Bitcoin Slides as China's Central Bank Launches Checks On Exchanges (reuters.com) 43
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: China's central bank launched spot checks on leading bitcoin exchanges in Beijing and Shanghai, ratcheting up pressure on potential capital outflows and knocking the price of the cryptocurrency down more than 12 percent against the dollar. The People's Bank of China said its probe of bitcoin exchanges BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin was to look into a range of possible rule violations, including market manipulation, money laundering and unauthorized financing. It did not say if any violations had been found. Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts to stem capital outflows and relieve pressure on the yuan. While the yuan lost more than 6.5 percent against the dollar last year, its worst performance since 1994, the bitcoin price has soared to near-record highs.
Re:Fuck off, msmash (Score:4, Insightful)
We're not your pump-n-dump engine.
How is saying, "The price is falling!" going to pump up the price? Perhaps it's a short-n-spread-fud scheme.
Re:Fuck off, msmash (Score:5, Interesting)
After you pump the price and dump your bitcoin, you want to drop the price so you can buy more low in preparation for the next pump.
Now, it's unlikely MsMash is a top-level player in that scam, but there are lots of people who want to participate in hopes of enriching themselves.
Since the market is more or less entirely driven by fraud, this is essentially a guessing game of how far bitcoin will go during its ups and downs, so if you're NOT actually one of the big players who is moving the market through exchange fraud or controlling large amounts of bitcoin, you're probably not going to do very well... which seems to make them try all the harder.
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Wow. Modded 'flamebait'.
This is what bitcoin cultists actually believe. I swear it's like watching Scientologists attempting to interact with reality.
"SUPPRESSIVE PERSON!"
Re: Fuck off, msmash (Score:2)
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Fuck off with your bitcoin spam. We're not your pump-n-dump engine.
speak for yourself, keep the bitcoin FUD coming
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We might be. There appear to be more people with mod points voting to support the scam's narrative than those voting against it.
But then again, most people who aren't participating in the scam probably aren't interested enough to waste mod points here, or even read the discussion in the first place.
Either way, these posts are an embarrassing reflection on the userbase of this site. I can only assume they're permitted because they're genera
Watch for Chinese Glass Hearts (Score:3)
The last time I speculated on /. about the share of Bitcoin being used by Chinese citizens to get capital out of the bubble, guess what happened? I was called a Japanese shittalker.
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They're my favourite kind of mushroom.
This is my shocked face... (Score:1, Flamebait)
>The People's Bank of China said its probe of bitcoin exchanges BTCC, Huobi and OKCoin was to look into a range of possible rule violations, including market manipulation, money laundering and unauthorized financing.
Wait, the price of Bitcoin was pumped by Chinese fraud? If only this had been known earlier! If only we'd noticed that every selling point of Bitcoin has actually been thoroughly debunked, that every major player in Bitcoin has been caught stealing or has failed (or both). If only we'd not
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> If only we'd noticed that every selling point of Bitcoin has actually been thoroughly debunked, that every major player in Bitcoin has been caught stealing or has failed (or both). If only we'd notice that blockchains have fundamental flaws that make them useless on any decent scale.
Bitcoin has died 119 times so far. Guess we'll make that 120 today then, based on your assessment?
source: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/
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Nope. Bitcoin's already dead.
It died long ago, when stores stopped accepting it, when Bitcoin ATMs failed as a business, when VC smartened up and stopped throwing money at it.
You just haven't noticed yet and you're playing with the corpse.
And you don't even have enough confidence in your cult scam to post with a registered UID, which is a pretty strong indicator you know bitcoin's digital shit.
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HAHAHAHAHA. Thanks for the laugh. There was a brief window where that could be practical, but now you'd just be throwing money away to use bitcoin, and in most cases also incurring extra liability over a cash or credit card transaction. With less convenience, and no anonymity.
Why on Earth would any sane person want to do any of that? It's like carrying a balance on your credit card - you're just throwing an extra portion of your wealth away with every transaction!
This is a Story about China, not about Bitcoin (Score:5, Interesting)
Last couple of years have seen the wealthy in China resort to more and more elaborate schemes to exfiltrate their wealth, which they are officially restricted to moving just $50K/yr.
Like suitcases of cash brought on "vacation" to Hong Kong [bloomberg.com]
And buying a $170M painting on a credit card. [newsweek.com]
Bitcoin is just the current fad for circumventing foreign exchange restrictions. When China clamps down, the wealthy will move to some other method, and bitcoin pricing will probably collapse.
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The Chinese aren't holding bitcoin, they are using it to move past their governments capital controls.
If the Chinese flux in bitcoin is that large a share of total bitcoin holdings than China and Bitcoin are even more fucked than I thought.
As you note: Capital controls never work.
Only a matter of time (Score:2, Insightful)
There's nothing governments hate more than money outside of their control.
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Good think bitcoin isn't money. It's a pump-n'-dump pony style scheme.
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The arrogance and the hypocrisy...
- of those who criticise what they don't understand and can't be bothered to learn. One of the central duties of any government is to protect the nation against things that harm the economy, and sucking capital out of the country does harm the economy. That is why people everywhere are rightfully outraged when rich people do everything they can to avoid paying taxes, for example. You may call it petty if you wish, but when you have some rich celebrity racing down motorways they carefully avoid contributing
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Allowing one to avoid taxes and capital controls is a very nice start.
In this case it is good for the whole world. When the Chinese bubble goes pop, there are going to be 1.6 thousand million pissed off people. Giving the smarter ones a chance to preserve some of their net worth will help.
How would you have felt, just after the .com bubble popped, if the US government had restricted your sales of .com stocks prior to the mess? At least you would vent your anger at the US government. I'm betting a large
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Impotent anger. Nice.
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It doesn't always work this way. Most fighters who want to take the belt from a champ would also post the first 3 lines. Most of them lose, as the typical champ has many career wins.
Bitcoin against govenment (Score:2)
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Here's the thing... whenever anyone tells you there's something good about bitcoin beyond its utility for gambling on the change in value between when you get buy some and when you sell some (and perhaps gambling on whether you get scammed in the process of either of those transactions)... they're lying scammers or deluded cultists.
We've had years of evidence of this but they have a
But I thought it was STABLE! (Score:3)
Wow, didn't Slashdot run a story [slashdot.org] just a few days ago boasting that Bitcoin is now "more stable than many of the world's top currencies?" Darn! How could I have been so silly as to believe them? If only I hadn't immediately moved all my assets into Bitcoin! Oh, that's right, I didn't. Well that's a relief.
What exactly IS a Bitcoin? (Score:2)
On the flip side, it's crypto. Is it legal to import/export, or am I likely to run afoul of government agents with water, rags and no sense of humor? If it's crypto and it's weak enough to import and export freely, what the hell good is it?
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It's totally virtual and has no direct use value, just like fiat money.
Fiat money has the backing of the government that issues the money. That includes the police and military who can prevent you from using other currencies whenever they want and the government that will enforce laws and protect said currency. Tell me, which army will force you to use only bitcoin? In a "free country" you are free to use whatever medium of exchange you want - within certain limits. You're also free to go bankrupt. Start a business granted special status by the government because it's a vital
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Fiat money has direct use value, you can pay your taxes in it.