So essentially we can say either China has 10x more interest than the rest of the world or the numbers are cooked up if usd is isolated from yuan or rmb. What I care about is money coming out of fiat and into btc.
I am not sure what you mean, but: from all I have read, I am quite convinced that the November rally was entirely due to demand in the Chinese exchanges. Ditto for the December crash and partial recovery, the decline from February to April, the stagnation in May, and the the mini-rally a couple weeks ago. Not sure yet about the current decline, but it seems to have coinided with a new push to cut out the remaining channels of yuan deposit to the exchanges.
I don't know how many coins are still in the hands of Chinese speculators and investors, but, if the markets there were to close and those coins returned to the Western market (which they probably would, since speculation seems to be the last significant utility of bitcoin in China), I am quite convinced that the price would drop to somewhere between 80$ (an estimate of where it would be if China had never entered the game) and 350$ (which it briefly reached after one of the PBoC scares).
As for Mr. Lee's claims: his exchange BTC-China used to have the largest volume in China until the December crash. Since that time it has become insignificant, while Huobi, OKCoin, and the other Nameless Ones became dominant. (Huobi in particular seems to have bumped its volume just when BTC-China suddenly lost theirs). I watched that video and heard the claims, but did not see the evidence. His being elected to the board of the Shrem Karpelès & Friends Foundation, together with Mr. Pierce, did not help convince me.
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