The amount of tax paid by companies is very high, including the Enterprise Income Tax (as high as 25%), and the VAT (normally 17%). The personal income tax (progressive, the maximum cap is 45%) is also pre-paid before one gets her salary. There are surely many places where people could benefit from Bitcoin.

The cost of banking is also not zero, and invoked quite a lot of complaints in the last several years. If your account is opened in city A and you want to withdraw cash in city B, you might probably pay fees (in my experience, around 0.5%). The transaction fee between different banks is also non-neglectable.

I'm sorry the best English material I could provide is the wiki page. This link plays "neutral" by mixing the Chinese government's opinion into it. There are tons of articles and evidences in Chinese to argue for her innocence.

Most of people in China, including her loaners, don't believe she's guilty. The state machine's conclusion, that she had no ability to pay back in the future, from the fact that half the money was missing, was arbitrary. And more importantly, the whole dispute was a topic of civil law. She should by no means have been considered as a criminal anyway.

Indeed. But I could imagine the furious react of the government when they identify Bitcoin as a threat. They would demonize it in TVs and newspapers most of which are owned by the state. They would randomly centesimate some people for their use of Bitcoin. They would also ban the ports.

But the good part, is that I don't think the Chinese government is capable of launching a 51% attack. At least the probability is very low. They are too inefficient to do such a thing. If the hardware cost of 51% attack is X dollars. They would waste at least 100*X dollars on constructing beautiful buildings for new government employees, organizing banquets for bureaucrats, and bribing a bunch of economists and scientists to justify their deeds in the media.

Note that Hong Kong is not a province. It's a Special Administrative Region that uses the British-style common law and has a local government of which Beijing only has a limited control. A lot of things that are perfectly fine in Hong Kong are serious crimes in the rest parts of China.

Chinese people don't particularly dread 4's. They just don't like to have them in celebrations very much. (I'm a Chinese and I live in China.)

In reality, the Chinese government is insanely afraid of the circulation of non-fiat currencies. Fundraising and financial companies in China are also highly regulated. An enterpreneur had just been sentenced to death just because she promised a high interest rate to her loaners(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Ying). This is why services like Bitcoinica wouldn't exist in China for at least a while.

No one could tell the exact contribution to trading volumes in other exchanges. But I briefly
know quite a few serious miners in China. They use either btcchina or mtgox.

The volume of Chinese Bitcoin exchange(www.btcchina.com) in the past 30 days is 6452.13 BTCs.

The notes are also a part of that mail.

I received a spamming mail today, which is sent from something called "Federal Bureau of Investigation <info@fbi.gov>".
The whole text is as follows:

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Anti-Terrorist And Monitory Crime Division.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation.
J.Edgar.Hoover Building Washington Dc
Customers Service Hours / Monday To Saturday
Office Hours Monday to Saturday:

Dear Beneficiary,
 
Series of meetings have been held over the past 7 months with the secretary general of the United Nations Organization. This ended 3 days ago. It is obvious that you have not received your fund which is to the tune of $3,000,000.00 due to past corrupt Governmental Officials who almost held the fund to themselves for their selfish reason and some individuals who have taken advantage of your fund all in an attempt to swindle your fund which has led to so many losses from your end and unnecessary delay in the receipt of your fund.
 
The National Central Bureau of Interpol enhanced by the United Nations and Federal Bureau of Investigation have successfully passed a mandate to the current president of Nigeria his Excellency President Good luck Jonathan to boost the exercise of clearing all foreign debts owed to you and other individuals and organizations who have been found not to have receive their Contract Sum, Lottery/Gambling, Inheritance and the likes. Now how would you like to receive your payment? Because we have two method of payment which is by Check or by ATM card?
 
ATM Card: We will be issuing you a custom pin based ATM card which you will use to withdraw up to $3,000 per day from any ATM machine that has the Master Card Logo on it and the card have to be renewed in 4 years time which is 2016. Also with the ATM card you will be able to transfer your funds to your local bank account. The ATM card comes with a handbook or manual to enlighten you about how to use it. Even if you do not have a bank account.
 
Check: To be deposited in your bank for it to be cleared within three working days. Your payment would be sent to you via any of your preferred option and would be mailed to you via UPS. Because we have signed a contract with UPS which should expire in next three weeks you will only need to pay $90 instead of $420 saving you $330 So if you pay before the three weeks 2012 you save $330 Take note that anyone asking you for some kind of money above the usual fee is definitely a fraudsters and you will have to stop communication with every other person if you have been in contact with any. Also remember that all you will ever have to spend is $90.00 nothing more! Nothing less! And we guarantee the receipt of your fund to be successfully delivered to you within the next 48hrs after the receipt of payment has been confirmed.
 
 
Note: Everything has been taken care of by the Federal Government of Nigeria, The United Nation and also the FBI and including taxes, custom paper and clearance duty so all you will ever need to pay is $90.
 
DO NOT SEND MONEY TO ANYONE UNTIL YOU READ THIS: The actual fees for shipping your ATM card is $420 but because UPS have temporarily discontinued the C.O.D which gives you the chance to pay when package is delivered for international shipping We had to sign contract with them for bulk shipping which makes the fees reduce from the actual fee of $420 to $90 nothing more and no hidden fees of any sort!
 
To effect the release of your fund valued at $3,000,000.00 you are advised to contact our correspondent in Africa the delivery officer John Will with the information below,
 
Email: fofinvestigation@yahoo.cn
Telephone: +234-1-2130615

You are advised to contact him with the informations as stated below:
 
1) Your full Name:
2) Home/Cell Phone:
3) Full Home address
4) Occupation:
5) Age:
6) Sex:

Preferred Payment Method (ATM / Cashier Check)
 
Upon receipt of payment the delivery officer will ensure that your package is sent within 24 working hours. Because we are so sure of everything we are giving you a 100% money back guarantee if you do not receive payment/package within the next 24hrs after you have made the payment for shipping.
 
Yours sincerely,
Martins Clough
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535
 
Note: Do disregard any email you get from any impostors or offices claiming to be in possession of your ATM CARD, you are hereby advice only to be in contact with John Will of the ATM CARD CENTRE who is the rightful person to deal with in regards to your ATM CARD PAYMENT and forward any emails you get from impostors to this office so we could act upon and commence investigation.

This explanation is very reasonable to me.

Thanks. I'm considering to buy a whole year's issues now.

We assume that all of the following happens after the day when 21 million BTCs have all been issued.

X=$332.9 million (The price of a Boeing 747-8 in 2011)
each BTC will worth $15.85

X=$1billion (The construction cost of the Roscoe Wind Farm, estimated)
each BTC will worth $47.62

X=$27.320billion (Ebay's total assets in 2011)
each BTC will worth $1300.95

X=$121.6billion (Vietnam's GDP in 2011)
each BTC will worth $5790.5

X=$8.48trillion (Total price of mined gold in the end of 2011, estimated)
each BTC will worth $403809.5

Good work. You guys are so cool! I believe that Bitcoinica could attract even more people if you support withdrawal via Alipay as well.

Do you have future plans of buying BFL Singles? It seems that GPU mining will become less and less profitable soon or later.

It seems that Bitcoinica is under Chinese localization now! Amazing speed & efficiency, Zhou!

Omg this is fantastic! I believe that the main threshold that stops people in China from buying Bitcoin is that they don't know how to deposit via bitinstant or dwolla. Supporting Alipay is definitely great news for Bitcoin. Thanks Zhou!

Some summary:

1. Zhoutong has been indeed making money.
2. He himself doesn't prefer short-time speculation on Bitcoin.
3. Bitcoinica might still be English-only for a long time.

The original author's id is Derson, according to that website. I've no idea if he has any accounts of bitcointalk though.

(Translated from: http://bitebi.cc/archives/1601.html. English is not my first-language, so please endure my verbal and grammar errors )

I came across Zhoutong tonight.

I was using my cell phone to watch the BTC price. Then I received a text message: "Hi, are you the Bitcoinica user XXX? I was examining the AML file you submitted just now."

I: Who's that?

Z: I'm Zhoutong... I happen to be in Guangzhou at this moment.

I: Zhoutong the Singapore guy?

Z: In fact I'm a Chinese. I was studying in Singapore when I was interviewed. Of course I'm that guy, otherwise how could I know your information? I was processing them minutes ago.

I: Is there any risk that Bitcoinica might be forced to close?

Z: Not now. The company has several other guys that are in charge besides me (but I can't disclose their identities yet). In addition, we have hired a few lawyers to make sure that we don't break the law. Now Bitcoinica has got the license of providing the financial service. According to the local legislation, we must verify our customers' identities.

I: Do you intend to make a Chinese version of Bitcoinica?

Z: Not yet. Our website was not designed with multi-language support from the start.

I: How did you come up with the idea of Bitcoinica? Were you majoring in finance? It is a very cool exchange.

Z: Hehe, thanks.

I: Do you often stay in China now?

Z: No. I'm about to study in Australia. I haven't gone to college yet. I became a stock speculator in 2006, and started writing Rails applications in 2009, therefore I sort of have some experiences in this. My business is very successful now, I've already earned my tuition.

I: I dived into the stock market in 2002. But I think Bitcoin is the best object I can find, for both investment and speculation.

Z: Hehe, it's certainly a good bet for long-time investment. But the risk of short-time speculation is way too high, I think. For speculation, I like foreign currencies and futures more.

I: Hehe, I find that my account is not allowed to choose the 10:1 leverage.

Z: It should be OK now. Only those transactions larger than $2000 are prohibited to do 10:1.

I: Haha, I hope I wouldn't be Zhoutonged then.

Z: ... Control your risk. Don't use high leverages. And don't put all your life savings into it.

I: Is my trading volume in the top of Bitcoinica?

Z: No, but it's large anyway. Both long and short volumes in Bitcoinica exceed 55000 now.

Then I asked him for his QQ(a popular IM tool in China) number, and dragged him into a discussion group:80041991)

Tuzi: Master Zhou, could I ask why you created Bitcoinica?

Shenzhoubahao: I find that placing orders in Bitcoinca is quite blind-minded. The price information given is less than that in the stock market.

Z: I started Bitcoinica because I'm not satisfied with other exchanges. I have traded foreign currencies before, and found that Mt.Gox does not have mechanisms to stop loss(forced liquidation). Nor it supports margin trading or short trading. I wanted to implement these features, while the only way to do it is to gather money from customers and let them borrow and lend from each other. We are quite like foreign currency exchanges, which also only provide a limited quantity of price information, namely two prices. In fact Bitcoinica will give some of its orders to Mt.Gox. It's called hedging. Nevertheless, the internal trading volume of our exchange is also very large already. But still, 30%-70% of the orders in Mt.Gox are from Bitcoinica every day.

cnbtcnews: It would be perfect if you support Alipay(A Paypal-like service in China) and the Chinese language. I guess it will attract many Chinese people then.

Z: Hehe, we didn't start with multi-language support in mind, so it is somehow technically difficult to modify the software. But surely I will consider.

We found that Zhoutong will soon be 18 as we were chatting.

cnbtcnews: What's your opinion in html5?

Z: I have no doubt that it will become mainstream. But the difference among browser standards are so big that we couldn't have a proper common specification.

cnbtcnews: Will you make Bitcoinica a cross-platform website using html5?

Z: Doesn't it support all mainstream browsers already? Even iPhone and iPad are supported. I use them to visit Bitcoinica myself.

cnbtcnews: Will you have an iPhone-specific client?

Z: No short-time plans of this yet. The cost is too high, and I have no experience in cell-phone development.