Courtesy of jaysabi for posting from one of my favorite endoftimes sites, ZeroHedge, a partial explanation for increased Chinese participation which doesn't involve MMM.
Bitcoin, at $444, is now up over 100% since we suggested, in early September, it would become the conduit for Chinese capital outflows following China's crackdown on capital controls. This afternoon's sudden BIS-induced plunge, taking the virtual currency down $50, has been entirely retraced and more as BTCC (China's leading Bitcoin Exchange) announced it will now accept direct deposits (making it significantly easier for Chinese to rotate their Yuan deposits into the virtual currency and out of the potential clutches of capital controlling communists).
As BTCC details,
Recent bitcoin price increases have reignited enthusiasm in buying bitcoin. BTCC is confident this trend will continue. As such, we are pleased to announce that we now accept direct deposits.
Customers now need only log in, click on “Account,” then “Fund,” and then select the “Bank Deposit” option to fund their BTCC accounts through their bank accounts. All customers who have Chinese bank accounts will be able to make direct deposits through ATM transfers or online banking.
And adds, even more crucially...
BTCC will stop accepting customer deposits through agents on November 15.
Which appeared to provide further dip-buying impetus to the recovery off the day's earlier mysterious plunge...
Lifting BTC to $444 highs, more than double the September levels when we suggested it. Notice the rally is on rapidly increasingly volumes also (as word spreads and ease of access is enabled)...
As we noted previously, this is the validation that, just as predicted here two months ago, bitcoin has become the go-to asset class for millions of Chinese savers seeking to quietly and under the radar transfer funds from point A to point B, whatever that may be, in the process circumventing the recently expanded governmental capital controls:
While he didn’t provide any concrete numbers, he did comment last week on what was driving the adoption. “Some Chinese traders are expressing a view on the CNY exchange rate after the last devaluation and you have interest by mainland speculators to move to other assets after the stock market fallout,” he explained in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine.
Which again brings us back to our conclusion from two months ago:
... if a few hundred million Chinese decide that the time has come to use bitcoin as the capital controls bypassing currency of choice, and decide to invest even a tiny fraction of the $22 trillion in Chinese deposits in bitcoin (whose total market cap at last check was just over $3 billion), sit back and watch as we witness the second coming of the bitcoin bubble, one which could make the previous all time highs in the digital currency, seems like a low print.
As of this moment, the total value of bitcoin is up from the $3 billion two months ago to a little over $5 billion. That means the ratio of Chinese deposits (at around $22 trillion) to bitcoin, is down to a far more "conservative" 4,400x.
And now, again, imagine what could happen if these same Chinese depositors realize they have been lied about the non-performing loans "backing" their deposits and that instead of the official 1.5% bad debt ratio, the real number is really far greater, somewhere in the 20% ballpark as we will show shortly, suggesting major deposit impairments are no longer the stuff of Cypriot nightmares but just the thing hundreds of millions of Chinese depositors have to look forward to, and that they have just two possible choices to avoid said impairment: reallocating their savings into bitcoin or, of course, gold.
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How will the Chinese regulators and government react to this? Especially as the volumes start to become relevant.
