Coindesk - China might have just killed BTC there.

[The 4ner]

today it's China, but tomorrow another big country could do the same. Who knows really? Nobody can be sure this will not happen. So the future is really uncertain.

Truth is bitcoin has grown into a bubble last weeks, and now the bubble is blasting. I wouldn't be surprised if it went down to 200/300 dollars and stayed there for a few month or even years. Just  like the Internet companies in the early 2000's. What can you buy with bitcoins? Drugs, and maybe a gun, that's about it.

No true. I purchased an iPad and will soon be purchasing a Macbook Air.

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[coins101]

"Dear BTC China valued customer: To stabilize the recent turbulent Bitcoin market and minimize potential market manipulation, BTC China will end the 0% trading fee promotion, effective immediately, and revert to the 0.3% trading fee. We deeply apologize for the sudden change. BTC China, December 16, 2013"

The reintroduction of a fee at short notice seems to indicate that this is true.

BTC took on funding from investors recently and cut the fee to zero, except for a withdrawal fee. Reintroducing the fee at short notice and tied to this possible move by the regulators, plus the fall in BTC value, increase in transactions - sounds like bad news?

[DeeSome]

I see no problem with that, who cares if Chinese can't buy Bitcoins, the price will go down, we'll buy more coins and they'll be late to the party. What do you expect from a dictatorial government anyway?

From what I can glean from a very bad google translate Bitcoin and the exchanges aren't being banned.

It is the third party payment comapnies - in other words if you withdrawing bitcoin from an exchange account it has to go into your bank account directly.

Though I might be wrong because of the wording about the spring festival - but in my unqualified opinion the chinese are still in Bitcoin quite legally as long as they don't use any stop gaps between the exchange and their bank...

How can you move bitcoins into a bank account?

[tclo]

"Dear BTC China valued customer: To stabilize the recent turbulent Bitcoin market and minimize potential market manipulation, BTC China will end the 0% trading fee promotion, effective immediately, and revert to the 0.3% trading fee. We deeply apologize for the sudden change. BTC China, December 16, 2013"

The reintroduction of a fee at short notice seems to indicate that this is true.

BTC took on funding from investors recently and cut the fee to zero, except for a withdrawal fee. Reintroducing the fee at short notice and tied to this possible move by the regulators, plus the fall in BTC value, increase in transactions - sounds like bad news?

Yes there is no way that is just a coincidence.  It came out the same day and they aren't even giving any notice as to the change.    

Chinese gov't has decided to kill BTC there and they are going at it in a clear and systematic fashion.

[BittBurger]

No kidding.  China's stance against bitcoin has just moved from 'firm' to 'outrageous'.  This is going to have a serious effect for a few months.  But who cares?  Can't stop bitcoin with these stupid laws.  You'll just disadvantage your country's economy.  Bitcoin is coming whether they like it or not.  The rest of the world will carry on without china for a while.  I didn't like the dominate position they were working themselves into last month anyway.  I for one am glad they put that fire out.

Next week I am going to buy some bitcoin on heavy discount.  All those Chinese who paid $1,200 are going to be taking $400 from me.  By March, we'll all be right back up to $1,000!!!  What a steal.  

I seriously couldn't have put it better myself.

Let the weak hands panic in the meantime.  Give us bigger discounts ladies.

[LiteCoinGuy]

I see no problem with that, who cares if Chinese can't buy Bitcoins, the price will go down, we'll buy more coins and they'll be late to the party. What do you expect from a dictatorial government anyway?

From what I can glean from a very bad google translate Bitcoin and the exchanges aren't being banned.

It is the third party payment comapnies - in other words if you withdrawing bitcoin from an exchange account it has to go into your bank account directly.

Though I might be wrong because of the wording about the spring festival - but in my unqualified opinion the chinese are still in Bitcoin quite legally as long as they don't use any stop gaps between the exchange and their bank...

How can you move bitcoins into a bank account?

you trade directly with other guys via an exchange, like at bitcoin.de (german "exchange") , that means, the exchange just connects you and an other guy.

[Gilberto]

People's Bank of China banned all the third party payment company doing business related to bitcoin, including bitcoin exchange platforms.
For those who is currently doing, they are required to completely cut off bitcoin related business by the Chinese new year, which is at the end of Jan 2014.
For the business held by entity outside of China, they haven't decide what to do, but very likely to be negative.

Btcchina is operated in the Shanghai's new pilot free trading zone. It is at a awkward spot. They has terminate the partnership with Tenpay(probably second largest third party payment company under Alipay). They are now using Yeepay, which is probably a random small company I have never heard of.

After Dec 5, small merchants or online shop owner could still accept bitcoin as payment and comfortably convert them to rmb through exchange like btcchina. In the future , this is going to be much harder and completely illegal after the Chinese new year. Basically, bitcoin is dead in China for the most part. People can only use it as speculative investment and store of value, but it is going to very hard for them to realize their potential profit legally in the future.

In the future, if bitcoin still managed to success internationally without China market, people in China would still be able to own it and sell it in a similar way how people deposit and withdraw money from Pokerstars. But it probably wouldn't be a hot topic as it was months ago.

Btcchina is the only exchange located in the Shanghai's free pilot trading zone, it could possibly survive. But the best case scenario is that btcchina is going to the only one left.

[seek4dream]

i just deposited some RMB in my BTCChina account.
it works well.
and the BTC price is in a rising trend,. i guess guys who sell under 4000RMB will cry a lot.

[BitJock-e]

Regulators here State side are watching the repercussions very closely.

Will all this drive the China exchanges to another country or to find some loopholes?

Its all new uncharted territory.

[ImI]

I see no problem with that, who cares if Chinese can't buy Bitcoins, the price will go down, we'll buy more coins and they'll be late to the party. What do you expect from a dictatorial government anyway?

From what I can glean from a very bad google translate Bitcoin and the exchanges aren't being banned.

It is the third party payment comapnies - in other words if you withdrawing bitcoin from an exchange account it has to go into your bank account directly.

Though I might be wrong because of the wording about the spring festival - but in my unqualified opinion the chinese are still in Bitcoin quite legally as long as they don't use any stop gaps between the exchange and their bank...

How can you move bitcoins into a bank account?

you trade directly with other guys via an exchange, like at bitcoin.de (german "exchange") , that means, the exchange just connects you and an other guy.

its basically an escrow service

[AnonyMint]

I see no problem with that, who cares if Chinese can't buy Bitcoins, the price will go down, we'll buy more coins and they'll be late to the party. What do you expect from a dictatorial government anyway?

From what I can glean from a very bad google translate Bitcoin and the exchanges aren't being banned.

It is the third party payment comapnies - in other words if you withdrawing bitcoin from an exchange account it has to go into your bank account directly.

Though I might be wrong because of the wording about the spring festival - but in my unqualified opinion the chinese are still in Bitcoin quite legally as long as they don't use any stop gaps between the exchange and their bank...

How can you move bitcoins into a bank account?

Wiring funds to and from BTC China's bank account.

This rumor only affects the 3rd party payment companies, not the banks.

This rumor doesn't add anything that wasn't already in that official document from China. The 3rd party payment processors were already banned from Bitcoin in the recent official document from China.

This panic selloff is probably a buying opportunity.

[johnyj]

There is another benefit with bitcoin: You can simply put your retirement savings into bitcoin each year and when you retire, move all those coins to another country and spend them there

Of course the government will be crazy, they could not charge you any capital gain tax because you never liquidated those coins domestically

[Equilux]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1s61x1/what_the_actual_chinese_notice_not_summary_says/

[FenixRD]

"Dear BTC China valued customer: To stabilize the recent turbulent Bitcoin market and minimize potential market manipulation, BTC China will end the 0% trading fee promotion, effective immediately, and revert to the 0.3% trading fee. We deeply apologize for the sudden change. BTC China, December 16, 2013"

The reintroduction of a fee at short notice seems to indicate that this is true.

BTC took on funding from investors recently and cut the fee to zero, except for a withdrawal fee. Reintroducing the fee at short notice and tied to this possible move by the regulators, plus the fall in BTC value, increase in transactions - sounds like bad news?

It's an impolite move by BTCChina, especially for the many users who make use of their API with trade scripts while they sleep. I've been highly unimpressed with some of their performance today, actually. (Been trying them out.) Either way, sounds like bad news, looks like bad news, and the market is certainly reflecting that. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to call where the price will stabilize until this plays out further. If it bounced now I'd say we could expect a new lower level of stability around $750 - $800 but that may be very different after the day ends. In China, I mean. It's 9:30 AM there, and their trade volume consistently peaks following the clock, so there will be movement, just unclear how much and in which direction.

[420]

How can we spin this into being a good thing?

"The large group of chinese speculators will no longer be in the bitcoin market causing high volatility!"

BOOM, print and run with it tomatoman

[BitCoinNutJob]

seems like china believe the news

[pand70]

How can we spin this into being a good thing?

By making a giant circlejerk saying from one to the other that this is a good thing! It kind of works so far 

[eXme]

private people can use bitcoins its only for bussines.. but they forgot to mention that haha what a nice speculation.. im taking a credit tomorrow in the bank, just need to wait untill it drops more muahahaha 

[AnonyMint]

It isn't FUD.  

It's real, alipay and the other payment providers and financial institutions are not allowed to deal with the bitcoin exchanges anymore.

I told you guys the legal document was open for interpretation.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=358368.0;all

Financial institutions deal with currency, and the Chinese government wants to keep it that way.

Bitcoin Exchanges and related companies deal with Bitcoin, and the Chinese government wants to proceed this way.


It's only clarification of separation between THESE businesses, not Bitcoin in general.

Agreed. A big part of the motivation is probably to stem potential capital flight out of China via bitcoin. Not there was likely much of that going on, but the gov probably wants to get out ahead of matters. Which means eliminating layers of financial intermediaries that could obscure identity (hence why "payment processors" might not be allowed to interact with bitcoin exchanges, but banks are ok).

All in all, it will probably indeed dampen the mania to some degree, but it's by no means as hostile as many are making it out to be.

Bingo!

Good to see you all are starting to understand finally.

For the record, we can fully expect governments everywhere to demand the equivalent of AML/KYC, which is more or less what this China action likely amounts to (though more rigidly). That AML/KYC status-quo permeates the global financial system; not just the US.

Yes and they will collect capital gains and/or VAT taxes on Bitcoin appreciation as an investment even if you are trying to use it as a currency (medium-of-exchange), thus it can not be a currency.

But developers of altcoins will rise to the opportunity and create truly anonymous coins. Anoncoin isn't it. Bitcoin isn't it. I will soon publish a whitepaper to explain why.

In short, you need to understand that Chaum mix-nets (e.g. Tor) are vulnerable to timing attacks, and even honeypotting given only 3 hops. They NSA and spy agencies in each country are likely still able to track your identity much of the time. And VPNs are likely all controlled/backdoored/hacked/rooted by the NSA. And exchanging through mixers and altcoins does not obscure your IP address no matter how many times you do it. Also even across these proxies, your identity is tracked in other ways such as browser plugins trojans, cookies, patterns of internet uses such as favored search terms, facbook et al tracking the way you type, etc..

Even if you are one of the lucky few who manages to keep your anonymity assured by careful mix of the above methods, the point is the majority will not. And thus it is very simple for the government to make your anonymous coins practically unspendable and useless. The government simply sends a tax bill and put criminal liability for all activity on a coin since mining until present, until those non-anonymous coins holders (or former holders) can provide the identity of whom they bought from and sold to.

Thus all users will become afraid and only accept coins and sell coins from those who provide their complete identity. Thus only a coin with widespread assured anonymity would be able to become a currency and remain immune to government control.

So clearly you can see that you never will have anonymity with Bitcoin nor any current altcoins. Thus Bitcoin and the current altcoins can never be currencies (unless the governments take them over somehow and make them legal tender), and the government will essentially control them.

Note one means anonymity I proposed thus far are a new way to do physical crypto-coins.

[Eri]

Just to clarify, coindesk has rumor for a source, and that rumor had a friend of a friend for a source. whereas when the chinese govt announced they banned govt owned/licensed banks and banking services from using bitcoin they did so via *4* different parts of govt, compared to coindesks 1 rumor.


most translations regarding the 'ban' are horribly wrong and being spread everywhere.

this one sums it up fairly well. Look for the others before believing this crap people are spreading.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-china-statement-interpretation/