Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday I attended the first Bitcoin meetup group in China.
Photo here: https://twitter.com/#!/rogerkver/status/199841022946185216/photo/1/large (https://twitter.com/#!/rogerkver/status/199841022946185216/photo/1/large)
It was organized with only one day notice,  but we had over 30 people show up.
Some traveled several hours all the way from Hong Kong for the meeting.
The Chinese version of Twitter,  Weibo, was buzzing with talk about the Bitcoin meeting.
One of my vendors who attended the meeting emailed me today saying:

Thanks for your last night's dinner and your introduction of bitcoin. I'm very interested in bitcoin even if I'm not quite understand how it workds. Anyway I'd like to trade with you through bitcorn in furture.
Let's talk about the 200 pcs of Finisar FCMJ-8521-3 GLC-T? How many bitcorns would you buy them from me? :) Thanks!


I suspect many of my vendors in China will now be much more open to the idea of using Bitcoins for their normal day to day business transactions.
I also know that there are currently talks between Russian telecom companies and Chinese suppliers about conducting their payments via Bitcoin.
 

In the meeting the following problem & Bitcoin solution was brainstormed,  but most of this idea came from Yifu Guo.


1) Chinese love to Gamble
2) Macau has gambling
3) Chinese are not allowed to bring more than $6,000 USD worth of currency to Macau.
4)Chinese cash deposits for Bitcoin
5)?????
6) PROFIT!


The ideal way for something like this to occur is for a Macau based casino to open their own bitcoin exchange.
It could be open to casino customers only, or to people around the world.

WIN: Customers would love it,  because they can bring as much money to gamble with as they want.
WIN: Casinos would love it,  because customers can bring as much money to gamble with as they want.

I can't think of any reason why anyone involved wouldn't like this idea.
Myself and some of my Chinese friends intend to approach Macau casinos about this idea.

In order for this to become a reality we need:

1. An easy way for anyone in China to buy any amount of Bitcoins.
2. Casinos to allow cash IN/OUT via Bitcoins.

For #1
Bitinstant.com (http://Bitinstant.com) would like to allow everyone in China to be able to buy Bitcoins,  but we needs some help finding the right partner company in China.

It will need the following requirements:

1) No Chargebacks
2) Easily available across China.
3) Allows for automatic communication with the Bitinstant system via API.


Can anyone recommend a company like this in China?


For #2
I suspect we only need to convince the Casinos that #1 is already in place.

Please add your thoughts or suggestions to the above idea.
Feel free to email me at roger@memorydealers.com
I also do my best to tweet about interesting Bitcoin developments as they happen.
Follow me @rogerkver

Bitcorn ? dont let monsanto know about it.
https://i.imgur.com/VXx16.jpg

I think it's a good idea,
Bitcoinica once add AliPay as funding methods,
but it disappeared later. Wonder why?

Alipay does not allow payments to be used for Currency exchange.
If you contact someone privately,  they will likely sell you Bitcoinica credit for Alipay.

Is there a Chinese language bitcoin wallet you can recommend?
My vendor is ready for me to pay him with Bitcoins!

NO. Maybe btcchina.com.
I once asked piuk, but he's not ready for i18n 

Let me guess which day Roger held this meeting:

https://i.imgur.com/zl0Xf.png

 - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/btcnCNY#rg10zigDailyzczsg2012-04-28zeg2012-05-10zm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

Some clients have chinese translations.  MultiBit is one.

I know Bitcoinica can be used as a hosted Ewallet and has localization (choose language in the top-right):
 - http://www.bitcoinica.com

I think the reason Alipay does not allow this kind of payments, is because it fears the involved government regulation. Alipay is too large a target.
It is very unlikely that the right partner company in China exists at all.

These are very good news you bring, MemoryDealer.


You're right about people involved. But, you know, there are these people which are not involved but love to mind other people's business. There's a potential "LOSE: The Chinese government will hate it, because people would be disobeying them" in your list.

Let's just hope Macau's casinos and bitcoin exchangers in mainland China are faster than the Chinese government, so that if they ever try to forbid anything, it's already too late.

Smart people (a lot of them & getting smarter fast) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17585201) + Bitcoins = Exciting/Interesting times

GLOBAL EDUCATION RANKINGS

Pisa tests are taken by 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science. Previous leaders in these subjects:

    2000: Finland, Japan, South Korea
    2003: Finland, Hong Kong, Finland
    2006: South Korea, Taipei, Finland
    2009: Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai

We've run into similar issues regarding the Chinese being restricted in spending their currency outside their borders (for an entirely different business opportunity).  After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that you need to get a domestic exchange going in China and people like yourself need to start using Bitcoin to buy things from the Chinese (so they can obtain more Bitcoin to use on their local exchanges).  Since Chinese currency isn't very usable outside China, it's unlikely that many people outside China will offer to sell Bitcoins in exchange for Yuan (but maybe speculators will).  So, you need domestic sellers of Bitcoin and for their to be sellers, they need to have Bitcoins to sell.

If you start paying some of your Chinese vendors in Bitcoin and find someone to run a domestic exchange, I think that would be a necessary prerequisite to making Bitcoin available to the Chinese for spending when they travel abroad (Macau or elsewhere).  And from what I gather, many Chinese have this problem when traveling and would love to have a way of converting their Yuan into something that is spendable outside China.

Now, there is a 2009 law that makes it illegal in China to use virtual currencies to buy real world goods…and you are skirting around their capital controls…so anyone engaging in this activity in China needs to be aware of the risks involved.

As of this moment, the latest version of Multibit (v0.3.4) has 50% coverage in Chinese. All the core functionality is covered, but new features (such as exchange ticker integration) and some wallet related text is still in need of updating.

We anticipate getting these translations updated soon so feel free to promote MultiBit worldwide ;D

Which is exactly why trying to create a buzz is the wrong idea. Here nice and quiet= ignored by the government. Buzz=attention and trouble.
Nice and quiet stuff here can grow, gain traction and eventually become mainstream as long as it doesn't step on anyone's toes.

However it requires an icebreaker deal similar to what Roger mentions in the telecom negotiating with suppliers here once that kind of precedent is set more steps can be taken.

The TV show from Guanxi province Finway was so good to share on here last year (can't figure out the correct search string) states clearly that you're in multiple violations of multiple laws and policies if you're involved in this kind of trade inside China.

You don't need to worry about having local btc sellers. People looking for arbitrage opportunities will do the job of moving bitcoins in or out of China as necessary.

Isn't using a credit card an alternative to having more than $6000.

I guess that, if you cannot enter with >$6k, then you can't transfer >$6k either. And credit cards leave a clear trail, so better not use them to break such law.

It is not quite as straight forward as that for Chinese card holders.
Have a look at this list from ICBC (a big Chinese bank) for what you can and cannot use one of its cards for:

http://www.icbc.com.cn/ICBC/Bank%20Card/Important%20Notices/Precautions%20for%20Card%20Use%20Outside%20China/ (http://www.icbc.com.cn/ICBC/Bank%20Card/Important%20Notices/Precautions%20for%20Card%20Use%20Outside%20China/)

Use in gambling transactions is prohibited, but you can use it to pay your vet bills!
The yuan is not (yet) freely convertible hence the capital controls.

And precisely what would such arbitrageurs outside of China do with the Yuan they purchase with their bitcoins?  Normally, the arbitrageur would need to wire/convert the Yuan back into USD and then buy back more bitcoins than they originally sold.  But China has strict controls on such transfers and exchange.  The problems that people in China have with spending their Yuan outside China are exactly the same problems that will impede such arbitrage.  Hence the need to create a domestic exchange of bitcoins for Yuan.

I think there would also be benefits in such an exchange to currency traders that might want trade Yuan against other currencies.  They could sell dollars for bitcoins, send the bitcoins to the Chinese bitcoin exchange, and sell the bitcoins for Yuan to hold in their account.  Then reverse that trade as they see fit.  Given there there are such strict controls on trading Yuan for other currencies on the free market, I bet you could make a fortune doing it if you could do it in large enough quantities…you buy Yuan after interventions force the exchange rate back in line with the USD, then sell as it rises and in advance of another intervention.

Your 100% right.

We touched on this at the Summit. Chinese have tight controls over their Renminbi currency.

Finway has just updated the Simplified Chinese translation of MultiBit, including all the most recent additions (including the currency ticker).

There is a screen shot here:
http://multibit.org/postImages/simplifiedChinese.png (http://multibit.org/postImages/simplifiedChinese.png)

It will be available in the next release (v0.3.5) which should be in a day or two.

Edit: MultiBit v0.3.5 - with finway's Simplified Chinese translation - is now on multibit.org (http://multibit.org)

The incentives to circumvent such controls would increase as the arbitrage opportunity increases. People would carry cash from mainland to Hong Kong if that's profitable.

Granted, we may see some price disparities between btc prices in China and outside of it, but IMHO it's not with a "lack of btc supply" that we need to worry when we talk China. I mean, their Great Firewall has successfully blocked Tor. Technically, there's nothing stopping them from blocking the bitcoin network either.

Firstly, the icbc card there says you can use it to buy meals. so set up a 'restaurant' in macau with ridiculously overpriced egg rolls. each egg roll comes with a piece of paper inside that happens to have the private keys to some bitcoins. lol. ha ha ha ha.

next problem ... i'll accept your yuan currency in the mail .. will send you bitcoin back to the address specified in your envelope. 15% fee. will do the reverse too (once I got some yuan in my hands lol). I'm in Victoria BC. This should be fun hahaa.

I'm using TOR just fine from inside China right now.
It has no problem connecting at all.

I also have some other BIG news that I will post tomorrow.
If implemented,  it will guarantee that the bitcoin network can not be blocked.

Oooh do tell, can we have a sneak preview? What tech, IPv6? DNS tunneling? UDP?

This depends on what city you're in and which ISP you're using. Try doing so from a "second-tier" city that has had any kind of civil unrest recently and you'll find it absolutely blocked unless you have access to an as of yet unidentified bridge or node and even those get killed of very quickly in "lock down" zones. Open VPN  doesn't even work from several major cities that I know of.

It involves adding 150,000 new nodes to the bitcoin network each month,  and it is totally legal.
I've been doing bitcoin every waking moment for nearly a week straight in China.
I need to get some rest now,  but I will do a full write up with a post in the morning.

Good to know the block is not general. I thought it was applied to the entire country.

How can you guarantee such a thing?
I mean, unless you found a way to decentralized ISPs or to provide satellite connection to all those living in China, they're still subject to whatever their government impose on their ISPs. And that's a government that really doesn't give a shit about freedom of expression or whatever.
Technically, they could go as far as switching their firewall to "white-list" mode and block everything which is not previously authorized. People are already used with such tyrannical kind of censorship in meatspace, anyways. Where I live, you need to be white-listed to own a gun, to drive a car, to attend to schools/university.... even to be a baker or to build a house in your own fucking land. For almost anything you want to do, you have to be white-listed. And yeah, to own a television channel or any other important press vehicle, you also need to be white-listed. They just need to adapt the twisted reasoning they use to justify such things in meatspace to the Internet to get people to accept it. Actually, the Chinese government in particular doesn't even need to mind much about such "acceptance"....

But well, I'm still curious about what "resilience method" you've come up with, as it's probably an improvement, nonetheless. :)

there are a significant # of currency traders who would want to get their hands on Yuan.  i myself was looking into this back in 2005-07 when the US was significantly debasing the USD vs. Yuan.  there were some real reasons to think the Yuan would skyrocket back then.

way to go Roger.  keep up the good work.

yup, this is really exciting for bitcoin!

you impress a room full of chinese people about bitcoin, and everyone in that room will tell a room full of people about it, and it'll spread like wildfire!

$35 bitcoin here we come! :D

Correct, there needs to be a domestic exchange...

I am sure that if Bitcoin becomes common in China, then they will make it illegal to buy and sell bitcoins. That's a natural decision if they want to preserve control. 

maybe can be useful information for Ewallet
Kindle 3G Works globally including China Great Firewall

So… if bitcoin becomes exceedingly useful in f.ex. China - more so that in other countries - won't sooner or later the market move all the bitcoins there? What mechanism ensures there's an even/sustainable distribution of the 21 mill bitcoins? History has seen one sided flow of gold and silver before?

Arbitrage.

no.  speculators from round the world would want to get in on that action.

Well, crap.

Here I've been investing all this time in carrots, when it's Bitcorn that people want.

Why? Why would it happen?

Cant you just take your credit card with to Macao, and withdraw an arbitrage amount of US$ to then take to the C4$iNos??
--> no credit card use for gambling

Sorry if that was already mentioned earlier here

I'm sure if your banking with a Chinese bank they monitor the ATM's within Macau, no matter the currency.

The only way to bypass it is to either bring in cash physically are use a protocol that bypasses such networks ie. Bitcoin 

If the price of a Bitcoin is higher in China than in the US, and this persists, then yes, Bitcoins will keep moving to China.

So what?

Of course, in real life, if the coins are all being bought up by Chinese, then demand for coins elsewhere will rise, the price will follow, and an equilibrium will be achieve.

"Distribution of coins" is a full non-issue. There is nothing a market is better at than distributing friction-less commodities where they ought to go.

fixed that ;)

da2ce7 and xelister have been working on "btcfn" almost a year ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2312.0. don't know what came of it. I love the idea, though.

You can fairly easily transfer funds to a private individual in Maccau or an educational institution but that's about it. Transferring funds to a company requires invoices and a ton of paperwork  >:(

I just posted the other idea / project

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80531.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80531.0)

In Macau, you can easily use your credit card to buy a gift and then it will be magically turned into chips on the casino table.

I think that a big opportunity for bitcoin in China is with International Chinese students.

Bitcoin makes it very easy and cheap for them to move money via btcChina.com into Bitcoin and them sell them on a local exchange in Europe or US.  

If Chinese students were aware of bitcoin they would not hesitate to use it as they wouldn't need to move thousands of dollars all at once to cover their living expenses etc and could just move money as and when they needed it. Their parents could budget over the year rather than having to have all the money in place at the start.
Also there are plenty of Chinese Computer Science undergraduates - they would be the best people to seed the idea of using bitcoin in this way amongst their fellow Chinese student friends.

In fact once students start using bitcoin in this way, an enterprising company could start selling student materials for bitcoin directly.

Anyone live near a university with a large Chinese student population?  
(of course it's not just Chinese students who could benefit from this, but this is a thread about Bitcoin in China)

First attempt at it didn't go so well:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8492.0

http://news.yahoo.com/fed-clears-chinas-first-us-bank-takeover-012927575.html

Looks like China is making inroads into the US market.  Not sure exactly what this means for the relationship between USD & yuan.

it's good news for bitcoin in china

If you want to start anything Bitcoin for China, then you should give it a go in WenZhou where the government watches but does very little to interfere with the areas progress. This location is very progressive for businesses and currently there is a large underground economy.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-04/27/content_15154943.htm

Only 6k? Then how do the high rollers play in the huge poker games there?

Locals can bring in as much money as they want. They probably hire someone to carry their bags. ;)

Strange, I "transferred" 10,000 USD equivalent RMB from my Bank of China account in China to the one in America.  I don't think I really transfered it as it was the same account number and bank.

How the hell did I miss this thread? I'm halfway through the first post and hooked, but tire. Calling it a night. Will read this thread in morn (damn, it is morn--I'm fucked...again http://www.iconwild.com/smilies/tired/tired-smiley-013.gif)

~Bruno~

Whats stopping someone from say bringing in a $100k diamond and selling it in Macau for RMB to gamble? And vice-versa to get > $6k out of the country?

Nice idea - Macau is a wildly fun place, people from all over South East Asia, East Asia and other parts are there.

The big problem with Macau gambling for China is the number of corrupt officials who go down with corrupt money and make China look bad, the renmin get pissed off and understandably upset. Most of the cash comes out of GuangDong. If the service you were offering was seen to be keeping an eye out for corrupt officials and working with the central government to an extent then it's likely they'll come round to the idea. Chinese are pragmatic, they know this is going to happen - best route is try and have some control and influence over it.