bitcoin without china, how would it look?

[European Central Bank]

so whether or not the recent panic turns out to result in some action, i for one think china killing off the bitcoin exchanges at some point is a total certainty.

they think nothing of directly intervening in their stock and property markets and bitcoin is nothing but a tiny thorn in their side that might grow into a tree some day. it's of no benefit to the government.

in that scenario what do you think happens to bitcoin? mining aside, china contributes nothing to development, there's no actual bitcoin economy there and the exchanges are all probably bucket shops. at the same time of course the exchanges lead the west by a long way, though i'd guess many people on there are westerners anyway.

does it fatally hole the bitcoin market for a long period of time? is western volume reinvigorated when the traders migrate back? does chinese mining fade away and change into hardware sales and not much else? would many or any chinese people rig up some type of black market?

would the chinese government attempt to moderate it recognising that they'd be left behind if it was squashed or would they not care?

what do you think?

[franky1]

many things could happen, but worse case..
manufacturing and pool farming moving to the Ukraine as thats the next best wage&climate&electricity price alternative

but as for what is most likely.
china wont do crap.
they know if someone is buying a bitcoin someone else is obviously selling a bitcoin(thats how trading works).. the chinese currency does not go out of circulation. it just changes whos chinese bank account it sits in.

its only paper money that can be burned or shipped out of the country to get removed from circulation. so digital currency swaps are not a threat

at most the BANKS (commercial and national) wont be allowed to handle bitcoin direct.. but hey their subsidiaries can and will..
but even without the subsidiaries. the main banks themselves will be using a sidechain of the hyperledger project, so they cannot exactly rule out blockchain currencies in full, if they themselves will be using one.

so while china is using the BRICS network sidechain of hyperledger as their legal tender(near future), the citizens can handle all the currencies they like, such as going to the airport or a 'bureaux de change' to swap one currency for another like they have done.

as for mining industry. electric companies are making alot of profit supplying electric to previously vacant warehouses. staff are being employed and technology being built. which are all economic boosts to the chinese economy.
yes china love setting up warehouses and making things even if the payment is not chinese currency. they know it gets converted to chinese currency at some point thus not harming the economy.
after all bitcoins are created via the electric of chinse businesses and chinese yuan is just moving from bank account to bank account. happily still handled by the chinese banks.
it would be different if a bitcoin was created by having to physically burn chinese bank note. but its not, so they dont care.
much like they are happy that apple pay them lots of dollars that get converted to yuan. chinese industry are happy to do that for bitcoin.. its no harm.

so outside the box there is no big issues
you just wont see bitcoin being a "national" (legal tender) currency, to pay fines, taxes with. but then again american express is not legal tender. yet accepted in many many places in china

[silkylove]

My guess would be that bitcoin would survive, even in China.  The majority of mining would be done in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia as opposed to China.  There would be a dip in demand which would negatively affect price.  However, if China was out of the picture or reduced to a smaller role than debates about the future of bitcoin would no longer depend on who can court the Chinese miners and confidence in bitcoin might go higher, which would affect the price positively.

[fortunecrypto]

It could even the competition in finding new blocks,they are the one actively mining bitcoin with their mining farms beating the other miners,they are a game changer indeed and if they are out of bitcoin could make a big difference on small players.I'd love to mine bitcoin but with China's big mining farm it's not possible..

[MONKEYJUNK]

I don't think they will stop mining, they can mine and sell the coins in another country, isn't so hard.

So in my opnion China just have miners and if they don't stop mining becuse some ban, the bitcoin world will still the same.

[pooya87]

bitcoin users love drama more than any other people on the planet. they even attract drama, and sometimes even produce some when everything is calm and nothing is going on.

in case of China, most probably nothing is going to happen. bitcoin and all its related businesses have multi million dollars at work. there is mining, manufacturing of mining equipment, the Electric companies that are earning money just because mining farms exist otherwise they would have gone bankrupt. China cares about earning money and nothing else and if that rumor is true it means they are going to shut down so many money earning opportunities and eliminate hundreds of jobs which is against their history so far!

[xuan87]

eventhough the government forbid bitcoin, i think some of them will still stealthily used it, but let's say if all the user in china stop using bitcoin and stop mining, then of course it will affect bitcoin as we know most of the miners is come from china, so without them our transaction will be slower and there are a lot of bitcoin user from china, so if they stop using it then it will affect the price

[Carlsen]

I think I do not know enough about how China is really involved into bitcoin.
All I know is that there are mining farms in China.

Does anybody have an idea of how high the mining capacity in China is compared to the whole bitcoin mining capacity?

I have looked up the list of some notable bitcoin exchanges on wikipedia. One is noted to be in Hong Kong, one in China. The other 13 have nothing to do with China.
Bitfinex was not mentioned, but I think it is in Hong Kong as well.
Since there are so many exchanges outside China, I do not see why regulating, or even closing those in China would be such a big thing.

 

[davis196]

so whether or not the recent panic turns out to result in some action, i for one think china killing off the bitcoin exchanges at some point is a total certainty.

they think nothing of directly intervening in their stock and property markets and bitcoin is nothing but a tiny thorn in their side that might grow into a tree some day. it's of no benefit to the government.

in that scenario what do you think happens to bitcoin? mining aside, china contributes nothing to development, there's no actual bitcoin economy there and the exchanges are all probably bucket shops. at the same time of course the exchanges lead the west by a long way, though i'd guess many people on there are westerners anyway.

does it fatally hole the bitcoin market for a long period of time? is western volume reinvigorated when the traders migrate back? does chinese mining fade away and change into hardware sales and not much else? would many or any chinese people rig up some type of black market?

would the chinese government attempt to moderate it recognising that they'd be left behind if it was squashed or would they not care?

what do you think?

What recent panic?What are you talking about?

Bitcoin will remain strong without China.All the mining will move to another country.

There are a lot of rumors about China and nothing more.

[kiklo]

For starters , BTC would probably still be a decentralized crypto,
however now it is only a Centralized puppet coin of the Chinese Mining Pools.

The BTC XT would have been enacted and there would be no transactions problems.
But Chinese Mining pools blocked XT, so transactions problems are still here for BTC.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinese-mining-pools-call-for-consensus-refuse-switch-to-bitcoin-xt

http://www.ibtimes.com/bitcoins-big-problem-transaction-delays-renew-blockchain-debate-2330143

 

FYI:
The Fact is that over 51% of BTC mining, has been coming from China for over a year is not rumor,
it is history.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fjkcs/the_communist_part_of_china_controls_more_than_51/

[1Referee]

i for one think china killing off the bitcoin exchanges at some point is a total certainty.

I don't think it will happen as they could have done it already. Bitcoin offers people the exact same options as it did years ago. No difference here beside Bitcoin that has become more popular. In that regard, I believe China at some point will force through severe restrictions that will make it much harder to trade Bitcoin, but not impossible. I don't see China issuing a total ban.

does it fatally hole the bitcoin market for a long period of time?

I seriously believe so. It's all China that has been dominating nearly every aspect of Bitcoin. Without China on board, the entire market will become different, empty, less interesting for traders, less liquidity, no real price driving from one country anymore, etc.

is western volume reinvigorated when the traders migrate back?

I surely believe that certain traders will join western exchanges as result, but it won't be much of an impact. Especially when you consider that the exchanges here do indeed charge trading fees. Traders on exchanges as Huobi & Co, have adjusted their trading style to the zero fee structure. If they choose to join western exchanges, they need to adapt to a slower trading style due to the fees that exchanges here charge.

would the chinese government attempt to moderate it recognising that they'd be left behind if it was squashed or would they not care?

The Chinese government only cares about eliminating ways to transfer money out of the country. If they need to go hard on Bitcoin or any other tool to accomplish that, they will definitely do so. But the fact that they haven't done it yet, makes me doubt whether or not they will be doing it at some other stage. If Bitcoin stays in its current form, then not much will happen, but if at some point Bitcoin grows too large, then you can bet that they will put a stop to it.

[~Bitcoin~]

Chinese government may tighten the rules or limit the trading volume per chinese citizen over a year time period or whatever. This may create certain panic like even FUD regarding this have created few days ago and price may get dumped a little bit when this policy get approved by chinese government. However i don't see this going to happen soon, chinese government only cares about cross-border transaction and may not limit bitcoin buy/sell within country.

[ivanst776]

I could say that people will move in another country and run their mining farms in another country which has the next lowest eletricity rate.

We are aware that china mostly controls the bitcoin price and when there happens something the bitcoin price is affected directly.

Franky says that Ukraine can be the next country but since it is in europe the EU can make new rules/laws and again bitcoin price can crash.

[ekoice]

Bitcoin is not dependant on china and so even if china is not there, Still bitcoin will be alive in the market without any change.If mining is not done in china, it will be mined in some other parts of the world.

[dothebeats]

China, I think, wouldn't pull the same shit again on bitcoin in terms of the regulation. I mean, come on, China is the world's superpower in terms of economic matters so why the heck would they care about a small, thriving market in the first place? They have better things to do lol, and as for bitcoin being dependent on Chinese markets, traders and players, yes, because Chinese sets the pace for most of the big movements and the West only follows suit. Lastly, most of the heavy trades happen on Chinese markets and exchanges, and again, the West and other markets only follows what they are seeing on the Chinese exchanges.

[bittraffic]

Chinese government may tighten the rules or limit the trading volume per chinese citizen over a year time period or whatever. This may create certain panic like even FUD regarding this have created few days ago and price may get dumped a little bit when this policy get approved by chinese government. However i don't see this going to happen soon, chinese government only cares about cross-border transaction and may not limit bitcoin buy/sell within country.

If there is going to be a lot of money involve, even the local government may want to control it.  
You may find it crazy but i think it may even lie behind that ANTshare to which they end up trying to start at the beginning of the Chinese cryptocurencies.

[Zadicar]

Bitcoin without china would  be alive still  but  i   believe they have  big  impact regarding  on bitcoins price thats why  its somehow  have a  big  contribution into bitcoin and also  the  most   miners  made  are  on china . I could say that they really help  out  on bitcoin.

[amacar2]

Chinese are known to run business in foreign countries and if china also start to tighten the rules against bitcoin, bitcoin miner may also start to shift from china and start to run it on other remote locations in foreign countries. There are many countries who like to welcome foreign investors and business tycoons.

[coynedterm]

i Think the price of the bitcoin Became high because china is the top most country to mine btc . because the electricity cost is low so many people earn btc through mining and making the more btc which makes lots of btc in the bitcoin world . making the price maintain .

[LordCoder]

I believe Bitcoin will probably survive, difficulty will decrease for obvious reasons but more people will start considering building some mining farms in Ukraine, as suggested on a reply above mine.
What I know is that i'll be a good time to find some old ASICs and start those dusty machines again.