines need to open an account, the account is actually a pair of public and private keys, public key algorithms via the transaction.

For example, if A give B to a sum of money, A put the money plus the number of B's ​​public key (ie, payment address), with their own private key signature. And B to see this sign, you can understand, is indeed shown with A bit transferred his money.

A time in initiating the transaction, the name must be signed to a bit-currency trading a single broadcast network, each node will eventually know it. B continued to receive from the network confirmation of others, when he received more than enough to confirm information, we can indeed confirm A single issue of this transaction. After that, B can be free to use this money a bit.

When B of A bit of his money transferred to the sub-C, also broadcast to enough people, let them be secured. Each Guarantor B has only convinced enough money to pay for the bit when it is done to confirm. In essence, the network did not record currency bits each bit coin belongs to whom, it is recorded in a list that contains the bit to play the current currency from the birth of every transaction. Any attempt to identify a single transaction, the bit-currency network will be confirmed by checking the list to turn out so many accounts, there is no bit-currency.

 Third, the main features of currency bits

1 no central control

Different from the traditional virtual currency, virtual currency is not bit-currency issuer's control, but by all the nodes in the network bits collective money management.

Traditional institutions such as virtual currency Tencent Q coins issued by the national central banks and government policies and the virtual currency management regulations. But bit different currency, without any government money and institutions can control the distribution and use of bits. Bit-currency issuance process controlled only by the algorithm, until all bits have changed algorithm currency network node, or a predetermined bit pattern coins will continue to release.

By means of this technique, bit of money to avoid adverse decisions by the central bank affected, due to the complete elimination of the currency crisis caused by human factors.

2 completely anonymous

Bit by parties to the transaction currency freely change the payment address to hide their true identity. Rely heavily on the traditional account of the virtual currency system, parties to the transaction must collect personal information to complete the transaction, and bit by currency no longer rely on public key technology accounts system, the two companies are free to generate their own private key, and will work with its corresponding public Key told the payer can receive the funds. Next time use, you can re-generate a pair of public and private transactions. This practice of one-time pad can be done

To a completely anonymous transaction, can not be tracked.

3 low transaction costs

Bit-currency trading is free, very low transaction costs, traders just take a little computer CPU time, storage space and network bandwidth only.

Bit no middleman currency transactions, can not by any financial institution on the Internet easily transfer. And no third party can control or stop bits currency transactions.

Currency of anonymity because bits, no government currency transactions to understand bits, which bits of currency trading can not pay taxes.

4 is not inflation

Algorithm due to the restrictions, the total money supply of bits is controlled, never more than 21 million, so one can not arbitrarily create more bits currency. This restriction avoids the central bank's bad policy and inflation caused by human interference.

5 vulnerability

Bits stored in the computer currency only, with no corresponding entity. Once the computer's hard drive stores bits damaged coins without a backup, computer theft or currency of the U-disk storage bit lost, will never be able to find those bits of money.

 Fourth, the currency of the currency attribute bits

Currency is a new bit of money, not only because some people accept it, in essence, the traditional bit-currency and the currency, especially gold and silver currency has exactly the same characteristics.

According to economic theory, money has five functions: measure of value, means of circulation, means of payment, storage means and the world currency. The coins also have a bit these five functions.

1 measure of value: The value of the bits in the currency it is by consuming large amount of computing power and electricity produced, consumed in the mining process into a bit of work all the coins value.

(2) means of circulation: There are already hundreds of websites to accept bits coins, currency is becoming a bit of general commodity exchange vehicle.

3 storage means: storage of the currency means that the functions of money out of circulation as a representative of the general social wealth is stored up functions. Currency as a means to self-regulate the storage amount of money in circulation. There is no doubt that bit money with this function.

4 means of payment: Due to low bit-currency payment convenience features, at present, in the programmer groups using currency exchange services has become a bit fashionable. With the growing popularity of bit money, goods and services between the ordinary transactions will increasingly use bit-currency.

5 World Currency: RMB bit exist on the Internet, its use has no borders, will not be any state and government control, is very suitable as a means of payment in international trade.

 Fifth, the challenges of the financial system

There is a bit of money existing monetary and financial system subversion. Bit-currency electronic money system than other more ambitious, the founder of bits you want to create a currency is completely independent of the current monetary system of virtual currency system.

Currency in the monetary sense bit exactly the same as monetary gold, silver and other precious metals, but also with precious metals do not have the advantages: First, the bit combination of coins can be arbitrarily divided, two-bit coin is the cost of carry and storage is almost zero, three coins are bit difficult to forge, counterfeit money is almost impossible, the four are less prone to loss.

From the financial point of view, the meaning of money is absolutely extraordinary bit.

First, the bit-currency fixed amount of base money, can not happen artificial inflation. In fact money will remain tight bit, that bit will be long-term appreciation of the currency.

Second, there is no middle bit currency trading institutions to manage, and their anonymity can hardly be traced to the end user, so the currency is likely to be used for bit illegal transactions, such as reselling pirated publications, drugs, and arms.

Third, the bit-currency transactions almost in real time and without charge, from banks and other intermediaries can not get the middle income.

Fourth, as a possible challenge to the sovereignty of monetary currency, it gives people a greater variety of choice in the national government in order to stimulate the economy and junk currency, people can choose to sell the currency sovereign monetary deflation, which from the market strong feedback can be quickly communicated to the central bank, so to re-examine its monetary policy.

 Six recommendations

1 Governments and central banks should face the existence of bit money, take the initiative, the use of the country's massive computing power, suppression of private mining power, the vast majority of money concentrated in the hands of the state bits.

(2) of setting up a bit coin banks, the implementation of the bit in the middle of currency trading institutions, in order to eliminate the anonymity that it can be regulated.

3 bits of currency-based international joint issue credit currency, thus contributing to the establishment of non-sovereign monetary system. With this new international settlement currency to challenge the U.S. hegemony, the international financial system more harmonious and stable.
«Dialcoin.com allows you to purchase immediately by telephone or cell phone small bits of money

The whole thread is TL;DR for me, so maybe someone else answered this, but:

Fucking YES. After all, what the fuck has the Bitcoin community built if the only thing stopping it from being trashed by a large national interest, is disinterest on their part? Absolutely nothing, that's what.

If a large nation with huge resources decided to take an interest in toying with Bitcoin, that'd be awesome. We can put our imaginary money where our mouths are. We can see how the devs, miners and community in general respond to a massive difficulty roller-coaster. No matter what happens, Bitcoin would be better for it.

So if (and what little of the thread I've bothered to wade through, it doesn't seem likely) a large portion of China did decide to fuck with Bitcoin, absolutely - go right ahead.

If China gets onto this, I think the price will go so high that I won't have to work another day in my life. I don't think many of us will have to.

Why bother trying buying/mining to control it when for probably less than $1 million they could manipulate the market up and down between $15 and $1 daily, like a yo yo randomly, making it useless for transactions, and likely end up with much of their money in the end. Almost zero cost destruction. Just the idea they could do that shows how little Bitcoin is a threat to them or any other fiat currency system.

(According to the mtgox order book you could push the price to over $3.85 for about $110k and that's the highest ask right now, which means a quick hit would send it skyrocketing after that)

Satoshi thought that if any government tried to take over the Bitcoin network, other countries would become jealous and compete, resulting in a functional network where no one has >50%. Seems likely in this case: the US wouldn't want China to have exclusive control over a "new global currency", so they would set up an equally large mining operation.

You guys aren't thinking clearly. Let's say we are in a fantastically improbable situation. China cares about something as pathetically insignificant as the bitcoin network.
 
Why should the gov't use this network? That would mean loss of control. A more attractive alternative: Ban it and a create a copy under your control.
Call the new block chain eRMB. Back eRMB with paper RMB.


Now let's compare the two blockchains.

Bitcoin:                                                                                             eRMB:
Extremely Volatile                                                                               Stable Value (predictable, slow inflation, always worth 1 paper RMB)
Legal future uncertain, likely banned in China                                           Firm Legal Standing                                      
Chargeback impossible                                                                         Chargeback impossible
Low Txn Fees                                                                                     Low Txn Fees
Decentralized Mining                                                                            Mining monopoly generates gov't revenue
Psuedonymous, Can Handle Illegal Transactions                                        Reveals personal information, Can Only handle legal transactions

From the government's perspective, Bitcoin get's its ass handed to it by eRMB.
From the legit merchant or consumer's perspective (in China, the US, and elsewhere), Bitcoin get's its ass handed to it by eRMB.
From the criminal or tax evader's perspective, Bitcoin remains attractive.
Maybe Bitcoin could survive this, but any benefits to bitcoin holders are not obvious.

[I'm waiting to move my discussion to ermbtalk.org where one hopes to find fewer libertarian asshats.]

Day traders would LOVE this.  They would have a field day and gladly take their money from them.

Now that is funny (and spot on).

"Jealous" probably isn't the right word for a nation state but "worried, afraid, concerned" would be equivalent. If China started buying bitcoin then no doubt the US would be worried they didn't understand what was going on and would act protectively in the way you suggest.

Also, it occurred to me that bitcoin offers some interesting plays for a country like China with massive US$ holdings. Lets say they used it as a vehicle to recover US$ value upon selling. They sell US$ for BTC and drive the price up to around $1000 and maintain it in that area while speculators around the world take note and want in on the action. Then they sell off their bitcoins for RMB or other currencies.

The speculators that jumped on pretty much ensure they can sell most of their coins before the plunge. They are supremely situated to pump and dump the BTC since they want to rid themselves of the US$ anyway. The biggest problem for them is the market is so small so they couldn't unload very much. In fact, any enterprising non-risk-averse millionaire could play this game pretty easily.

They wouldnt have to put in a buy order for every bitcoin out there at once.  Just nice and slowly , in years,  at reasonable prices to keep a panic from happening.  Even 100$ a coin would still be "reasonable" for them.

I might even consider selling them some of my coins at $100 per coin today if they want - just tell them to PM me if they are interested.

Give some help to China to get in ;D
1) which is the most common black market in china?
2) have customers a mobile phone?
3) which is the most commod OS on these phones?
4) are these ideas useful to this market? ( old phones ? )
SMS: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53371.0
Sound: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51849.0

Governments don't need a digital currency to have all that mining mumbo jumbo. They'd just issue one based on a central transactions database.

Either way, whatever they'll do, it won't be Bitcoin, thus Bitcoin will continue to exist, be it rather underground.

They need less than 20,000 rigs to do that, which cost $20 million dollars. Chinese government's annual tax receipt is $1.5 trillion dollars

It is impossible to "take control of most bitcoins" using computing power alone.

Most bitcoins are in cold storage.  A double spending attack would affect only a small fraction of bitcoins, or it would destroy the current block chain altogether if it persisted for long enough. In which case you are talking about outright destruction, not "facing up to existence".

Either these people failed to RTMF, or this is a bad translation, or it's a fake.

If China wanted to destroy bitcoin I think they could do it. Yes, they have that much juice.

It looks to me like the Chinese authorities have destroyed Bitcoin (in China) before it was invented.  Seems that fewer than one in a million souls in that country have the combination of capability and mindset to employ the solution.

One Chinese I know fairly well is vehemently and viscerally opposed to Bitcoin on principle and steadfastly refuses to learn or understand anything about it.  I have to hypothesis that whatever factors effect her perception are at play with a healthy percentage of the rest of the population.

He's probably talking about using the Chinese supercomputers to mine a majority of the 16.13 million remaining bitcoins.

Which would be marvelous. The price increase would be exponential. I find myself liking our Chinese overlords more and more.

What good would bitcoin be if it were being manipulated by the Chinese government? I think I would sell off at that point. To me that is a fatal flaw. It completely undermines bitcoins strengths.

Heh. Only the means turn you away, you racist. You don't like those filthy Chinese touching your coins? I kid, I kid.

The fact is if China tackles the market, so will many other governments. If the incentive exists for the largest sovereign government to manipulate the currency, it won't be alone.

The rational way to see this is only as mere demand. Governments are just another Bitcoin customer. They just have guns to extort more funds. Dangerous in ways but have faith that competition will keep them in check: China doesn't own the world.

Nobody is conquering the Bitcoin network. It shall remain sovereign as always because everybody is going to want to have a stake in it.

Your choice in Bitcoin suppliers and supporters shall remain and your coins will only be found more valuable. The fantasy we are portraying here can only be good fortune.

And the majority of the fees for the remaining history.

If people desire Bitcoins from the Chinese entirely. I am sure people will happily for service elsewhere, if they so desire it.

Again, there is little to be afraid of here. You people are scared of centralization but there is none to be had. It's not the amount of money nor fees that is relevant but the means that distribute them. The means remain sound and sovereign.

How would adding mining power increase the price?

You're probably thinking of the other attack: buying up coins regardless of the cost. That would make the majority of this forum millionaires  ;D ;D ;D

Gold is manipulated by the Chinese government. Are you selling yours?

Heh, mining equates to bitcoin payouts. If governments begin earning the majority of the Bitcoins, they'll have the means to sell them for high prices. It would be a good return for the taxpayers to say the least -- on a societal level.

There is this black guy I know who is quite violent. I have to hypothesize that whatever factors affect his perception are at play with a healthy percentage of the race.

Asshats. Shameless libertarian asshats.

If there were one non-violent African to every million violent Africans, I might entertain your hypothesis.  Or at least seek some explanation (and without feeling a lot of guilt in doing so.)

I await your hypothesis about why so few Chinese, as a percentage of the population of the country, seem to have an interest in Bitcoin.  Perhaps it is simply their low inflation rate and general satisfaction with the leadership's stewardship of the economy that makes them highly ambivalent to non state sponsored alternatives.  You think?

At least he didn't generalize the whole human race and claim to know how to care for everyone. There's no bigotry greater than that.

People's bank of China don't even buy very much gold, so that they will buy in bitcoin.

Do you know how to use the Chinese internet? Why not? Or surprise me with some cool links.

"The Chinese internet"?  The ghost of Ted Stevens lives on!


  http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/

I'll surprise you with some cool math to boot:

10,000 / 300,000,000 = .0033 %

500 / 1,000,000,000 = .00005%

.0033 / .00005 = 66

So Americans appear to be around 50 times more likely to have Bitcoin clients running than Chinese.

Now why don't you (finally) surprise me with a hypothesis.  There is no requirement for it to have any basis in truth.  It's just an idea which could play a part in explaining the phenomenon and which can be tested against various observations that come up.  There are a multitude of them.

Some reasons to consider:

1) More than 50% of Chinese (who live in the countryside) do not have regular (or often any) internet access.

2) You can buy things on Taobao (the Chinese equivalent of eBay) with zero payment processing charges.

3) The RMB is appreciating and has been a stable currency for many years.


Cheers,

Ian.

See coincula!  That's how it's done.

As with most complex phenomenon, and in fact most simple ones, there are often a number of factors.

CIYAM:  I take some issue with the 'stability' of the RMB.  My friend reports that the inflation rate is alarming and is having a significant negative impact on a lot of people.

True there is indeed an inflation problem but compared with the devaluation of the USD I don't think it is as alarming.

The impact on people that have "middle class" like jobs in large cities has not been very serious but for those eeking out an existence on less than 1000 RMB per month life has become increasingly difficult (which does affect a lot of people but mostly people with very little voice).


Cheers,

Ian.

As a user of the USD, I just don't see it in the economic numbers or in real life.  If anything I see continuing deflation since I've been interested in the real estate market lately, and my wages are such that food and fuel are not a large fractions of my expenses.  I really only detect devaluation because gold prices are going up so fast.

In contrast, my friend who is visiting China right now took a bus out of Chendu because the taxi fare has doubled since she was there a few years ago.  She tells me that the price of pork in Guangzhou is about the same as in the US and people's wages are really not up nearly that amount.

One hell of a lot of USD are being created so there is a clearly devaluation going on, but I think that the money creation is getting sucked into the shadow banking system and exported overseas so we on Main Street USA are not yet seeing it in a major way.  I do expect it to wash in like a tidal wave at some point however.  That is part of the reason I am interested in Bitcoin.

Interesting - I live in Beijing (have done for 5 years now) and the price of a taxi to/from the international airport (one of the bigger taxi drives you are likely to take here) has only gone up by around 15% in that time (from around 60 RMB to 70 RMB going from the airport to the CBD area).

That being said it is correct that the price of food (and pork especially) has increased a lot and wages haven't kept up as much but I haven't noticed any significant drop in the popularity of people going out to eat "Yuxiangrousi" (the most popular pork dish) here. Perhaps people are just buying less new (or "real" brand) clothes instead. ;)


Cheers,

Ian.

Well, price of food going up with stagnant wages has been happening here in the US as well.  It's a natural consequence of the higher fuel prices that all the envirowhackos are cheering about.

Not everyone is interested in Bitcoin for political reasons.

Libertarians tend to be the most vocal proponents of bitcoin, especially on this forum, but I think there might be a a quiet majority of users who really couldn't care less about our libertarian "cause".  They probably just like playing around with new technologies or see a new business opportunity.

Chinese people are people in the end of the day, and not machines.  Just like any human population, they will have a fair share of geeks, technophiles, visionaries, and experimenters among them.  Just like any human population, the majority of them will be conformist and risk averse. 

Perhaps curiosity and questioning of authority is more suppressed in Chinese culture than in American culture, but that doesn't mean that millions of Chinese people don't do those things in private. 

By the way, similar things could be said about German culture, yet there is a very active German speaking bitcoin community.

My friend's trip was from Chendu to around the giant Budda area.  At least a several hour drive.  She says it used to be about $50 and is now about $100.  When I visited Beijing shortly before the Olympics, the Great Wall, and the 'better' part which was a little farther away.  I don't recall exactly how much I paid, but it seems like somewhere around $30 sticks in my mind.  I did take public transportation down to the Peking Man site mostly just to find out for myself what it was like.  The rate was extremely low and I'm sure it must have been highly subsidized.

I do sense that the government controls things (like fuel prices) in a fairly hands-on manner, and also that the government tends to favor Beijing (to the chagrin of Shanghai in particular) and have read such.  I did not get any farther outside of Beijing than that, and have not yet been back.

I was quite amazed at how cheap food was.  It blew me away that a fish could be raised to a decent size, brought to the city alive, and cooked all for a few bucks.  The economics didn't seem to be there, but I never did really get my mind around people doing so much work for so little money.  We in the US are quite spoiled.

lol you think lightly over at current the financial most powerfull country in the world
You seem to forget that china already owns most of us in terms of what they bought, china is more a super power now then the usa would like it to be.
I can buy nothing these days which is not made in china, even so called native companies just put the parts together which almost all are made in china.
And yes if the chinese want they can blow away the whole bitcoin network with their computing power or do you dream that they do not have graphic workstations.
The chinese are everywhere on the planet buying as much as they can, to later have control over every aspect in products we need or worse for the need of china ( energy oil,gas, metals and whatever you can think off )
Bitcoin is succesfull because no governement is controlling it, if the chinese get full control what effect would this have.

If there were a standalone TOR box, you bet it would be manufactured in China. We are all focused on control here, but I think the article is hinting at a good opportunity for China, which is, half jokingly, manufacturing of bitcoins.

If you are planning for long term control of minting, GPU's (and any other general purpose device) lose advantage, fast. China could produce specialized efficient BTC minting machines and start mining on them within months. If you are absolutely sure you will be able to process most of the transactions, and produce most of the coins, it makes sense to make Bitcoin popular for the rest of the world. With luck, you get to take some financial power away from the West with very little cost.

It would cost billions and billions of dollars. It would mean creating the largest computer network ever. Then... No one would use it. We would move to an alt coin and they would be left with nothing. It makes no logical sense whatsoever.

I do not refuse when an employee from the PBC staff proposes to control the bitcoin network. But if you can. Bitcoin technology is not a simple management technology. Leading technology experts are frustrated with tracking and managing terrorists using blockchain to anonymously in their operations. I think this is not workable.

It's more likely a personal opinion. This geek published several articles about how to transfer financial transaction information with the help of satellite or something like that.

I don’t think the Chinese government will use the top supercomputer to calculate
It takes a long time and resources are wasted. For scientists, this is a waste of their time.

I want you to do, try every problem, I like this

amazing!

It's great to be able to do that

That's so cool if it istrue