Answer to “Who are trading bitcoin in China” and “What will Chinese government do”
China probably got more attention than it deserves. Jan 7th's crash has nothing to do with China when many eyes are looking at China.
I came to get used to some of the impatient audience here. For them I prepared a one line short answer right after each question.
Who are trading bitcoin in China?Short answer: no one, i.e. zero percent of population. (It's China.)
I was online for a few days on my 3 subscribed bitcoin-QQ groups and there are very few discussion about bitcoins, except messages from vendors and platforms. Noisy as before, but topic changed. Everyone are talking about alternative crypto-currencies, dozens of them, much of these Chinese imitations without an English website on their own.
This article provided honest information and no apparent mis-interpretation - considering the culture gap it is an unusal quality for English articles:
What’s really going on in the Chinese Bitcoin communityThis article answered well about the diversity of the traders. For the majority, the article says they are "opportunistic investors who have no ideological ties to Bitcoin and whose technical understanding of the currency is fuzzy at best".
It is easy to understand why the Chinese imitations look no different to the eyes of these traders: they have neither the ideologe tie nor the technical understanding of the difference. And since the government is opressing bitcoin, the imitations are more attractive now. Many created the same myth like bitcoin created the early days, but are just pyramid schemes with new names.
This majority group used to be the vocal one on QQ and they likely influnced the world for a month or two. Without them China is not not be the most influnential market. They are leaving.
I didn't do any data research to verify if the trade volume reduction match the change of topic forum/QQ topic, but in case these group are still holding, perhaps because they bought at 1000USD, then you want to have some description of this group. Here are some beyond the rich detail offered in above-mentioned TechInAsia article.
They are youngsters of working class (age<35) with grudge against society (but no anger, just sad miserable powerless grudge, unlike the combination of anger and grudge that is often seen in news reports about the western world). The popular idea: a living is made by hard working, and a fate by opportunity. The generation before them, could simply buy a house witfh loan, and profit 10 times than the loan itself, as real estate price rises (some call it bubble); the generation even before them, was living in communism hence has no wealth to worry about. This generation got nothing. The reality is that you don't have a hope of buying a local house if you are a Beijing working class (purchase-rent-rate is 1000 times in many corners). Individual is powerless when they face the society. They are in denial stage, believing their time would come, if they are bold enough to capture the opportunity that was RIGHTFULLY theirs - bitcoin fills in, but other schemes can do too. That's not a picture of all Chinese: certainly there are Chinese who believe in honest money but they didn't buy bitcoin.
They are also emotional. Let me improvise a typical paragraph that may come from a trader:
"Mom is worried, 'cos the news says bad things. I told her not to. We will see the good days; we will by a flat in Beijing like the rich guys do. My father will be able to rest in peace knowing we are not in poverty. When we visit dad's tomb next year he will be so proud, because by that time (the price of a coin) will be 10000. It will. It has to, because I firmly believe."
If you think Chinese won the world stupitility competition, then you haven't read "Money Game" (Smith Adam) and "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". All ethic groups are doing fine in the competition.
(I personally think this question is not as important as the next one, of
how the government would act.)
