There are 196 countries in the world, China is one of them

[newIndia]

i am really getting tired of seeing all this talk about China and bitcoin. everyone should start talking about the other 195 countries instead of focusing on what people are doing in China when it comes to bitcoin.

Bitcoin's market cap is bigger than GDP of 60% of those countries. Hence, most of them just does not matter anymore.

[deisik]

the maths, logistics and costs have already been done to death.
 india is not in second place as the best place to mine.
its not about population numbers or land mass or minimum wage. there are other factors in play

due to india being a hot climate and the electric issues and other factors. india is not second place

infact its a couple places in the eastern europe area that come second.

I'm always surprised that Russia isn't more active in mining Bitcoin

There are a few reasons behind this

First of all, people are not very familiar with Bitcoin in Russia overall. Second, China had an advantage before Russia as well as most other countries (barring, maybe, the US) in respect to the ease of getting mining equipment. Basically, China happens to manufacture the equipment used for mining, so it is no surprise that it takes a leading position in Bitcoin mining. And last (but likely not least), wealthy people in Russia are not the same kind of wealthy people in China. Most of their wealth comes from selling natural resources and arms which China is a net importer of, and they just don't feel very interested in Bitcoin and earning profits through Bitcoin mining (when they can happily continue selling oil and natural gas as well as tanks and fighters to the same China)

[Kprawn]

Most of us are deeply invested into this technology... either though hoarding bitcoins that we bought or through businesses that are built around this

technology. Anything that might influence our investment or our businesses will attract much attention. China has the major share of Bitcoin mining

and they seem to buy most of the coins. { Some say, 80% + of the bitcoin transactions are coming from China } This might be because they have

zero trading fees on these exchanges, but whatever the reason is... MOST bitcoins goes through Chinese hands. China has this position over some

other commodities too, so this is nothing new.  

[BrewMaster]

{ Some say, 80% + of the bitcoin transactions are coming from China }

that is not bitcoin transaction, that is what their exchanges report as trading volume. and it is as you said mostly because there is 0 fees for trading and also i do believe that they are reporting lots of fake volume to compete with each other.

[digaran]

China as a place yes but not as a government, remember bitcoin shouldn't be considered as a currency which a government decides the fate of it's value and the moment that happens we could kiss goodbye to decentralization, but still china doesn't have +51% of the network hash rate or even if they did it's not focused in just one mining farm, that's something right?

[Mometaskers]

It's just the sheer volume of bitcoins they mine there and not to mention that the Chinese are also very active in using bitcoin and handling transactions. If these are physical coins, a hundred Chinese hands have probably touched it before someone else from another country do. The government currently have no control on bitcoin whatsoever but simply because of the large amount of volume of bitcoins in there, any event there can have a large impact on bitcoin, impact on the rest of us. A rumor of someone trying to make some policy regarding cryptos, an earthquake, it can be anything.

So no, we cannot not talk about China when talking about bitcoin.

[franky1]

I'm always surprised that Russia isn't more active in mining Bitcoin

There are a few reasons behind this

First of all, people are not very familiar with Bitcoin in Russia overall. Second, China had an advantage before Russia as well as most other countries (barring, maybe, the US) in respect to the ease of getting mining equipment. Basically, China happens to manufacture the equipment used for mining, so it is no surprise that it takes a leading position in Bitcoin mining. And last (but likely not least), wealthy people in Russia are not the same kind of wealthy people in China. Most of their wealth comes from selling natural resources and arms which China is a net importer of, and they just don't feel very interested in Bitcoin and earning profits through Bitcoin mining (when they can just continue selling oil and natural gas as well as tanks and fighters to the same China)

seems not only is the logic of difference between citizen and government too much for people to grasp, but geography too.
russia is not even in europe.. so not sure why russia was mentioned... not even sure why governments arms trading is mentioned in relation to citizens choice of using a different currency.. russian government selling guns to china govrnment has nothing at all to do with individual peoples choice or to do with the topic of bitcoin.

but anyway

russia is not number 2 of best places to manufacture miners and mine...
however if you want to play the skin colour racial biased game and class a few individuals as being the same as a whole country.

to answer the question why isnt russia more active. and if china just got there first...

"russia" has been involved in bitcoin far long before "china".
BTC-E has been running since 2011 afterall.
vitalic buterin got involved in 2011 too

you may now say that i only stated 2 small examples of 2 small entities and then whitewashed it to sound like i was trying to coat the whole country as being involved..

well i hope you see the reverse psychology of it

[DooMAD]

Huzzah, I was hoping I wasn't the only one.  It's becoming ridiculous how paranoid some people are about it.  I'm with the OP 100% on this one.

I don't see any threads where people are getting hysterical about the US having ~25% of the reachable nodes.  Where's the batshit mental conspiracy theories about an American takeover, I wonder?  Oh yes, that's right, apparently it's only China we can't trust because they're the only nation where everyone is a drone colluding in a hive mind with no free will of their own.  The Great Firewall of China beams orders from the hive queen directly into their interlinked minds.   

^{(hint for the dim: there are literally no serious arguments in the prior paragraph, I am purely taking the piss, so please don't bother replying about American nodes, I can assure you neither I, nor anyone else cares, so shut up in advance)}

Blatant sarcasm aside, there's just too much stupid on this forum for me the take the China "issue" seriously anymore.  If I see people needlessly fretting over China, I just work under the assumption they don't have two braincells to rub together and discard whatever nonsense they're spouting.  Enough is enough already.

[deisik]

I'm always surprised that Russia isn't more active in mining Bitcoin

There are a few reasons behind this

First of all, people are not very familiar with Bitcoin in Russia overall. Second, China had an advantage before Russia as well as most other countries (barring, maybe, the US) in respect to the ease of getting mining equipment. Basically, China happens to manufacture the equipment used for mining, so it is no surprise that it takes a leading position in Bitcoin mining. And last (but likely not least), wealthy people in Russia are not the same kind of wealthy people in China. Most of their wealth comes from selling natural resources and arms which China is a net importer of, and they just don't feel very interested in Bitcoin and earning profits through Bitcoin mining (when they can just continue selling oil and natural gas as well as tanks and fighters to the same China)

seems not only is the logic of difference between citizen and government too much for people to grasp, but geography too.
russia is not even in europe.. so not sure why russia was mentioned... not even sure why governments arms trading is mentioned in relation to citizens choice of using a different currency.. russian government selling guns to china govrnment has nothing at all to do with individual peoples choice or to do with the topic of bitcoin

Russia is part of Europe but it is not entirely in Europe (you obviously ditched your geography lessons). As usual, you don't get the intricacy and complexity just one level below what is on the surface. First, it is not the government itself that sells arms and natural resources. You could claim that the arms trade is monopolized by the state, but it is still separate companies engaged in that activity. And it is obviously not the case with natural resources which are extracted, processed and sold by non-government companies (Gasprom, for example, is closely affiliated with the government but it is still a publicly traded company). Second (and this is where you fail to deliver), the money that these companies and the government receive does trickle down to lower tiers, which the wealthy part of Russian population basically consists of. In short, the rich Russians are rich because they get their share of the resource rent, and they don't give a fuck about Bitcoin as long as their cash inflow doesn't run dry...

I removed the color from the posts since red is reserved for moderators if I'm not mistaken (and advise you to do the same)