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I have a different technological perspective on this. Having traveled and lived in Asian, Chinese-majority cities/countries, this is a typical Chinese govt. mov
by neya 9y ago
I have a different technological perspective on this. Having traveled and lived in Asian, Chinese-majority cities/countries, this is a typical Chinese govt. move. In China, WeChat is a dominant player (by Tencent), a LOT of the transactions in China happen through WeChat, which offers seamless payments integration. The penetration is so strong that even poor, road-side sellers accept money through WeChat. Almost everyone has a WeChat account.
This in my personal opinion - is to prevent BitCoin from posing a threat to their homegrown technology industry, which is honestly no match for what we have in the Americas.
List of banned companies:
Google - Because they want to protect their clone Baidu.
Twitter/Facebook - Because they want to protect their clone Weibo.
YouTube - Because they want to protect their clone YouKu.
.
.
.
(it's a long list)
BitCoin banned - Because they want to protect their homegrown WeChat.
Just my opinion.
- tboyd47 9y agoInteresting - but isn't Bitcoin more of a protocol and WeChat more of an application? Couldn't WeChat offer Bitcoin payments?
- FractalNerve 9y agoI think parent means that china avoids the risks of using theoretically subversive decentral foreign technologies, is this right?
- baybal2 9y agoTry to explain this to an average communist party member
- alexchantavy 9y agoWeChat is kind of a protocol for life there. I'd argue it has a stronger influence in China than Facebook does in the US.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoPresumably you meant to type "Twitter" there, which Weibo clones.
- neya 9y agoThank you, updated.
- csomar 9y agoI highly doubt that. First, bitcoin can be used through "wechat". Second, bitcoin can't handle what wechat is doing: It is volatile, expensive to transact with and slow. My guess is the simplest thing: China only wants things that can yield its' control over.
- hyh1048576 9y agoI don't think this is to protect WeChat. But speaking of this, it's really interesting to witness many Chinese bitcoin users/traders start to abandon WeChat and switch to Telegram. Many of them are totally new to telegram, but fear of Gov-monitoring drive them there. See also https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-15/china-s-wechat-crackdown-drives-bitcoin-devotees-to-telegram https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-15/china-s-w...