The big talk as of late seems to be how the trade volume in yuan is surging past USD and all other currencies but I've seen some people leary of this for reasons I can't understand.
ANY nation with a bunch of people buying bitcoin is a generally good thing but I'd like to mention why the Chinese having access to bitcoin has alot of potential.
China has a famously high personal savings rate:
http://english.people.com.cn/90778/8040481.html ---somebody can find a better source, i didn't feel like digging. But its no secret that the Chinese save at extremely high rates. But many don't see how this alone would be good for bitcoin/why they'd buy bitcoin. Consider the Chinese gov's monetary policy which is infamous for undervaluing it's currency:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/currency This means that all these chinese savers would be more likely to move that savings into something that would grow more.
Now of course this doesen't mean 1.3 billion people are going to start buying bitcoin,
China's middle class is still woefully small compared to other nations. However those that do have net access and want to earn on their savings have to be drooling at bitcoin.
China's middle class is estimated at 500 million , the largest in the world. The link is half way down my Oct 28th post below
The figures link up 500M middle class with 568M internet users shown in my next postRe: China Trades 58k btc rest of the World 34k
October 28, 2013, 04:54:31 AM
Plenty of wealthy Chinese and this is where their money goes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/03/28/where-chinas-new-rich-are-putting-their-money/http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=157&subcatid=70 According to Hurun Report, and in Chinese yuan terms, the country had 875,000 multimillionaires and 55,000 billionaires in 2011 – 6.1 per cent more millionaires and 7.8 per cent more billionaires than in 2009. The tycoons are young, too. The average age of the respondents with at least 100 million yuan was 39; that of those with at least one billion yuan was 43. Both averages were a year younger than the previous year. [Source: Clifford Coonan Irish Times, January 22, 2011]
According to Forbes the number of dollar billionaires in China rose form 15 in 2006 to 40 in 2007. Shenzhen has the highest number of Chinese dollar millionaires per capita. According to the Boston Consulting Group there were around 391,000 millionaire households in China in 2008, up from 310,000 in 2007. India and China have the world’s fastest-growing populations of millionaires. According to Merrill Lynch, the number of millionaires in China increased 20.3 percent to 415,000 in 2007. A survey in 2009 counted 825,000 dollar millionaires with 116,000 of them in Shanghai
Thats 40 Dollar billionaires in 2007 and 317 in 2013 or is that times 3 or 950?
http://www.ibtimes.com/does-asia-or-north-america-have-most-billionaires-1111165Forbes
For every billionaire that Hurun Report has found, I estimate we have missed at least two, meaning that today there are probably 4,000 billionaires in the world [instead of the estimated 1,453],” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief reporter of the magazine.
The rising middle classes estimated at 500Millionhttp://www.mckinsey.com/insights/consumer_and_retail/mapping_chinas_middle_classOur latest research suggests that within the burgeoning middle class, the upper middle class is poised to become the principal engine of consumer spending over the next decade
http://thediplomat.com/pacific-money/2013/05/30/half-a-billion-chinas-middle-class-consumers/Additionally a substantial amount of wealth is unreported ..could be that bitcoins may be an option for those people
2.34 trillion dollars a year are estimated as hidden
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/03/07/chinese-households-have-2-34-trillion-in-hidden-income/Over 50% want to emigrate and probably need to find ways to move unreported income
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204394804577011760523331438
