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October 23, 2013, 01:41:07 AM |
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I boldly predict that Bitcoin will become a 'Chinese thing.' It will be mined, traded, and used mainly in China and controlled mainly by Chinese people. Further that the shift could occur quite rapidly, and we might even be seeing that as of the last few weeks. Non-Chinese will want to have Bitcoin and will be able to, but the center mass of the ecosystem and the driving forces shaping it will originate in China.
My prediction is contingent on the Chinese government being somewhat tolerant of Bitcoin. I've never felt that that was likely and I've been surprised to see that scenario taking shape. There are some strategic reasons for the Chinese government to adopt this strategy, but I did not believe that they would be recognized at all, much less chosen over the more natural authoritarianism reflexes that the government is infamous for.
Distributed crypto-currencies generally, and Bitcoin in particular if it retains it's first contender advantage, have the potential to be highly disruptive technologies. From a geo-political frame of reference it does make some sense to attempt to harness them and having the center-mass be citizens living under one's own regime is probably the best hope to accomplish this. One way or another it will be a sharp knife to handle and one which could very easily cut the possessor.
If my prediction takes shape and most of the full clients which actually define how the solution works are operated in China, it will be they who decide how the system operates. I'll be deeply interested if they choose to unlimit the block size and move toward 'supernodes', or keep the size limited and try to retain the distributed nature of the solution.
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