The best new Bitcoin idea from China! (MACAU and BITCOINS)

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

Isn't using a credit card an alternative to having more than $6000.

I guess that, if you cannot enter with >$6k, then you can't transfer >$6k either. And credit cards leave a clear trail, so better not use them to break such law.

Cant you just take your credit card with to Macao, and withdraw an arbitrage amount of US$ to then take to the C4$iNos??
--> no credit card use for gambling

Sorry if that was already mentioned earlier here

I'm sure if your banking with a Chinese bank they monitor the ATM's within Macau, no matter the currency.

The only way to bypass it is to either bring in cash physically are use a protocol that bypasses such networks ie. Bitcoin 

[evoorhees]

So… if bitcoin becomes exceedingly useful in f.ex. China - more so that in other countries - won't sooner or later the market move all the bitcoins there? What mechanism ensures there's an even/sustainable distribution of the 21 mill bitcoins? History has seen one sided flow of gold and silver before?

If the price of a Bitcoin is higher in China than in the US, and this persists, then yes, Bitcoins will keep moving to China.

So what?

Of course, in real life, if the coins are all being bought up by Chinese, then demand for coins elsewhere will rise, the price will follow, and an equilibrium will be achieve.

"Distribution of coins" is a full non-issue. There is nothing a market is better at than distributing friction-less commodities where they ought to go.

[molecular]

Firstly, the icbc card there says you can use it to buy meals. so set up a 'restaurant' in macau with ridiculously overpriced egg rolls fortune cookies. each egg roll fortune cookie, instead of some chinese wisdom, comes with a piece of paper inside that happens to have the private keys to some bitcoins.

fixed that

[molecular]

Oooh do tell, can we have a sneak preview? What tech, IPv6? DNS tunneling? UDP?

iirc bitcoin over freenet

da2ce7 and xelister have been working on "btcfn" almost a year ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2312.0. don't know what came of it. I love the idea, though.

[Bigpiggy01]

I'm sure if your banking with a Chinese bank they monitor the ATM's within Macau, no matter the currency.

The only way to bypass it is to either bring in cash physically are use a protocol that bypasses such networks ie. Bitcoin
   

You can fairly easily transfer funds to a private individual in Maccau or an educational institution but that's about it. Transferring funds to a company requires invoices and a ton of paperwork 

[MemoryDealers]

I just posted the other idea / project

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80531.0

[chunglam]

In Macau, you can easily use your credit card to buy a gift and then it will be magically turned into chips on the casino table.

I'm sure if your banking with a Chinese bank they monitor the ATM's within Macau, no matter the currency.

The only way to bypass it is to either bring in cash physically are use a protocol that bypasses such networks ie. Bitcoin
   

You can fairly easily transfer funds to a private individual in Maccau or an educational institution but that's about it. Transferring funds to a company requires invoices and a ton of paperwork  

[dancupid]

I think that a big opportunity for bitcoin in China is with International Chinese students.

Bitcoin makes it very easy and cheap for them to move money via btcChina.com into Bitcoin and them sell them on a local exchange in Europe or US.  

If Chinese students were aware of bitcoin they would not hesitate to use it as they wouldn't need to move thousands of dollars all at once to cover their living expenses etc and could just move money as and when they needed it. Their parents could budget over the year rather than having to have all the money in place at the start.
Also there are plenty of Chinese Computer Science undergraduates - they would be the best people to seed the idea of using bitcoin in this way amongst their fellow Chinese student friends.

In fact once students start using bitcoin in this way, an enterprising company could start selling student materials for bitcoin directly.

Anyone live near a university with a large Chinese student population?  
(of course it's not just Chinese students who could benefit from this, but this is a thread about Bitcoin in China)

[Stephen Gornick]

Anyone live near a university with a large Chinese student population?  
(of course it's not just Chinese students who could benefit from this, but this is a thread about Bitcoin in China)

First attempt at it didn't go so well:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8492.0

[kjlimo]

http://news.yahoo.com/fed-clears-chinas-first-us-bank-takeover-012927575.html

Looks like China is making inroads into the US market.  Not sure exactly what this means for the relationship between USD & yuan.

[hxtop]

it's good news for bitcoin in china

[check_status]

If you want to start anything Bitcoin for China, then you should give it a go in WenZhou where the government watches but does very little to interfere with the areas progress. This location is very progressive for businesses and currently there is a large underground economy.

A center that will monitor and act as a clearinghouse for private lending opened in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, on Thursday under a 12-point pilot plan to reform the city's financial industry.
The center is intended to bring Wenzhou's huge, unquantified "shadow banking" system into the light of day. It has 6 million yuan ($952,000) in registered capital and 22 investors, both individuals and institutions.
It will gather, process and disseminate private lending-related information, register private loans and provide credit ratings.
The entity, to be supervised by Wenzhou's financial regulators, rents office space to private lenders. So far, seven institutions have leased space.
The center requires borrowers and lenders to submit bank transfer receipts and contracts after a loan deal is conducted through the center.
"Existence of the center will make private lending traceable and prevent a build-up of risks," said Zhou Dewen, chairman of the Wenzhou Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Development Association.
There is no authoritative figure for the scale of private lending in Wenzhou because everything's done underground, Zhou said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-04/27/content_15154943.htm

[byronbb]

Only 6k? Then how do the high rollers play in the huge poker games there?

During the weekend, Yeh said Dwan originally bought in for around US $2.5 million against his opponent and proceeded to play heads-up No Limit Hold’em with blinds at HKD $30,000/60,000 (approximately US $4,000/$8,000). That’s around 10 times the stakes Dwan normally plays on Full Tilt Poker. http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/macau-poker-cash-games-wrap-up-tom-dwan-wins-big-16956/

[check_status]

Only 6k? Then how do the high rollers play in the huge poker games there?

During the weekend, Yeh said Dwan originally bought in for around US $2.5 million against his opponent and proceeded to play heads-up No Limit Hold’em with blinds at HKD $30,000/60,000 (approximately US $4,000/$8,000). That’s around 10 times the stakes Dwan normally plays on Full Tilt Poker. http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/macau-poker-cash-games-wrap-up-tom-dwan-wins-big-16956/

Locals can bring in as much money as they want. They probably hire someone to carry their bags.

[stochastic]

We've run into similar issues regarding the Chinese being restricted in spending their currency outside their borders (for an entirely different business opportunity).  After some thinking, I came to the conclusion that you need to get a domestic exchange going in China and people like yourself need to start using Bitcoin to buy things from the Chinese (so they can obtain more Bitcoin to use on their local exchanges).  Since Chinese currency isn't very usable outside China, it's unlikely that many people outside China will offer to sell Bitcoins in exchange for Yuan (but maybe speculators will).  So, you need domestic sellers of Bitcoin and for their to be sellers, they need to have Bitcoins to sell.

You don't need to worry about having local btc sellers. People looking for arbitrage opportunities will do the job of moving bitcoins in or out of China as necessary.

And precisely what would such arbitrageurs outside of China do with the Yuan they purchase with their bitcoins?  Normally, the arbitrageur would need to wire/convert the Yuan back into USD and then buy back more bitcoins than they originally sold.  But China has strict controls on such transfers and exchange.  The problems that people in China have with spending their Yuan outside China are exactly the same problems that will impede such arbitrage.  Hence the need to create a domestic exchange of bitcoins for Yuan.

I think there would also be benefits in such an exchange to currency traders that might want trade Yuan against other currencies.  They could sell dollars for bitcoins, send the bitcoins to the Chinese bitcoin exchange, and sell the bitcoins for Yuan to hold in their account.  Then reverse that trade as they see fit.  Given there there are such strict controls on trading Yuan for other currencies on the free market, I bet you could make a fortune doing it if you could do it in large enough quantities…you buy Yuan after interventions force the exchange rate back in line with the USD, then sell as it rises and in advance of another intervention.

Your 100% right.

We touched on this at the Summit. Chinese have tight controls over their Renminbi currency.

Strange, I "transferred" 10,000 USD equivalent RMB from my Bank of China account in China to the one in America.  I don't think I really transfered it as it was the same account number and bank.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Yesterday I attended the first Bitcoin meetup group in China.
Photo here: https://twitter.com/#!/rogerkver/status/199841022946185216/photo/1/large
It was organized with only one day notice,  but we had over 30 people show up.
Some traveled several hours all the way from Hong Kong for the meeting.
The Chinese version of Twitter,  Weibo, was buzzing with talk about the Bitcoin meeting.
One of my vendors who attended the meeting emailed me today saying:

Thanks for your last night's dinner and your introduction of bitcoin. I'm very interested in bitcoin even if I'm not quite understand how it workds. Anyway I'd like to trade with you through bitcorn in furture.
Let's talk about the 200 pcs of Finisar FCMJ-8521-3 GLC-T? How many bitcorns would you buy them from me? Thanks!


I suspect many of my vendors in China will now be much more open to the idea of using Bitcoins for their normal day to day business transactions.
I also know that there are currently talks between Russian telecom companies and Chinese suppliers about conducting their payments via Bitcoin.
 

In the meeting the following problem & Bitcoin solution was brainstormed,  but most of this idea came from Yifu Guo.


1) Chinese love to Gamble
2) Macau has gambling
3) Chinese are not allowed to bring more than $6,000 USD worth of currency to Macau.
4)Chinese cash deposits for Bitcoin
5)??
6) PROFIT!


The ideal way for something like this to occur is for a Macau based casino to open their own bitcoin exchange.
It could be open to casino customers only, or to people around the world.

WIN: Customers would love it,  because they can bring as much money to gamble with as they want.
WIN: Casinos would love it,  because customers can bring as much money to gamble with as they want.

I can't think of any reason why anyone involved wouldn't like this idea.
Myself and some of my Chinese friends intend to approach Macau casinos about this idea.

In order for this to become a reality we need:

1. An easy way for anyone in China to buy any amount of Bitcoins.
2. Casinos to allow cash IN/OUT via Bitcoins.

For #1
Bitinstant.com would like to allow everyone in China to be able to buy Bitcoins,  but we needs some help finding the right partner company in China.

It will need the following requirements:

1) No Chargebacks
2) Easily available across China.
3) Allows for automatic communication with the Bitinstant system via API.


Can anyone recommend a company like this in China?


For #2
I suspect we only need to convince the Casinos that #1 is already in place.

Please add your thoughts or suggestions to the above idea.
Feel free to email me at roger@memorydealers.com
I also do my best to tweet about interesting Bitcoin developments as they happen.
Follow me @rogerkver

How the hell did I miss this thread? I'm halfway through the first post and hooked, but tire. Calling it a night. Will read this thread in morn (damn, it is morn--I'm fucked...again )

~Bruno~

[Seal]

Whats stopping someone from say bringing in a $100k diamond and selling it in Macau for RMB to gamble? And vice-versa to get > $6k out of the country?

[Btc4Domains]

Nice idea - Macau is a wildly fun place, people from all over South East Asia, East Asia and other parts are there.

The big problem with Macau gambling for China is the number of corrupt officials who go down with corrupt money and make China look bad, the renmin get pissed off and understandably upset. Most of the cash comes out of GuangDong. If the service you were offering was seen to be keeping an eye out for corrupt officials and working with the central government to an extent then it's likely they'll come round to the idea. Chinese are pragmatic, they know this is going to happen - best route is try and have some control and influence over it.