27 ms·

China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’

305 points by sturza 5y ago

robtaylor 5y ago
Again
- lexa1979 5y ago
  uh... You stole my word ^^
- Bombthecat 5y ago
  And in two months :again!
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    It wouldn’t even surprise me if China runs this as a pump and dump scam.
- rastafang 5y ago
  They wanted to buy more Bitcoins...
noneeeed 5y ago
I've been wondering if/when China would start tightening their rules. However I'm not entirely clear from the article exactly what the status of crypto in china now is. It's not clear to me from the quoted statement if it is actually illegal to use crypto to pay for something or to hold or transfer it, or if it's something a bit more subtle and limited.
- powerapple 5y ago
  bitcoin in China is mainly for speculation and money laundering. It is illegal for business to take bitcoins and operate exchanges. I don't think holding it or transferring it would be a problem, that's the base of bitcoin's decentralization. There are A LOT scams going on with all coins, people put money into it without knowing anything about cryptocurrency. If you read recent news about Evergrande, when Chinese people invest money for speculation, no one is considering the risk of losing money. I wonder if this has something to do with this.
trident5000 5y ago
Exchanges were already banned a while back.
- _red 5y ago
  Its literally just a restatement of their 2017 pronouncement with no changes. Its being hyped as "new" but its not.
  - Closi 5y ago
    Banning exchanges and banning use are two different things.
    - trident5000 5y ago
      Financial institutions cant deal with it, no exchanges, no ICO's. They shut all the doors a while back. How do you use or own something when all legal avenues are closed unless you just do it illegally which is probably what some are doing.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        Private persons could still exchange coins before. This time it is a total ban.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ulzeraj 5y ago
    Apparently it never gets old.
  - yorwba 5y ago
    Here's the 2017 announcement: http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2017-09/04/content_5222657.htm http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2017-09/04/content_5222657.htm Here's the one from 2021: http://www.safe.gov.cn/safe/2021/0924/19911.html http://www.safe.gov.cn/safe/2021/0924/19911.html There are changes. E.g. the 2017 announcement doesn't mention 衍生品 (derivatives) at all, while the 2021 announcement explicitly lists trading them among the prohibited activities.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
And what about mining? When will this be truly enforced?
sturza 5y ago
Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-central-bank-vows-crackdown-cryptocurrency-trading-2021-09-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-central-bank-vows-...
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
The use of “illegal” in this article is highly ambiguous. I can't read the text and be certain whether it means that transactions in it are prohibited, or that it simply does not have the same status as legal tender, as in currency that companies are required to accept.
1cvmask 5y ago
This seems to me the same as their old pronouncements. Nothing new as in newsworthy. Maybe they are doing this as a reminder of their older announcements? Sort of like "I told you so!"
- mettamage 5y ago
  A friend of mine that works in the industry as a business developer for Chinese blockchain firms since 2017 said the exact same thing! My market perspective: "Everything is priced in." Apparently, not in the crypto markets. Old news is new news, apparently. Policy perspective: The more DeFi becomes a thing, the less a policy like this will matter. It will still matter a lot, but it will pack less of a punch due to decentralized services. My overall perspective: If crypto still feels as speculative (in terms of trading crypto) 10 years later, then I feel the experiment to find a good use-case has ran for long enough.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    >If crypto still feels as speculative (in terms of trading crypto) 10 years later, then I feel the experiment to find a good use-case has ran for long enough. Maybe I'm taking this to a place you didn't intend, or maybe this is an ignorant question but. . . . What is the US market now, compared to 10 years ago. My experience is that 10 years ago Bitcoin was used to either buy drugs, or as a bet made by college kids that they could make easy money. And. Well. It seems still pretty much the same in terms of existing primarily as a speculative tool.
    - mettamage 5y ago
      I'd agree, but I'm willing to wait and see for 10 more years. For one, I do see some developments nowadays that are making me excited (not money related). Also, tackling blockchain problems is hard. And in all fairness, the speed at which you can send Ripple and similar cryptocurrencies is actually quite cool. It's a shame that it's mostly in its own little bubble still. > Bitcoin was used to either buy drugs In all fairness, I'm not necessarily against it. I'm not pro, but I do believe that many drug laws in most countries are against the idea of freedom. And I find it a comforting yet troubling thought (for different reasons) that cryptocurrencies fight against that (troubling: a 13 year old buying/using some very strong drugs, comforting: a 31 year old doing it for experimentation -- freedom is important).
holoduke 5y ago
I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.
- flenserboy 5y ago
  So you'd rather a system where TPTB get to fudge the books as they see fit, impose taxes via intentional inflation, and keep tabs on your every transaction? Interesting.
  - epgui 5y ago
    That’s not exactly how it works.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Regardless of law, intent, etc, this is how it functionally ends up happening, a nonzero amount of the time.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        That's what ends up happening when an asset becomes economically meaningful. Crypto is still a joke to global economy, but on the off chance it gains mainstream adoption, it'll have the same kind of regulations, taxation and fraud attached to it.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        Except crypto is less firmly anchored in the real world than in the digital realm. It's fundamentally harder to regulate it than a physical currency, which needs specialist equipment to generate.
        5y ago
mlang23 5y ago
deja vu!
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
They probably want to install the digital yuan, so better get rid of the competition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi
noxer 5y ago
This is about the 19th time they do this since I follow the crypt news. Its irrelevant, the people there are under the control of he CCP and no crypt could help them escape.
perlgeek 5y ago
> virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal currency > they are not legal and should not and cannot be used as currency in the market So, you're not allowed to use it as a currency. Can you still use it as an asset?
yosito 5y ago
Alternate headline: China says today is a good day to invest in crypto.
tgtweak 5y ago
For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  This is a country rounding up a whole population of a religious minority and sending them to reeducation camps. A country that mobilized over a billion people to almost completely control covid. You are vastly underestimating the CCP, as most Westerns continue to do.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    I've noticed this quite a bit, and I don't understand it. People keep writing articles and saying things amounting to 'it just won't last forever'. But the reason is, because it just won't, totalitarian governments don't last. Why wouldn't it? Strong central government. Clear economic and social goals with the ends justifying whatever unethical means. A complacent middle and upper class satiated by enough new wealth to make them fat(ter than they used to be) and happy. Why won't they be the next world power for the foreseeable future? Is there an anti-party faction in China that's larger and more powerful than I see in US media? Or is this just wishful thinking from the west?
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Nothing wrong with the fundamentals of your argument, but growth can’t be unlimited. Eventually it’s starts slowing down, then those complacent middle class will start being less complacent and start demanding more freedom. I think it’s reasonable to say the CCP will keep their grip on power for as long as they can continue delivering wealth to the middle class, and lifting those in poverty into the middle class. What’s not clear is how long the CCP can continue delivering that wealth. The ongoing crisis with Everglade is showing that the CCP power and ability to generate wealth is not unlimited. I doubt it’s the beginning of the end, but it does shine a light on the long term structural flaws of their strategy. It’ll be interesting to see how the CCP deals with this over the next 10 to 20 years, maybe they’ll find a new strategy to maintain power, or maybe they’ll start a slow and gentle transition into democracy, allowing them to placate the middle class who won’t be seeing outsized wealth growth anymore.
lampe3 5y ago
Doge Coin to the moon! /s
milliams 5y ago
cryptocurrency?
- theonemind 5y ago
  ok, boomer. just kidding. I see 'crypto', I think 'cryptography', and China banning cryptography (except for the party/government) doesn't seem that far fetched, so I think its a bad headline.
  - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
    I think cryptozoology. China should ban bigfoot, loch ness monster and chupacabra.
- xtracto 5y ago
  Hah you brought a grin to my face. I fondly remember the late 90s when I was doing my BSc on computing. I was pretty into cryptography, stenography, data obfuscation and reverse engineering. Back then people doing "crypto" were called nerds by Software Engineers (the nerds of the nerds). Pretty great time.
tgtweak 5y ago
Trampoline sales fall as China declares gravity "illegal".
- singularity2001 5y ago
  Trampoline "users" fall as China declares gravity illegal
vnchr 5y ago
If the Chinese Communist Party bans it, that’s good enough for me. They’re definitely making the kinds of changes and exerting power in a way that reassures me of their domestic and global aspirations.
anfilt 5y ago
While not a fan of PoW for evironmental reasons. For instance El Salvador made bit-coin legal tender there... So china has out lawed what an other country has declared legal tender... Might make transactions between those 2 countries interesting....
- yxhuvud 5y ago
  No, because El Salvador still accepts dollars.
_Algernon_ 5y ago
This happens every other week.
Gareth321 5y ago
Isn't this the 26th time China has declared crypto illegal?
uberdru 5y ago
It's not inconceivable that we could wind up in a period of hyperinflation where bitcoin (or some token) could be used to in a way similar to the Plano Real in Brasil back in the '90s. It could actually have a stabilizing (mostly psychological) effect, should things go haywire with fiat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real
crypot 5y ago
Other than white listing and black listing transactions by the miners and exchanges, and governments declaring it illegal, Bitcoin is 100% censorship resistant.
- FabHK 5y ago
  >Bitcoin is 100% censorship resistant. ... as is everything else? Other than governments declaring it illegal and intermediaries black listing it, I mean.
- snarf21 5y ago
  Serious question: In a place like China with the Great Firewall, can't they simply block crypto connections at the ISP level? Can't they more aggressively disallow VPN connections to locations outside of China? They might not be able to change the ledger but it seems like they could (will?) block access to them.
  - photon-torpedo 5y ago
    I think this is technically possible. Relatedly, can they jam Starlink?
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  Bitcoin isn't, but Monero is.
aazaa 5y ago
> A statement posted on the Central Bank’s website today says that “virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal currency.” China has "banned Bitcoin" dozens of times over the last decade. I mean, this is an ancient and well-known meme involving a certain South Park clip after all. Maybe this time is for real, but all of these media announcements have one thing in common. They always conflate the concept of "legal tender" and "legality." The number of authorities around the world who have warned citizens about Bitcoin using language like "no legal tender status" and "risky" and "no government guarantee" is legion. Easily thousands of times. Every time "journalists" with no business reporting on tech, law, or foreign governments interpret this as a "ban." 99% of the time, nothing happens and there is no ban. So, maybe this time is different. Over the last year, an initiative toward greater centralized control seems to be underway in China's tech and finance sectors. Disappearing of wealthy founders. Restrictions on video game consumption. The three red lines. The ejection of the Chinese mining industry. Then again, maybe not.
- RivieraKid 5y ago
  > China has "banned Bitcoin" dozens of times over the last decade This is a false narrative pushed by the Bitcoin cult. It's supposed to create an impression that nothing has changed, so the price should not change.
  - shlant 5y ago
    or it's completely factual? 2013: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-05/china-s-pboc-bans-financial-companies-from-bitcoin-transactions https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-05/china-s-p... 2015: https://archive.is/Higoz https://archive.is/Higoz 2017: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-china-idUSKCN1BJ1US https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-china-idUSKCN1BJ1... 2018: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-eliminates-all-cryptocurrency-trading-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-eliminates-all-cryptoc... 2021: https://archive.is/s7nbw https://archive.is/s7nbw "China Has Banned Bitcoin 13 Times Since 2012": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-great-bitcoin-mining-migration-134452993.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-great-bitcoin-mining-mi...
todd8 5y ago
Here's an interesting take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp86n7QCf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp86n7QCf0 This analysis suggests that the value of tracking every financial transaction will eventually cause governments to all want to institute there own crypto currencies and eventually outlaw independent crypto currencies.
- RivieraKid 5y ago
  It's simpler to simply require banks to provide transaction data.
- mekster 5y ago
  Question is, would people give up a currency that's not under anyone's control?
57844743385 5y ago
Crypto goes up, crypto goes down. Panic/optimism/panic/whatever. There’s nothing behind the price but pure sentiment.
lucasyvas 5y ago
I'm not sure why the market would react to this news. China is not an example to follow in just about anything these days.
dtwest 5y ago
This is interesting timing given what has been happening related to Evergrande. It is possible that the government is worried about money being moved out of the country, and cryptocurrency is one way of doing that.
- EveYoung 5y ago
  How would crypto help with moving money out of a country if mining is banned?
  - photon-torpedo 5y ago
    1. Find a place that takes RMB and gives you crypto. 2. Send crypto to your wallet or foreign exchange. 3. Abroad, sell crypto for non-RMB fiat currency. No mining needed. China can't ban 2 (or perhaps they could by putting the great firewall into overdrive) so they are banning 1.
  - stiltzkin 5y ago
    You do not mining to exchange Yuan to crypto.
6d6b73 5y ago
Some people think of Bitcoin as a "store of value", comparing it to gold.. I have a question to people who believe that - What do you think will be the value of bitcoin in 100 years? Do you think your descendants would be happier with $50k* worth of bitcoin or with $50k* worth of gold in 200 years? How about 500 years? *$50k bitcoin/gold if bought today
- xtracto 5y ago
  Meh... there were some bonds provided by the Mexican government between 1850 and 1951 that at the time seemed like a good investment and now they are worth nothing [1]. Different instruments for different goals. I would hold BTC for a 100 year horizon. I wouldn't hold it for a 500 year horizon. Actually I would not hold any asset for a 500 year horizon (including gold): I don't have kids and I don't think I will have to worry at that time. [1] https://www.banxico.org.mx/marco-normativo/d/%7B097567D4-647C-0071-0E93-55D887D1E54E%7D.pdf https://www.banxico.org.mx/marco-normativo/d/%7B097567D4-647...
Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
Keep falling! Gamers want their gpus back
caiomassan 5y ago
they ban bitcoin every year. what is the news?
adrianN 5y ago
Excellent news for the climate.
- phist_mcgee 5y ago
  And what about non energy intensive crypto currencies that rely on PoS or PoH?
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Don’t worry they are scams, only proof of work is actually secure.
    - drdeca 5y ago
      Not convinced of this. (Your handle doesn’t make it a more convincing claim.) I’m not saying I’m totally convinced that PoS can be really secure, but I am reasonably confident that some developing such systems sincerely believe it can be, and have no deceptive intent. This in my mind seems to contradict it being “a scam”, which to my mind requires deception. In fact, I do suspect that it can be secure, for some reasonable sense of “secure”, though I am not especially confident in this.
  - fouric 5y ago
    Depends on what you mean by "PoS". If you mean "proof of stake" - I've never heard anyone describe any environmental issues with them, so I assume that they either don't exist or are far smaller in impact than PoW. If you mean "proof of storage/space" - it seems like that tends to produce very high write volumes, which in turn burns SSDs out very quickly[1] - and you can argue that that's bad for the environment. How bad, and whether it's worse than the energy consumption of PoW, I'm not sure. From one perspective, it's worse, because you could theoretically power PoW mining using exclusively green energy, but you can't pull the raw materials for SSDs out of thin air. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Most mining has already shifted out of China, and Bitcoin mining is a very small percentage of electricity usage on the scale of "all electricity usage" - there are plenty of bigger fish (the argument then turns, validly, to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin).
mistrial9 5y ago
China bans your crypto as illegal, while preparing their own national crypto chain(s). Sweden too right? US Fed in the mix with their own plans. "big thieves hate little thieves"
- shawnk 5y ago
  E X A C T L Y
- echelon 5y ago
  It's a way to move capital out of the country. Bad. China is trying to prop up domestic stocks and investment. Crypto blunts that effort. Moreover, following or reclaiming the money is difficult, slow, and sometimes impossible. Very bad. Crypto is probably something that the NSA can headshot and easily kill your cottage industry. Also bad, but to a much lesser degree than the capital flight.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Pollution is also a huge problem in China. While China would like to still keep its electricity cheap, especially in the hinterland where people can’t really afford higher prices (and otherwise would resort to direct coal use for heating), crypto miners taking advantage of the cheap rates in a way that government didn’t intend.
    - taylodl 5y ago
      That's an interesting insight. Thank you!
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    Agreed. the CCP wants control and cryptocurrencies weaken that control.
- the-dude 5y ago
  The EU : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28618297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28618297
bananapub 5y ago
hooray, finally some good news this week. even aside from reducing the amount of financial stupidity in the world, bitcoin uses as much electricity as entire countries! to process 4 TRANSACTIONS PER SECOND: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second what in the ever-loving fuck are we doing with ourselves.
detaro 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964
- smegcicle 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964
jasonlaramburu 5y ago
How is this actually enforceable? Anyone with internet and power can mine. Could they firewall the entire bootstrap IP list for Bitcoin mining?
- zucker42 5y ago
  They don't have to block Bitcoin through technical means; they just have to (figuratively) hit a sufficient number of violators with a $5 wrench. [1] [1] https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- nness 5y ago
  I imagine the physical footprint of large-scale mining operations will make it easy to find miners. And as Chinese companies looking to operate on the internet need to acquire a license from the Government, they're probably less likely to risk their whole business for crypto payments/trading.
- WJW 5y ago
  > Could they firewall the entire bootstrap IP list for Bitcoin mining? I mean, yes that would be one way. But apart from that, they don't need to find every last one. Nobody cares about a miner making $0.5 per day on their GPU. The target is the big mining farms drawing multiple megawatts of electricity and you can just ask the power company for the address of anyone using that much electricity. There can't be _that_ many of them, so just visit them all and see if they are running a legit power-intensive business like a metal foundry or if it is a crypto mining farm.
- josefx 5y ago
  > Anyone with internet and power can mine. How hard could it be for the Chinese government to identify suspiciously large amounts of power use? Malaysia of all places recently managed to seize and destroy around a thousand bitcoin mining rigs.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  It is enforceable at the citizen and institutional level. I know many decentralized cryptocurrency advocates tout the fact that no government can literally modify the blockchain. While accurate, that is not the point. Governments don't need to do that because they basically have free reign to enforce laws and regulations on its citizenry. Sure you can set up a miner in China, but if the authorities find out you're going to prison. The State might not be able to stop all mining, but they will definitely force it underground and make it a very risky thing to do. A total prevention of an activity is never the actual goal of a ban, the real goal is just to stop the vast majority of it from happening.
Invictus0 5y ago
When will the defi movement realize how much centralized and regulated equipment and systems they rely on? Crypto-anarchists/libertarians are just living in a fever dream.
nimbius 5y ago
translation: the microchip shortage has finally become exhausting enough to begin picking low hanging fruit.
quotemstr 5y ago
And the anti-cryptocurrency sentiment I've seen all over HN --- which appeared suddenly a few months ago --- is totally organic, right? I'm sick and tired of everything being a narrative manipulation op.
- detaro 5y ago
  If you think anti-cryptocurrency sentiment on HN "appeared suddenly a few months ago" you really haven't been paying attention. People have been whining that HN is so so negative about cryptocurrencies for years.
- almost_usual 5y ago
  HN has been mostly anti crypto as far as I can remember.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    It actually makes sense, the "YC generation" turnover is overdue. A few will pass through to the next dialectical synthesis successfully, but a lot are going to be left behind. Crypto is one of several things which are going to carry things through to the new order. (Avatar embodiment and pseudonymous identity is another, and DAOs taking the place of traditional startups is another.) A lot of people here are going to be left confused and angry, but that's the nature of change: the innovators of the past boil slowly into being stuck in their ways and unable to adapt.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  HN's anti-crypto silliness goes back to the very early days of bitcoin.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I'd love to hear what else you believe is a narrative manipulation op.
- nullc 5y ago
  Other than occasionally promoting ethereum and connected scams that have been heavily invested in by SV VC firms HN has been pretty reliably negative on cryptocurrency. Even pure tech work that just happens to have been done by Bitcoin related folks tends to get downvoted and flagged, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18645790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18645790
echopurity 5y ago
This is "news" every other month. Too bad HN enforces ideological uniformity over worthwhile information. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/375221 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/375221
la6471 5y ago
China seems to be hell bent on exiting the global speculative markets. Can the stock markets absorb this shock?
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Afaik, there is effectively "the Chinese domestic stock market" and "the rest of the world's stock market." Chinese citizens can invest in the former, but (via government currency exchange controls) can't participate meaningfully in the latter. So if China exits global stock markets... there isn't that much Chinese money being pulled out of them, because there wasn't that much in them. What money China is investing internationally appears to mostly go to bonds, construction financing, and asset leases / purchases. PS: What this appears to really be about is severing links for extraordinarily wealthy Chinese citizens to move money outside the reach of the PRC. Which, if you were running an expansionist monetary policy intended to facilitate domestic economic growth, while simultaneously cracking down on the wealthy in pursuit of equality, is presumably something you'd take very seriously (as a command economy). Lest all that new & old money just fly offshores.
- yomly 5y ago
  To be fair, it is well accepted that high inflation is bad as everyone stops spending. This holds true for asset inflation as well - you can be damned sure that in the current environment tonnes of people will be taking money out of the system to dump into markets
  - rmah 5y ago
    High inflation encourages spending. It is deflation that discourages spending. High inflation means that the money you have today will purchase less in the future, thus it pushes people to buy now rather than later when things will be more expensive in nominal terms. High inflation combined with low interest rates, will also increase financial speculation pretty much across the board. The problem with high inflation is that it usually (but not recently) goes hand in hand with higher interest rates (i.e. money costs more). Which tends to discourage business borrowing, which acts as a damper on non-financial investment (i.e. spending on factories, marketing, R&D, etc.). This has the effect of slowing down economic growth. On the other hand, high inflation/high interest rate environments tend to arise when growth is high. Because high growth tends to go hand in hand with a rise in wages, increases in demand (which shifts the demand curve, and thus raises prices), increases in financial speculation, etc. There are a ton more "on the other hands". Economic analysis is complex and difficult because it's a tangled mess of interdependent feedback loops that constantly change. A single policy action has an avalanche of cascading effects, some of which will be counter to the policy objective. I'm not suggesting humanity should just roll over in the face of this challenge. We should just be aware that it's a "hard problem" and there are never any simple solutions.
vdddv 5y ago
how many times has it happened already?
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Earlier discussion (was on this same front page just over an hour or so, but disappeared, somehow) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964
- danuker 5y ago
  you are commenting on it
- toofy 5y ago
  It looks like some threads were merged, so you’re likely in the same thread already.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
acd 5y ago
Wonder if this will free up Graphics cards for gamers or if the mines will move country? Bsckground There is a severe shortage of gaming GPUs Geforce 30xx. Possibly semi conductor shortage / crypto mining.
- dleslie 5y ago
  One can hope, it's been a problem for a while now that's impacting the regular cycle of game development.
lousken 5y ago
hopefully more ocuntries will follow so that we finally get rid of POW
- plebianRube 5y ago
  I for one, only like money that there is no proof it was worked for.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
  If every country in the world AND the UN "banned" cryptocurrencies, there would still be POW.
  - rspeele 5y ago
    It's all about how much work the reward pays for. At current Bitcoin prices of around $43k, the block reward pays miners $14,125,500,000/year to spin ASICs all day. That kind of money buys a lot of wasted power. If PoW is still around, but the price dumps low enough that miners are only burning, say, $1,000,000 a year worth of power, that'd be a great improvement.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Sure, but if no American, Canadian, European, Chinese, Japanese, etc person is willing to use it, then what's the point?
wcoenen 5y ago
I'm not sure why the title of the article focuses on mining. China had already banned mining. This was very visible as a drop in the hash rate over the summer[1]. What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned. [1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ http://bitcoin.sipa.be/
- earthscienceman 5y ago
  There's a lot of vague language in these types of threads. What does "banned" mean? Does that mean illegal and punishable by death? Or does that mean, connections to identified crypto computing resources will be blocked by the great firewall?
  - cormacrelf 5y ago
    Apart from the missing actual news (it's now also trading), what's not to understand? Banned by a government means illegal. Trading cryptocurrencies is now illegal there. Who cares how they enforce it? They will enforce it. https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-central-bank-rules-crypto-094408319.html https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-central-bank-rules-crypto-0944...
  - nabla9 5y ago
    What it means is that crypto is shut down from anything that involves bookkeeping. Banks, financial transactions, money transfers, buying stuff from kiosk, ... No legal commerce or finance. Crypto is now purely black market currency in China.
  - newaccount2021 5y ago
    "banned" as in, you get arrested, put in a van, taken away don't be obtuse
  - creshal 5y ago
    From my understanding of the announcements, Chinese companies will be banned from performing any cryptocurrency related services, transactions or exchanges, including smart contract platforms like Ethereum. No firm mention of private individuals, or what particular penalties companies would face. But either way, it greatly limits the value of cryptocurrencies (and related concepts) in China.
nightski 5y ago
Wow, imagine living in a country where the legal financial assets you own can be turned criminal where accessing them is punished with hard labor. Sounds like a dystopian nightmare.
- DethNinja 5y ago
  Coming soon to a country nearby you… Plebs cannot be allowed to have access to sound money, otherwise financial parasites can’t exists.
  - lottin 5y ago
    Are you sure you got this right? Keep in mind that the only way to make money with bitcoin is literally by taking it away from other "investors".
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      Or transacting for goods and services. You know, like in an economy. I just bought coffee with it.
      - zuminator 5y ago
        You made money with bitcoin by buying coffee with it?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        reedjosh 5y ago
        I view bitcoin as money. You can make bitcoin via good old fashion work. There are tons of these out there https://bitcoinerjobs.co/ https://bitcoinerjobs.co/
    - quantumBerry 5y ago
      Now apply your idea to dollars, and think about who prints the dollars.
exo762 5y ago
Will we observe a significant hash-rate dive in near future?
- epinephrinios 5y ago
  No, miners already migrated. This is affecting Chinese holders more than anything.
eggy 5y ago
Blockchain, not specifically crypto currencies, are also a means to operate anonymously outside of an authoritarian government. Sure there are gotchas with remaining anonymous, but I am sure China wouldn't want a blockchain-based, mesh, peer-to-peer, or distrubuted network, that could operate outside of the Great Firewall's ability to regulate or censor it. High-power, long-range WiFi and mesh networks would be hard to control or stop with reasonable efforts.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  It would be trivial to find the source of high-powered wifi/antennas. Consider how easy it is already for one to find the source of an unlicensed ham radio stream. It's definitely not impossible to obfuscate and use crypto even in a country where it's banned, but it isn't that easy.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Indeed. There's a huge difference between one or several actions and habitual behavior. You can find a method to get away with anything once. Operating on a daily basis where the government only has to catch you once is far less practical.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      This is true for lots of virtuous acts or acts of survival under authoritative regimes, such as hiding Jews from the Nazis or selling your surplus harvest under Stalin. It’s only if you are privileged (or, arguably, ignorant) to not consider on balance the counterfactual costs of undermining technologies which could de-risk such acts for those being oppressed. (Which may include a future-you.)
      - acdha 5y ago
        Alternately, people who accurately understand the technology and the environment in which it is used might be speaking up against a system which is designed to endanger those people. Using people subject to these risks in service of MLM recruitment pitches is not a moral good.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
How much BTC is likely to be held in accounts that can no longer legally trade?
- gruez 5y ago
  AFAIK there aren't any exchanges in mainland china, so everyone there has their crypto in offshore accounts that aren't subject to such regulations.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Pretty sure it's still illegal for Chinese citizens to use them.
    - gruez 5y ago
      So with this recent announcement, it's super duper illegal for them to use it? That's not really much of a change from a few weeks ago.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        No, it was never illegal for private citizens to use them before, they just banned the exchanges. Now any transaction is illegal.
shiado 5y ago
Some China FUD on the last Friday of the month that is an almost verbatim reprint of headlines printed a couple months ago... You surely realize the purpose of this right? Just look at all those 40k strike puts...
- EGreg 5y ago
  I don’t really understand these types of claims. You think the CCP and central bank of China are just putting out statements to help a few foreign traders win on leveraged trades? The central planners of the economy that if fast becoming the largest in the world care a ton about some random traders in other countries? LMAO.
  - shiado 5y ago
    Oh China is definitely cracking down on crypto, what I'm pointing out is that Western financial rags print the story late on expiry day to manipulate the market.
amin 5y ago
I hope it all comes crashing down, so that cryptocurrencies will go back to their use of transacting instead of speculating.
- javert 5y ago
  Cryptocurrency was originally designed to be currency, not a transactional mechanism only. If you think it through, it can't work as only a transactional mechanism, because the price won't be stable. It has to first become a big asset class with a lot of liquidity, which means it has to go through a growth phase, i.e. speculation.
crhutchins 5y ago
It's not just Chinese crypto traders at a loss. I think almost all crypto traders are at a loss in this state.
ejanus 5y ago
Looks like something serious is cooking around Chinese economy.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  It seems to be part of an overall move to curb people from becoming too rich in China.
  - ejanus 5y ago
    Which kind of economic model is that?
frjalex 5y ago
One good thing to always keep in mind is that China structurally maintains the status quo of a Leninist state --- IMO, the entire reason they banned crypto is that crypto's goal --- relative anonymity, privacy, and freedom of where to move one's money --- goes directly _against_ China's closed, tightly regulated financial system. The bureaucrats at their Ministry of Finance must be absolutely appalled by the idea that one could transfer money via bitcoin easily outside China without any sort of authorization.
- blueblisters 5y ago
  I have always imagined China to have more sophisticated tools for monitoring financial flows than Soviet Russia. Crypto (at least Bitcoin) isn't all that anonymous, nor outside CCP control so long as there are exchanges and miners located inside China. For instance, there were (probably unfounded) fears that the CCP could control Bitcoin by proxy if more than 50% of the hash rate was owned by Chinese miners. I suspect the recent crackdown is more related to a fear of uncontrolled capital flight due to regulatory changes and anticipated slowdown of the economy.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  I doubt it. It's not that hard to figure it out if every other capital flow is being tracked. I'm guessing it has to do with preventing people from moving wealth out of the country.
- cm2187 5y ago
  I suspect what is triggering this crackdown is that the enforcement of capital controls is becoming more critical as more people are nervous of a financial crisis in China because of bad debt / bad banks. Need to make sure those depositors have no place to go. Though to be honest I don't understand how bitcoin can be used for getting money out of the country. Who would be willing to accept onshore CNY in payment for bitcoin in volumes if everyone is trying to move out?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Someone who needs CNY, that can then buy real goods and export them.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Wow, this I did not see coming. I kind of assumed BTC mining was going to be owned by Chinese nationals within a couple years, at which point the government would nationalize it and BTC would no longer, in practice, have the promise of a distributed store of truth. Egg on my face.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wnevets 5y ago
I'm curious to know how to will be spun into being good for bitcoin.
tehjoker 5y ago
Finally, someone is taking action against this insanity.
powerapple 5y ago
"The directive, which sent Bitcoin dropping as much as 5.5%, comes as global markets grow increasingly concerned over a debt crisis involving Chinese property developer Evergrande." 5.5%???? for bitcoin it means nothing.
fossuser 5y ago
The odd thing about their repeated attempts to damage crypto is that it feels like a strategic miss to me. If I was the CCP I'd try to leverage BTC (and others) as a weapon against the dominance of USD. Instead it looks like they just want to implement their own variant that gives them total control and transparency of in-country transactions. At a minimum they could do both (ban BTC use internally, but still allow mining in the country). I must be missing something. Their authoritarian currency does allow for some interesting things like expiring credits or instant distribution of benefits, refunds, stimulus to the public (with constraints baked in) - but the obvious negatives are pretty extreme especially with the CCP's track record.
- azinman2 5y ago
  It hard to leverage it as a hedge against USD when it can be used against you, so many miners are already in China, and no real international transactions are happening in it (oil still USD).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
seaourfreed 5y ago
The real news: Massive problems in China's real estate markets, bad banking loans and more are uncovered. People in China are greatly moving to crypto and also moving money out of China. China works to trap them in the problems of the legacy financial system.

305 points by sturza 5y ago

robtaylor 5y ago

Again

lexa1979 5y ago
uh... You stole my word ^^
Bombthecat 5y ago
And in two months :again!
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  It wouldn’t even surprise me if China runs this as a pump and dump scam.
rastafang 5y ago
They wanted to buy more Bitcoins...

noneeeed 5y ago

I've been wondering if/when China would start tightening their rules. However I'm not entirely clear from the article exactly what the status of crypto in china now is. It's not clear to me from the quoted statement if it is actually illegal to use crypto to pay for something or to hold or transfer it, or if it's something a bit more subtle and limited.

powerapple 5y ago
bitcoin in China is mainly for speculation and money laundering. It is illegal for business to take bitcoins and operate exchanges. I don't think holding it or transferring it would be a problem, that's the base of bitcoin's decentralization. There are A LOT scams going on with all coins, people put money into it without knowing anything about cryptocurrency. If you read recent news about Evergrande, when Chinese people invest money for speculation, no one is considering the risk of losing money. I wonder if this has something to do with this.

trident5000 5y ago

Exchanges were already banned a while back.

_red 5y ago
Its literally just a restatement of their 2017 pronouncement with no changes. Its being hyped as "new" but its not.
- Closi 5y ago
  Banning exchanges and banning use are two different things.
  - trident5000 5y ago
    Financial institutions cant deal with it, no exchanges, no ICO's. They shut all the doors a while back. How do you use or own something when all legal avenues are closed unless you just do it illegally which is probably what some are doing.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Private persons could still exchange coins before. This time it is a total ban.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ulzeraj 5y ago
  Apparently it never gets old.
- yorwba 5y ago
  Here's the 2017 announcement: http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2017-09/04/content_5222657.htm http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2017-09/04/content_5222657.htm Here's the one from 2021: http://www.safe.gov.cn/safe/2021/0924/19911.html http://www.safe.gov.cn/safe/2021/0924/19911.html There are changes. E.g. the 2017 announcement doesn't mention 衍生品 (derivatives) at all, while the 2021 announcement explicitly lists trading them among the prohibited activities.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

And what about mining? When will this be truly enforced?

sturza 5y ago

Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-central-bank-vows-crackdown-cryptocurrency-trading-2021-09-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-central-bank-vows-...

Blikkentrekker 5y ago

The use of “illegal” in this article is highly ambiguous. I can't read the text and be certain whether it means that transactions in it are prohibited, or that it simply does not have the same status as legal tender, as in currency that companies are required to accept.

1cvmask 5y ago

This seems to me the same as their old pronouncements. Nothing new as in newsworthy. Maybe they are doing this as a reminder of their older announcements? Sort of like "I told you so!"

mettamage 5y ago
A friend of mine that works in the industry as a business developer for Chinese blockchain firms since 2017 said the exact same thing! My market perspective: "Everything is priced in." Apparently, not in the crypto markets. Old news is new news, apparently. Policy perspective: The more DeFi becomes a thing, the less a policy like this will matter. It will still matter a lot, but it will pack less of a punch due to decentralized services. My overall perspective: If crypto still feels as speculative (in terms of trading crypto) 10 years later, then I feel the experiment to find a good use-case has ran for long enough.
- Loughla 5y ago
  >If crypto still feels as speculative (in terms of trading crypto) 10 years later, then I feel the experiment to find a good use-case has ran for long enough. Maybe I'm taking this to a place you didn't intend, or maybe this is an ignorant question but. . . . What is the US market now, compared to 10 years ago. My experience is that 10 years ago Bitcoin was used to either buy drugs, or as a bet made by college kids that they could make easy money. And. Well. It seems still pretty much the same in terms of existing primarily as a speculative tool.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    I'd agree, but I'm willing to wait and see for 10 more years. For one, I do see some developments nowadays that are making me excited (not money related). Also, tackling blockchain problems is hard. And in all fairness, the speed at which you can send Ripple and similar cryptocurrencies is actually quite cool. It's a shame that it's mostly in its own little bubble still. > Bitcoin was used to either buy drugs In all fairness, I'm not necessarily against it. I'm not pro, but I do believe that many drug laws in most countries are against the idea of freedom. And I find it a comforting yet troubling thought (for different reasons) that cryptocurrencies fight against that (troubling: a 13 year old buying/using some very strong drugs, comforting: a 31 year old doing it for experimentation -- freedom is important).

holoduke 5y ago

I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.

flenserboy 5y ago
So you'd rather a system where TPTB get to fudge the books as they see fit, impose taxes via intentional inflation, and keep tabs on your every transaction? Interesting.
- epgui 5y ago
  That’s not exactly how it works.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Regardless of law, intent, etc, this is how it functionally ends up happening, a nonzero amount of the time.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      That's what ends up happening when an asset becomes economically meaningful. Crypto is still a joke to global economy, but on the off chance it gains mainstream adoption, it'll have the same kind of regulations, taxation and fraud attached to it.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        Except crypto is less firmly anchored in the real world than in the digital realm. It's fundamentally harder to regulate it than a physical currency, which needs specialist equipment to generate.
        5y ago

mlang23 5y ago

deja vu!

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

They probably want to install the digital yuan, so better get rid of the competition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi

noxer 5y ago

This is about the 19th time they do this since I follow the crypt news. Its irrelevant, the people there are under the control of he CCP and no crypt could help them escape.

perlgeek 5y ago

> virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal currency > they are not legal and should not and cannot be used as currency in the market So, you're not allowed to use it as a currency. Can you still use it as an asset?

yosito 5y ago

Alternate headline: China says today is a good day to invest in crypto.

tgtweak 5y ago

For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.

dougmwne 5y ago
This is a country rounding up a whole population of a religious minority and sending them to reeducation camps. A country that mobilized over a billion people to almost completely control covid. You are vastly underestimating the CCP, as most Westerns continue to do.
- Loughla 5y ago
  I've noticed this quite a bit, and I don't understand it. People keep writing articles and saying things amounting to 'it just won't last forever'. But the reason is, because it just won't, totalitarian governments don't last. Why wouldn't it? Strong central government. Clear economic and social goals with the ends justifying whatever unethical means. A complacent middle and upper class satiated by enough new wealth to make them fat(ter than they used to be) and happy. Why won't they be the next world power for the foreseeable future? Is there an anti-party faction in China that's larger and more powerful than I see in US media? Or is this just wishful thinking from the west?
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Nothing wrong with the fundamentals of your argument, but growth can’t be unlimited. Eventually it’s starts slowing down, then those complacent middle class will start being less complacent and start demanding more freedom. I think it’s reasonable to say the CCP will keep their grip on power for as long as they can continue delivering wealth to the middle class, and lifting those in poverty into the middle class. What’s not clear is how long the CCP can continue delivering that wealth. The ongoing crisis with Everglade is showing that the CCP power and ability to generate wealth is not unlimited. I doubt it’s the beginning of the end, but it does shine a light on the long term structural flaws of their strategy. It’ll be interesting to see how the CCP deals with this over the next 10 to 20 years, maybe they’ll find a new strategy to maintain power, or maybe they’ll start a slow and gentle transition into democracy, allowing them to placate the middle class who won’t be seeing outsized wealth growth anymore.

lampe3 5y ago

Doge Coin to the moon! /s

milliams 5y ago

cryptocurrency?

theonemind 5y ago
ok, boomer. just kidding. I see 'crypto', I think 'cryptography', and China banning cryptography (except for the party/government) doesn't seem that far fetched, so I think its a bad headline.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  I think cryptozoology. China should ban bigfoot, loch ness monster and chupacabra.
xtracto 5y ago
Hah you brought a grin to my face. I fondly remember the late 90s when I was doing my BSc on computing. I was pretty into cryptography, stenography, data obfuscation and reverse engineering. Back then people doing "crypto" were called nerds by Software Engineers (the nerds of the nerds). Pretty great time.

tgtweak 5y ago

Trampoline sales fall as China declares gravity "illegal".

singularity2001 5y ago
Trampoline "users" fall as China declares gravity illegal

vnchr 5y ago

If the Chinese Communist Party bans it, that’s good enough for me. They’re definitely making the kinds of changes and exerting power in a way that reassures me of their domestic and global aspirations.

anfilt 5y ago

While not a fan of PoW for evironmental reasons. For instance El Salvador made bit-coin legal tender there... So china has out lawed what an other country has declared legal tender... Might make transactions between those 2 countries interesting....

yxhuvud 5y ago
No, because El Salvador still accepts dollars.

_Algernon_ 5y ago

This happens every other week.

Gareth321 5y ago

Isn't this the 26th time China has declared crypto illegal?

uberdru 5y ago

It's not inconceivable that we could wind up in a period of hyperinflation where bitcoin (or some token) could be used to in a way similar to the Plano Real in Brasil back in the '90s. It could actually have a stabilizing (mostly psychological) effect, should things go haywire with fiat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano_Real

crypot 5y ago

Other than white listing and black listing transactions by the miners and exchanges, and governments declaring it illegal, Bitcoin is 100% censorship resistant.

FabHK 5y ago
>Bitcoin is 100% censorship resistant. ... as is everything else? Other than governments declaring it illegal and intermediaries black listing it, I mean.
snarf21 5y ago
Serious question: In a place like China with the Great Firewall, can't they simply block crypto connections at the ISP level? Can't they more aggressively disallow VPN connections to locations outside of China? They might not be able to change the ledger but it seems like they could (will?) block access to them.
- photon-torpedo 5y ago
  I think this is technically possible. Relatedly, can they jam Starlink?
MillenialMan 5y ago
Bitcoin isn't, but Monero is.

aazaa 5y ago

> A statement posted on the Central Bank’s website today says that “virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal currency.” China has "banned Bitcoin" dozens of times over the last decade. I mean, this is an ancient and well-known meme involving a certain South Park clip after all. Maybe this time is for real, but all of these media announcements have one thing in common. They always conflate the concept of "legal tender" and "legality." The number of authorities around the world who have warned citizens about Bitcoin using language like "no legal tender status" and "risky" and "no government guarantee" is legion. Easily thousands of times. Every time "journalists" with no business reporting on tech, law, or foreign governments interpret this as a "ban." 99% of the time, nothing happens and there is no ban. So, maybe this time is different. Over the last year, an initiative toward greater centralized control seems to be underway in China's tech and finance sectors. Disappearing of wealthy founders. Restrictions on video game consumption. The three red lines. The ejection of the Chinese mining industry. Then again, maybe not.

RivieraKid 5y ago
> China has "banned Bitcoin" dozens of times over the last decade This is a false narrative pushed by the Bitcoin cult. It's supposed to create an impression that nothing has changed, so the price should not change.
- shlant 5y ago
  or it's completely factual? 2013: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-05/china-s-pboc-bans-financial-companies-from-bitcoin-transactions https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-05/china-s-p... 2015: https://archive.is/Higoz https://archive.is/Higoz 2017: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-china-idUSKCN1BJ1US https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-china-idUSKCN1BJ1... 2018: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-eliminates-all-cryptocurrency-trading-2018-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-eliminates-all-cryptoc... 2021: https://archive.is/s7nbw https://archive.is/s7nbw "China Has Banned Bitcoin 13 Times Since 2012": https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-great-bitcoin-mining-migration-134452993.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-great-bitcoin-mining-mi...

todd8 5y ago

Here's an interesting take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp86n7QCf0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp86n7QCf0 This analysis suggests that the value of tracking every financial transaction will eventually cause governments to all want to institute there own crypto currencies and eventually outlaw independent crypto currencies.

RivieraKid 5y ago
It's simpler to simply require banks to provide transaction data.
mekster 5y ago
Question is, would people give up a currency that's not under anyone's control?

57844743385 5y ago

Crypto goes up, crypto goes down. Panic/optimism/panic/whatever. There’s nothing behind the price but pure sentiment.

lucasyvas 5y ago

I'm not sure why the market would react to this news. China is not an example to follow in just about anything these days.

dtwest 5y ago

This is interesting timing given what has been happening related to Evergrande. It is possible that the government is worried about money being moved out of the country, and cryptocurrency is one way of doing that.

EveYoung 5y ago
How would crypto help with moving money out of a country if mining is banned?
- photon-torpedo 5y ago
  1. Find a place that takes RMB and gives you crypto. 2. Send crypto to your wallet or foreign exchange. 3. Abroad, sell crypto for non-RMB fiat currency. No mining needed. China can't ban 2 (or perhaps they could by putting the great firewall into overdrive) so they are banning 1.
- stiltzkin 5y ago
  You do not mining to exchange Yuan to crypto.

6d6b73 5y ago

Some people think of Bitcoin as a "store of value", comparing it to gold.. I have a question to people who believe that - What do you think will be the value of bitcoin in 100 years? Do you think your descendants would be happier with $50k* worth of bitcoin or with $50k* worth of gold in 200 years? How about 500 years? *$50k bitcoin/gold if bought today

xtracto 5y ago
Meh... there were some bonds provided by the Mexican government between 1850 and 1951 that at the time seemed like a good investment and now they are worth nothing [1]. Different instruments for different goals. I would hold BTC for a 100 year horizon. I wouldn't hold it for a 500 year horizon. Actually I would not hold any asset for a 500 year horizon (including gold): I don't have kids and I don't think I will have to worry at that time. [1] https://www.banxico.org.mx/marco-normativo/d/%7B097567D4-647C-0071-0E93-55D887D1E54E%7D.pdf https://www.banxico.org.mx/marco-normativo/d/%7B097567D4-647...

Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago

Keep falling! Gamers want their gpus back

caiomassan 5y ago

they ban bitcoin every year. what is the news?

adrianN 5y ago

Excellent news for the climate.

phist_mcgee 5y ago
And what about non energy intensive crypto currencies that rely on PoS or PoH?
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Don’t worry they are scams, only proof of work is actually secure.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    Not convinced of this. (Your handle doesn’t make it a more convincing claim.) I’m not saying I’m totally convinced that PoS can be really secure, but I am reasonably confident that some developing such systems sincerely believe it can be, and have no deceptive intent. This in my mind seems to contradict it being “a scam”, which to my mind requires deception. In fact, I do suspect that it can be secure, for some reasonable sense of “secure”, though I am not especially confident in this.
- fouric 5y ago
  Depends on what you mean by "PoS". If you mean "proof of stake" - I've never heard anyone describe any environmental issues with them, so I assume that they either don't exist or are far smaller in impact than PoW. If you mean "proof of storage/space" - it seems like that tends to produce very high write volumes, which in turn burns SSDs out very quickly[1] - and you can argue that that's bad for the environment. How bad, and whether it's worse than the energy consumption of PoW, I'm not sure. From one perspective, it's worse, because you could theoretically power PoW mining using exclusively green energy, but you can't pull the raw materials for SSDs out of thin air. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27001848
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Most mining has already shifted out of China, and Bitcoin mining is a very small percentage of electricity usage on the scale of "all electricity usage" - there are plenty of bigger fish (the argument then turns, validly, to the usefulness of said bigger fish in comparison to bitcoin).

mistrial9 5y ago

China bans your crypto as illegal, while preparing their own national crypto chain(s). Sweden too right? US Fed in the mix with their own plans. "big thieves hate little thieves"

shawnk 5y ago
E X A C T L Y
echelon 5y ago
It's a way to move capital out of the country. Bad. China is trying to prop up domestic stocks and investment. Crypto blunts that effort. Moreover, following or reclaiming the money is difficult, slow, and sometimes impossible. Very bad. Crypto is probably something that the NSA can headshot and easily kill your cottage industry. Also bad, but to a much lesser degree than the capital flight.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Pollution is also a huge problem in China. While China would like to still keep its electricity cheap, especially in the hinterland where people can’t really afford higher prices (and otherwise would resort to direct coal use for heating), crypto miners taking advantage of the cheap rates in a way that government didn’t intend.
  - taylodl 5y ago
    That's an interesting insight. Thank you!
- cabalamat 5y ago
  Agreed. the CCP wants control and cryptocurrencies weaken that control.
the-dude 5y ago
The EU : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28618297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28618297

bananapub 5y ago

hooray, finally some good news this week. even aside from reducing the amount of financial stupidity in the world, bitcoin uses as much electricity as entire countries! to process 4 TRANSACTIONS PER SECOND: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second https://www.blockchain.com/charts/transactions-per-second what in the ever-loving fuck are we doing with ourselves.

detaro 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964

smegcicle 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

How is this actually enforceable? Anyone with internet and power can mine. Could they firewall the entire bootstrap IP list for Bitcoin mining?

zucker42 5y ago
They don't have to block Bitcoin through technical means; they just have to (figuratively) hit a sufficient number of violators with a $5 wrench. [1] [1] https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
nness 5y ago
I imagine the physical footprint of large-scale mining operations will make it easy to find miners. And as Chinese companies looking to operate on the internet need to acquire a license from the Government, they're probably less likely to risk their whole business for crypto payments/trading.
WJW 5y ago
> Could they firewall the entire bootstrap IP list for Bitcoin mining? I mean, yes that would be one way. But apart from that, they don't need to find every last one. Nobody cares about a miner making $0.5 per day on their GPU. The target is the big mining farms drawing multiple megawatts of electricity and you can just ask the power company for the address of anyone using that much electricity. There can't be _that_ many of them, so just visit them all and see if they are running a legit power-intensive business like a metal foundry or if it is a crypto mining farm.
josefx 5y ago
> Anyone with internet and power can mine. How hard could it be for the Chinese government to identify suspiciously large amounts of power use? Malaysia of all places recently managed to seize and destroy around a thousand bitcoin mining rigs.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
It is enforceable at the citizen and institutional level. I know many decentralized cryptocurrency advocates tout the fact that no government can literally modify the blockchain. While accurate, that is not the point. Governments don't need to do that because they basically have free reign to enforce laws and regulations on its citizenry. Sure you can set up a miner in China, but if the authorities find out you're going to prison. The State might not be able to stop all mining, but they will definitely force it underground and make it a very risky thing to do. A total prevention of an activity is never the actual goal of a ban, the real goal is just to stop the vast majority of it from happening.

Invictus0 5y ago

When will the defi movement realize how much centralized and regulated equipment and systems they rely on? Crypto-anarchists/libertarians are just living in a fever dream.

nimbius 5y ago

translation: the microchip shortage has finally become exhausting enough to begin picking low hanging fruit.

quotemstr 5y ago

And the anti-cryptocurrency sentiment I've seen all over HN --- which appeared suddenly a few months ago --- is totally organic, right? I'm sick and tired of everything being a narrative manipulation op.

detaro 5y ago
If you think anti-cryptocurrency sentiment on HN "appeared suddenly a few months ago" you really haven't been paying attention. People have been whining that HN is so so negative about cryptocurrencies for years.
almost_usual 5y ago
HN has been mostly anti crypto as far as I can remember.
- gfodor 5y ago
  It actually makes sense, the "YC generation" turnover is overdue. A few will pass through to the next dialectical synthesis successfully, but a lot are going to be left behind. Crypto is one of several things which are going to carry things through to the new order. (Avatar embodiment and pseudonymous identity is another, and DAOs taking the place of traditional startups is another.) A lot of people here are going to be left confused and angry, but that's the nature of change: the innovators of the past boil slowly into being stuck in their ways and unable to adapt.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
HN's anti-crypto silliness goes back to the very early days of bitcoin.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
I'd love to hear what else you believe is a narrative manipulation op.
nullc 5y ago
Other than occasionally promoting ethereum and connected scams that have been heavily invested in by SV VC firms HN has been pretty reliably negative on cryptocurrency. Even pure tech work that just happens to have been done by Bitcoin related folks tends to get downvoted and flagged, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18645790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18645790

echopurity 5y ago

This is "news" every other month. Too bad HN enforces ideological uniformity over worthwhile information. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/375221 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/375221

la6471 5y ago

China seems to be hell bent on exiting the global speculative markets. Can the stock markets absorb this shock?

ethbr0 5y ago
Afaik, there is effectively "the Chinese domestic stock market" and "the rest of the world's stock market." Chinese citizens can invest in the former, but (via government currency exchange controls) can't participate meaningfully in the latter. So if China exits global stock markets... there isn't that much Chinese money being pulled out of them, because there wasn't that much in them. What money China is investing internationally appears to mostly go to bonds, construction financing, and asset leases / purchases. PS: What this appears to really be about is severing links for extraordinarily wealthy Chinese citizens to move money outside the reach of the PRC. Which, if you were running an expansionist monetary policy intended to facilitate domestic economic growth, while simultaneously cracking down on the wealthy in pursuit of equality, is presumably something you'd take very seriously (as a command economy). Lest all that new & old money just fly offshores.
yomly 5y ago
To be fair, it is well accepted that high inflation is bad as everyone stops spending. This holds true for asset inflation as well - you can be damned sure that in the current environment tonnes of people will be taking money out of the system to dump into markets
- rmah 5y ago
  High inflation encourages spending. It is deflation that discourages spending. High inflation means that the money you have today will purchase less in the future, thus it pushes people to buy now rather than later when things will be more expensive in nominal terms. High inflation combined with low interest rates, will also increase financial speculation pretty much across the board. The problem with high inflation is that it usually (but not recently) goes hand in hand with higher interest rates (i.e. money costs more). Which tends to discourage business borrowing, which acts as a damper on non-financial investment (i.e. spending on factories, marketing, R&D, etc.). This has the effect of slowing down economic growth. On the other hand, high inflation/high interest rate environments tend to arise when growth is high. Because high growth tends to go hand in hand with a rise in wages, increases in demand (which shifts the demand curve, and thus raises prices), increases in financial speculation, etc. There are a ton more "on the other hands". Economic analysis is complex and difficult because it's a tangled mess of interdependent feedback loops that constantly change. A single policy action has an avalanche of cascading effects, some of which will be counter to the policy objective. I'm not suggesting humanity should just roll over in the face of this challenge. We should just be aware that it's a "hard problem" and there are never any simple solutions.

vdddv 5y ago

how many times has it happened already?

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Earlier discussion (was on this same front page just over an hour or so, but disappeared, somehow) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28640964

danuker 5y ago
you are commenting on it
toofy 5y ago
It looks like some threads were merged, so you’re likely in the same thread already.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

acd 5y ago

Wonder if this will free up Graphics cards for gamers or if the mines will move country? Bsckground There is a severe shortage of gaming GPUs Geforce 30xx. Possibly semi conductor shortage / crypto mining.

dleslie 5y ago
One can hope, it's been a problem for a while now that's impacting the regular cycle of game development.

lousken 5y ago

hopefully more ocuntries will follow so that we finally get rid of POW

plebianRube 5y ago
I for one, only like money that there is no proof it was worked for.
bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
If every country in the world AND the UN "banned" cryptocurrencies, there would still be POW.
- rspeele 5y ago
  It's all about how much work the reward pays for. At current Bitcoin prices of around $43k, the block reward pays miners $14,125,500,000/year to spin ASICs all day. That kind of money buys a lot of wasted power. If PoW is still around, but the price dumps low enough that miners are only burning, say, $1,000,000 a year worth of power, that'd be a great improvement.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Sure, but if no American, Canadian, European, Chinese, Japanese, etc person is willing to use it, then what's the point?

wcoenen 5y ago

I'm not sure why the title of the article focuses on mining. China had already banned mining. This was very visible as a drop in the hash rate over the summer[1]. What has been announced now (by the Chinese central bank and a bunch of regulators) is that all crypto related transactions will be banned. [1] http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

earthscienceman 5y ago
There's a lot of vague language in these types of threads. What does "banned" mean? Does that mean illegal and punishable by death? Or does that mean, connections to identified crypto computing resources will be blocked by the great firewall?
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  Apart from the missing actual news (it's now also trading), what's not to understand? Banned by a government means illegal. Trading cryptocurrencies is now illegal there. Who cares how they enforce it? They will enforce it. https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-central-bank-rules-crypto-094408319.html https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-central-bank-rules-crypto-0944...
- nabla9 5y ago
  What it means is that crypto is shut down from anything that involves bookkeeping. Banks, financial transactions, money transfers, buying stuff from kiosk, ... No legal commerce or finance. Crypto is now purely black market currency in China.
- newaccount2021 5y ago
  "banned" as in, you get arrested, put in a van, taken away don't be obtuse
- creshal 5y ago
  From my understanding of the announcements, Chinese companies will be banned from performing any cryptocurrency related services, transactions or exchanges, including smart contract platforms like Ethereum. No firm mention of private individuals, or what particular penalties companies would face. But either way, it greatly limits the value of cryptocurrencies (and related concepts) in China.

nightski 5y ago

Wow, imagine living in a country where the legal financial assets you own can be turned criminal where accessing them is punished with hard labor. Sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

DethNinja 5y ago
Coming soon to a country nearby you… Plebs cannot be allowed to have access to sound money, otherwise financial parasites can’t exists.
- lottin 5y ago
  Are you sure you got this right? Keep in mind that the only way to make money with bitcoin is literally by taking it away from other "investors".
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Or transacting for goods and services. You know, like in an economy. I just bought coffee with it.
    - zuminator 5y ago
      You made money with bitcoin by buying coffee with it?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - reedjosh 5y ago
        I view bitcoin as money. You can make bitcoin via good old fashion work. There are tons of these out there https://bitcoinerjobs.co/ https://bitcoinerjobs.co/
  - quantumBerry 5y ago
    Now apply your idea to dollars, and think about who prints the dollars.

exo762 5y ago

Will we observe a significant hash-rate dive in near future?

epinephrinios 5y ago
No, miners already migrated. This is affecting Chinese holders more than anything.

eggy 5y ago

Blockchain, not specifically crypto currencies, are also a means to operate anonymously outside of an authoritarian government. Sure there are gotchas with remaining anonymous, but I am sure China wouldn't want a blockchain-based, mesh, peer-to-peer, or distrubuted network, that could operate outside of the Great Firewall's ability to regulate or censor it. High-power, long-range WiFi and mesh networks would be hard to control or stop with reasonable efforts.

endisneigh 5y ago
It would be trivial to find the source of high-powered wifi/antennas. Consider how easy it is already for one to find the source of an unlicensed ham radio stream. It's definitely not impossible to obfuscate and use crypto even in a country where it's banned, but it isn't that easy.
- Causality1 5y ago
  Indeed. There's a huge difference between one or several actions and habitual behavior. You can find a method to get away with anything once. Operating on a daily basis where the government only has to catch you once is far less practical.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    This is true for lots of virtuous acts or acts of survival under authoritative regimes, such as hiding Jews from the Nazis or selling your surplus harvest under Stalin. It’s only if you are privileged (or, arguably, ignorant) to not consider on balance the counterfactual costs of undermining technologies which could de-risk such acts for those being oppressed. (Which may include a future-you.)
    - acdha 5y ago
      Alternately, people who accurately understand the technology and the environment in which it is used might be speaking up against a system which is designed to endanger those people. Using people subject to these risks in service of MLM recruitment pitches is not a moral good.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

How much BTC is likely to be held in accounts that can no longer legally trade?

gruez 5y ago
AFAIK there aren't any exchanges in mainland china, so everyone there has their crypto in offshore accounts that aren't subject to such regulations.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Pretty sure it's still illegal for Chinese citizens to use them.
  - gruez 5y ago
    So with this recent announcement, it's super duper illegal for them to use it? That's not really much of a change from a few weeks ago.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      No, it was never illegal for private citizens to use them before, they just banned the exchanges. Now any transaction is illegal.

shiado 5y ago

Some China FUD on the last Friday of the month that is an almost verbatim reprint of headlines printed a couple months ago... You surely realize the purpose of this right? Just look at all those 40k strike puts...

EGreg 5y ago
I don’t really understand these types of claims. You think the CCP and central bank of China are just putting out statements to help a few foreign traders win on leveraged trades? The central planners of the economy that if fast becoming the largest in the world care a ton about some random traders in other countries? LMAO.
- shiado 5y ago
  Oh China is definitely cracking down on crypto, what I'm pointing out is that Western financial rags print the story late on expiry day to manipulate the market.

amin 5y ago

I hope it all comes crashing down, so that cryptocurrencies will go back to their use of transacting instead of speculating.

javert 5y ago
Cryptocurrency was originally designed to be currency, not a transactional mechanism only. If you think it through, it can't work as only a transactional mechanism, because the price won't be stable. It has to first become a big asset class with a lot of liquidity, which means it has to go through a growth phase, i.e. speculation.

crhutchins 5y ago

It's not just Chinese crypto traders at a loss. I think almost all crypto traders are at a loss in this state.

ejanus 5y ago

Looks like something serious is cooking around Chinese economy.

kilroy123 5y ago
It seems to be part of an overall move to curb people from becoming too rich in China.
- ejanus 5y ago
  Which kind of economic model is that?

frjalex 5y ago

One good thing to always keep in mind is that China structurally maintains the status quo of a Leninist state --- IMO, the entire reason they banned crypto is that crypto's goal --- relative anonymity, privacy, and freedom of where to move one's money --- goes directly _against_ China's closed, tightly regulated financial system. The bureaucrats at their Ministry of Finance must be absolutely appalled by the idea that one could transfer money via bitcoin easily outside China without any sort of authorization.

blueblisters 5y ago
I have always imagined China to have more sophisticated tools for monitoring financial flows than Soviet Russia. Crypto (at least Bitcoin) isn't all that anonymous, nor outside CCP control so long as there are exchanges and miners located inside China. For instance, there were (probably unfounded) fears that the CCP could control Bitcoin by proxy if more than 50% of the hash rate was owned by Chinese miners. I suspect the recent crackdown is more related to a fear of uncontrolled capital flight due to regulatory changes and anticipated slowdown of the economy.
sudosysgen 5y ago
I doubt it. It's not that hard to figure it out if every other capital flow is being tracked. I'm guessing it has to do with preventing people from moving wealth out of the country.
cm2187 5y ago
I suspect what is triggering this crackdown is that the enforcement of capital controls is becoming more critical as more people are nervous of a financial crisis in China because of bad debt / bad banks. Need to make sure those depositors have no place to go. Though to be honest I don't understand how bitcoin can be used for getting money out of the country. Who would be willing to accept onshore CNY in payment for bitcoin in volumes if everyone is trying to move out?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Someone who needs CNY, that can then buy real goods and export them.

shadowgovt 5y ago

Wow, this I did not see coming. I kind of assumed BTC mining was going to be owned by Chinese nationals within a couple years, at which point the government would nationalize it and BTC would no longer, in practice, have the promise of a distributed store of truth. Egg on my face.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wnevets 5y ago

I'm curious to know how to will be spun into being good for bitcoin.

tehjoker 5y ago

Finally, someone is taking action against this insanity.

powerapple 5y ago

"The directive, which sent Bitcoin dropping as much as 5.5%, comes as global markets grow increasingly concerned over a debt crisis involving Chinese property developer Evergrande." 5.5%???? for bitcoin it means nothing.

fossuser 5y ago

The odd thing about their repeated attempts to damage crypto is that it feels like a strategic miss to me. If I was the CCP I'd try to leverage BTC (and others) as a weapon against the dominance of USD. Instead it looks like they just want to implement their own variant that gives them total control and transparency of in-country transactions. At a minimum they could do both (ban BTC use internally, but still allow mining in the country). I must be missing something. Their authoritarian currency does allow for some interesting things like expiring credits or instant distribution of benefits, refunds, stimulus to the public (with constraints baked in) - but the obvious negatives are pretty extreme especially with the CCP's track record.

azinman2 5y ago
It hard to leverage it as a hedge against USD when it can be used against you, so many miners are already in China, and no real international transactions are happening in it (oil still USD).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

seaourfreed 5y ago

The real news: Massive problems in China's real estate markets, bad banking loans and more are uncovered. People in China are greatly moving to crypto and also moving money out of China. China works to trap them in the problems of the legacy financial system.