A Chinese look at the situation in China

[bclcjunkie]

this is possible but with very tiny probability, because ultra rich don't trust bitcoin yet and rely on moving their shady money via other proven and more anonymous ways compared to using some exchange that won't save you in court if shit hits the fan.. one thing you need to remember if you wanted to anonymously move your funds out then it would've been suitcases of cash instead of bank wire and if there were ever such attempts bitcoin would've easily hit multiples of where we are now... also the kind of volume that was dumped on bitstamp and btce is miniscule to what was dumped on huobi... so again don't be deceived by illusion that attemps to portray panic as it is created by simply taking bitcoins from right pocket and moving to left pocket, rest is just accounting work...

Given the anti-corruption drive that the new Chinese leadership embarked on last year is it not likely that certain more tech savvy, slightly misinformed, but entirely corrupt individuals within the People's Republic thought that they could use bitcoin as a way to move their wealth to places that the Chinese authorities would be unable to trace them? (think bitcoin is anonymous - misinformed)
This might explain the desperate acquisition of coins on Chinese Exchanges in the last month or two of 2013 as well as the fact that the recycling of these coins onto western exchanges has depressed the price since. (by this I mean down to the 800/600 area.)
By this stage I would expect that these individuals are already out of bitcoin and in USD or EUR in bank accounts all over the world.
When the Chinese leadership officials caught on to the wheeze, it would be an obvious and simple step for them to stamp on it, hard, this has forced others in China who were involved for less nefarious reasons to exit the market or scale back their investments - driving us to this $400 area.

It may also explain why exchanges are being targeted piecemeal - those more guilty (in the eyes of the leadership), or least protected politically - are punished/closed/impacted first with others later or to a lesser extent.

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[zhangweiwu]

this is possible but with very tiny probability, because ultra rich don't trust bitcoin yet and rely on moving their shady money via other proven and more anonymous ways compared to using some exchange that won't save you in court if shit hits the fan..

I support this view.

For those who weren't following closely, BTCChina and Huobi recently had announcements, and I think they don't have the political support many speculated that they do. They seems to be confident that they have good channels to know the intention from above, but for now they don't know more. From the announcements, you can read that they don't think they have the level of political support they need. -- Either they really don't, or, they do have political support from the investors side, but investors wish to remain silent on why the companies they invested are so lucky.

Right now, the capital, potential profit of bitcoin, is too paltry for those with strong government background to participate. The attention put on bitcoin is unusual: PBOC usually doesn't care such small-timers. I think the possibility that exchanges have needed political support is tiny.

Also, FxBTC and BTER are not registered companies in China. I don't know the other two recently-out-of-business exchanges: BT38 and BTCIG. They were small. BTCChina, Huobi, OKCoin, CHBTC each have a company and at least 10 million CNY capital (1.67 m$). (I had the impression BTER had Canadian venture capital funding, but I don't think they have a physical presence in China.) It is also possible that the smaller targets can be taken out without too much noise.

[koryu]

this is possible but with very tiny probability, because ultra rich don't trust bitcoin yet and rely on moving their shady money via other proven and more anonymous ways compared to using some exchange that won't save you in court if shit hits the fan..

I support this view.

For those who weren't following closely, BTCChina and Huobi recently had announcements, and I think they don't have the political support many speculated that they do. They seems to be confident that they have good channels to know the intention from above, but for now they don't know more. From the announcements, you can read that they don't have the level of political support they need. -- Or, they do have political support from the investors side, but investors wish to remain silent on why the companies they invested are so lucky - so the company themselves doesn't know.

Also, FxBTC and BTER are not registered companies in China. I don't know the other two recently-out-of-business exchanges: BT38 and BTCIG. They were small. BTCChina, Huobi, OKCoin, CHBTC each have a company and at least 10 million CNY capital (1.67 m$). (I had the impression BTER had canadian venture capital funding, but I don't think they have a physical presence in China.) It is also possible that the smaller targets can be taken out without too much noise.

ty for your posts, really interesting.

could you please confirm if the following statements are true:
- huobi stops withdrawls/funding with third party payment processors tonight (prepaid-cards).
- after 15th of april third parties are not allowed to deal as middle man between banks and bitcoin exchanges anymore.
- you can withdraw from and fund fiat to exchanges using bank transfer.

[zhangweiwu]

ty for your posts, really interesting.

could you please confirm if the following statements are true:
- huobi stops withdrawls/funding with third party payment processors tonight (prepaid-cards).

I am not their user. I read the same news in Chinese and do not doubt this.

- after 15th of april third parties are not allowed to deal as middle man between banks and bitcoin exchanges anymore.

This was already banned in December 2013, but no one punish the violation: PBOC seems to believed sheer threat would work. Now 3rd parties are getting orders directly, individually. There is still no one assigned to punish the violation (as far as I know) but they will not ignore direct orders. Conclusion: TRUE.

- you can withdraw from and fund fiat to exchanges using bank transfer.

You haven't read the news? Among 15 named exchanges, BT38, BTER, FXBTC ceased to offer any way to fund fiat = only out, no in, opposite of MtGox fiasco. BTCIG is even worse, website is down. On withdraw: FxBTC's bank forced them to cease offering cash withdraw with bank transfer, their users are hurrying to withdraw from 3rd party before 15th, at which time it will offer no in, no out. Other exchanges (except the now-offline BTCIG) allows fiat withdraw with bank transfer.

FxBTC is a strange case, the only one who ceased bank-transfer withdraw. Sometimes local official over-execute higher orders in attempt to endear themselves to the above, I think FxBTC is simply unlucky to work with such an official. But it can also be possible as a deliberate move to make withdraw harder - FxBTC charges the highest bitcoin withdraw fee (0.01฿), a behaviour MtGox adopted when they can't fix TM bug, hinting FxBTC also had the same bug and perhaps lost some coins. With this considered, FxBTC users should withdraw now.

I wrote an editorial in detail (the site is in German but an English version is available after a small payment):
http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/04/03/exklusiv-eine-chinesische-perspektive-auf-die-situation-in-china/

[koryu]

- you can withdraw from and fund fiat to exchanges using bank transfer.

You haven't read the news? Among 15 named exchanges, BT38, BTER, FXBTC ceased to offer any way to fund fiat = only out, no in, opposite of MtGox fiasco. BTCIG is even worse, website is down. On withdraw: FxBTC's bank forced them to cease offering cash withdraw with bank transfer, their users are hurrying to withdraw from 3rd party before 15th, at which time it will offer no in, no out. Sometimes local official over-execute higher orders in attempt to endear themselves to the above, I think FxBTC is simply unlucky to work with such an official. But it can also be possible as a deliberate move to make withdraw harder - FxBTC changest the highest bitcoin withdraw fee, a behaviour MtGox adopted when they can't fix TM bug, hinting FxBTC also had the same bug and perhaps lost some coins. Other exchanges (except the now-offline BTCIG) allows fiat withdraw with bank transfer.

I wrote an editorial in detail (the site is in German but an English version is available after a small payment):
http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/04/03/exklusiv-eine-chinesische-perspektive-auf-die-situation-in-china/

sry what i mean was that huobi and btcchina continue bank transfers or at least they say that they will continue.
did the small exchanges offer funding via bank transfer before? i thought they only used third parties for funding. so if they lose their only option to fund then all funding is stopped.


from the distance it looks like the pboc's aim is to make it more complicated to create and operate an exchange. this way they only have to deal with a few large exchanges and not with all the small ones.

[Rols]

Its not hard to understand why pboc want to ban bitcoin.

* chinese people put a lot of money into bitcoin, so much that other countries now also are thinking about what to do about it.
* there were 2 exchanges that stole the money from the people
* the exchanges had been using private accounts.
* china want chinese to use unionpay and they want to export it. So they crippled alipay and tenpay, Issued a document about bitcoin in december which nobody cared about.
* There are big corruption scandals in china that probably involves bitcoins and its about billions of dollars.

The only problem is how hard they are going to enforce the ban.



 

[zhangweiwu]

sry what i mean was that huobi and btcchina continue bank transfers or at least they say that they will continue.
did the small exchanges offer funding via bank transfer before? i thought they only used third parties for funding. so if they lose their only option to fund then all funding is stopped.

I don't think so. I think BTER is the only exchange that only used third parties for funding. There are 4 effected exchanges, that is 1:4 ratio.

[atp1916]

China didn't ban Bitcoin.  They didn't ban a single exchange.  They haven't outlawed privater or business use of bitcoin.

They did, however, entirely ban their financial institutions / payment processors from interfacing with the exchanges.  It is very, very hard now for Chinese to buy bitcoins or cash out into yaun.  It's virtually impossible for businesses to cash out into yaun after receiving bitcoin.

China is basically out of the speculation game, but nothing has changed if people want to buy/sell in bitcoin and receive bitcoin.

The real question is: how much of that mainland yaun is gonna get offshored?

[segeln]

@zhangweiwu
I just want to say I feel so sorry for chinese People and chinese bitcoiners

[Easy2Mine]

@zhangweiwu
I just want to say I feel so sorry for chinese People and chinese bitcoiners

No need to say sorry.
They are strong people and eventually find a solution that can be used by other exchanges throughout the world who also have difficulties with their own government.
www.f2pool.com is already second biggest pool in the world.

[fonzie]

@zhangweiwu
I just want to say I feel so sorry for chinese People and chinese bitcoiners

They can still use casinos or roll the dice, i don´t think that much tears will be shed.

[Erdogan]

China didn't ban Bitcoin.  They didn't ban a single exchange.  They haven't outlawed privater or business use of bitcoin.

They did, however, entirely ban their financial institutions / payment processors from interfacing with the exchanges.  It is very, very hard now for Chinese to buy bitcoins or cash out into yaun.  It's virtually impossible for businesses to cash out into yaun after receiving bitcoin.

China is basically out of the speculation game, but nothing has changed if people want to buy/sell in bitcoin and receive bitcoin.

The real question is: how much of that mainland yaun is gonna get offshored?

What the fuck is a yaun? It makes me want to take a nap.

[bambou]

all chinese bitcoiners ready to flee to US? ^^

-> http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/25/news/economy/china-us-immigrant-visa/

[percocet]

It's great to have insight from a man on the ground over there. Much appreciated Zhang, please keep us informed.

[zhangweiwu]

It's great to have insight from a man on the ground over there. Much appreciated Zhang, please keep us informed.

I will do so from http://bitcoinblog.de/ in the future. The two latest article I wrote for it are:
http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/04/16/china-if-bitcoin-remains-small-it-will-be-allowed-to-live/
http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/04/12/its-not-a-survivors-game-its-a-losers-game/

[Raystonn]

No offense, but everything you write seems to push the Bear stance.  Please read the beginning of your own 4/12 story.  "... the Chinese think China is the world..."  Developments in China do not necessarily mean USD/BTC will plummet.  Perhaps you hold a short position.

At any rate, the Chinese cannot print an infinite amount of BTC to sell.  The best they can do is vastly increase mining, which would be very visible.  Once their BTC runs out, they lose the ability to depress USD/BTC price with manipulations on the BTC side.  Perhaps they'd like to try their hands at propping up the USD instead?  That will be the only thing left.

[zhangweiwu]

No offense, but everything you write seems to push the Bear stance.

Not true: you haven't read this, I push for Bull stance back in Oct 2013 before the great great China bubble:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=315380.0 (the price was below $200 by then)

I don't always sing the doom song, only that I have a cold cold heart (down-to-the-ground approach, no emotion involved in speculation).

I agree China factor is limited - govt is determined to make china unimportant to world.

P.S. Not sure what "push for .. stance" means in English, if you mean influnce the market: of course we can't.

[MatTheCat]

No offense, but everything you write seems to push the Bear stance.

Not true: you haven't read this, I push for Bull stance back in Oct 2013 before the great great China bubble:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=315380.0 (the price was below $200 by then)

I don't always sing the doom song, only that I have a cold cold heart (down-to-the-ground approach, no emotion involved in speculation).

P.S. Not sure what "push for .. stance" means in English, if you mean influnce the market: of course we can't.

Push in this sense, means sell or promote.

i.e. Drug Pusher = Drug Dealer.

Looking forward to your next article when it arrives!

[ArticMine]

First thank you to the OP for your insights and perspective.

If Bitcoin remains small, it will be allowed to live

What I see here is that this would work if Bitcoin was limited to China and "The West" has little of no say in the matter. Up to now "The West" has actually played along responding to the PBOC signals by depressing the price, so everything for the time being is harmonious. My take is that sooner or later "The West" will stop playing along and drive the BTC/USD rate and by implication the BTC/CNY and BTC/CNH rates to meteoric new highs. The question then becomes what will the master do when presented with a situation where the master and also the servant has no control?

[jl2012]

First thank you to the OP for your insights and perspective.

If Bitcoin remains small, it will be allowed to live

What I see here is that this would work if Bitcoin was limited to China and "The West" has little of no say in the matter. Up to now "The West" has actually played along responding to the PBOC signals by depressing the price, so everything for the time being is harmonious. My take is that sooner or later "The West" will stop playing along and drive the BTC/USD rate and by implication the BTC/CNY and BTC/CNH rates to meteoric new highs. The question then becomes what will the master do when presented with a situation where the master and also the servant has no control?

As BTC/USD increases, BTC/CNY must increase due to arbitrage, as it is technically unfeasible to completely stop bitcoin trading in China.

If this happens (which I believe definitely will), they will look like the biggest dickhead of this century. They will shutdown all centralized exchanges in China. However, as they have already cut off the fiat channels for the exchanges, they will soon become zombie and irrelevant to the rest of the world

They will also turn on their brainwashing propaganda machine to defame bitcoin (They are doing this NOW). However, smart Chinese people will not give a shit and will keep buying and holding. Those stupid brainwashed Chinese people have already left the game in the past few months, so they are irrelevant.

If you don't believe me, look at Twitter, Facebook, and Google. They are all banned in China, while their market cap is still several magnitudes higher than bitcoin.