China Will Likely Ban All Bitcoin Mining Soon (arstechnica.com) 194
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bitcoin took investors on another rollercoaster ride over the weekend after a top regulator in China announced a crackdown on mining, a new tack in the country's ongoing fight against the cryptocurrency. The government will "crack down on bitcoin mining and trading behavior and resolutely prevent the transfer of individual risks to the society," said the statement, which was issued by the Financial Stability and Development Committee of the State Council, the country's cabinet equivalent. The committee is chaired by Vice Premier Liu He, who acts as President Xi Jinping's top representative on economic and financial matters.
"The wording of the statement did not leave much leeway for cryptocurrency mining," Li Yi, chief research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the South China Morning Post. "When all mining activities are banned in China, it will be a turning point for the fate of bitcoin, as a large chunk of its processing power is taken out of the picture." The Chinese government isn't just worried about financial stability, either. A commentary piece in Xinhua News, the Communist Party's official media outlet, elaborated on the government's stance, voicing concerns about bitcoin's role in money laundering, drug trafficking, and smuggling. It also mentioned bitcoin's profligate energy use. Last week, China warned financial institutions not to participate in crypto-transactions or related services.
The combination of bitcoin's high price and its tremendous energy demand has pushed miners to take extreme positions. Miners in China have flocked to provinces such as Inner Mongolia, where cheap coal power makes mining more profitable. The scale of these facilities reflects how much money investors have sunk into the projects. At least one mining facility in Inner Mongolia draws more than 50 MW. Similarly large operations are popping up in the US, too. In upstate New York, a private equity firm bought and revamped an abandoned power plant just to mine bitcoin. When its data centers are completed, mining will consume 79 percent of the power plant's capacity, or 85 MW. China's warning to bitcoin miners is certain to push many operations out of the country. At least one bitcoin observer said that he anticipates miners pushed out of China will set up operations in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan.
"The wording of the statement did not leave much leeway for cryptocurrency mining," Li Yi, chief research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the South China Morning Post. "When all mining activities are banned in China, it will be a turning point for the fate of bitcoin, as a large chunk of its processing power is taken out of the picture." The Chinese government isn't just worried about financial stability, either. A commentary piece in Xinhua News, the Communist Party's official media outlet, elaborated on the government's stance, voicing concerns about bitcoin's role in money laundering, drug trafficking, and smuggling. It also mentioned bitcoin's profligate energy use. Last week, China warned financial institutions not to participate in crypto-transactions or related services.
The combination of bitcoin's high price and its tremendous energy demand has pushed miners to take extreme positions. Miners in China have flocked to provinces such as Inner Mongolia, where cheap coal power makes mining more profitable. The scale of these facilities reflects how much money investors have sunk into the projects. At least one mining facility in Inner Mongolia draws more than 50 MW. Similarly large operations are popping up in the US, too. In upstate New York, a private equity firm bought and revamped an abandoned power plant just to mine bitcoin. When its data centers are completed, mining will consume 79 percent of the power plant's capacity, or 85 MW. China's warning to bitcoin miners is certain to push many operations out of the country. At least one bitcoin observer said that he anticipates miners pushed out of China will set up operations in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan.
Awesome (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably also serves as a way to get rid of the small miners, while all the major miners just bribe the various officials and the ban does not apply to them.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
China had a massive crack down on bribery some years back. With stiff penalties it put a stop to much of it, even near the top of the CCP.
Chances are good this will work. Next time someone says "but China" as an excuse to pollute, remember China was the first major economy to ban crypto mining.
Re: Awesome (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s just China propaganda. Everyone knows bribes work very well in communist regimes because the same political party that is supposed to enforce the law is filled by people that need to keep their family, power and operations afloat by receiving the bribes.
Re: (Score:2)
I can tell you from experience that bribery that used to work at provincial level is now refused.
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you're not offering enough. The price has simply gone up.
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I don't think the governments and companies are that concerned about the environment, it's just a convenient excuse to do something people may not like, just as "think of the children" is used as an excuse to increase spying on citizens.
If people in power were really concerned abut the environment, then stuff like right to repair would have been passed already - obvious way to reduce e-waste and energy consumed to produce the new device (including mining/recycling materials, shipping it from the factory to
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
It is like all the environment cries that ignore that the every fiat currency is based on the USD which derives its value in turn directly from oil
What a silly little bitcoin zealot you are.
Where did you learn economics? Pyrite Pete's school for the non-gifted?
Further, they ignore that it is unclean energy production which has the negative impact, not a mere consumer neutral to the power source like bitcoin.
Too busy pumping bitcoins to read the summary were you?
Mmmm coal...
It wasn't abandoned because it was green...
Well know for their green energy credentials...
If someone were really concerned they'd propose making renewably mined crypto tax free on first sale.
Wasting green energy for whatever reason, means someone else needs to use dirty energy instead. It doesn't help anything.
And crypto ponzi's are one of the worst reasons to waste it.
Re: (Score:2)
"Wasting green energy for whatever reason, means someone else needs to use dirty energy instead."
Ridiculous.
You'll need to explain your 'reasoning' a little better than that...
If you take all the green energy and use it to mine bitcoin, what is everyone else supposed to use? There's only dirty energy left.
The only thing which ultimately prevents 100% of energy production from being green is financial viability. Bitcoin could help with that.
And until we get to that magical 100% green energy. Bitcoin energy is either polluting energy, or causing pollution by taking the green energy from something more useful.
Where is the process you are proposing where bitcoin helps build green energy?
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Okay, so we agree Bitcoin isn't polluting. You are just passing a value judgement about something else being more useful.
Your arguments pretend there is some fixed amount of power to be had and that Bitcoin is taking some kind of unfair share. We are nowhere near our cap on renewable energy production, we've barely touched the generation potential meaning there is a giant almost entirely e
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Okay, so we agree Bitcoin isn't polluting. You are just passing a value judgement about something else being more useful.
No it seems we don't agree at all. Bitcoin is polluting. Other things are polluting too. If we want less pollution, we have to judge which things are more worthwhile. There may be worse things than bitcoin, there are way way more useful things we can do with energy.
You seem to be saying other things pollute anyway, so bitcoin should also be allowed to. And currently it is. Anyone can buy electricity and do what they want with it. That isn't necessarily a good thing. Especially if your worried about polluti
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Reality has diverged. You can live in yours and I'll live in mine.
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You are naive and misinformed, 67% of all energy produced is lost, because you can't store it and you can't transport it. The green movement adds more unreliable sources of energy which will increase the total of the energy lost.
Thanks for the info. Now I don't know what those big wires are doing behind my house. I'll have to get them removed.
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These "wires" are designed to give you the power where you need it.
Fixed that for you.
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You are naive and misinformed, 67% of all energy produced is lost,
Have you tried looking down the back of the couch?
because you can't store it and you can't transport it.
That's strange. I could have sworn my mobile phone does both.
The green movement adds more unreliable sources of energy which will increase the total of the energy lost.
Yea, but only 67% apparently. The other 33% we can still use to mine bitcoin!
Well, once we invent one of these to transport the energy [wikipedia.org] we can. Not sure how they're doing it now.
Maybe someone less naïve and misinformed can let me know.
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What's the percentage of bitcoin waste heat that is actually used for something worthwhile?
A heat pump is likely more efficient source of heat than bitcoin mining in those situations anyway.
You are trying to greenwash bitcoin mining by saying the heat is useful. But there are better ways to get the heat. Bitcoin miners are doing it for the bitcoins. You said it yourself "waste heat".
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Bitcoin represents an opportunity to separate economic power from the control of state and central banking systems. In a regime like China where all players are essentially arms
Re: Awesome (Score:3)
Re: Awesome (Score:2)
It's not just about creating coins. It's a distributed ledger. There will eventually be no coins left, and miners will be paid transaction fees for the service they provide just like any bank. If Bitcoin endures long enough, that is.
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That is a false dilemma. There are other aspects to Bitcoin than mining, miners endure an ongoing risk.
No, no risk at all.
Wash your mouth out with soap.
Bitcoin is solid and dependable like gold. Something something sound money. Inflation something. Debased US dollar.
Something something fiat.
Bitcoin is best coin.
Just ask Elon.
Don't ask Elon now though.
Monetary manipulation.
No check the 10 year.
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I'm not trying to grief or troll you. Some people just genuinely don't understand how bitcoin pollution is bad. Or that it could all come crashing down, or jump another 1000% there is a risk. Better to hear both sides and make an informed decision.
Nothing against you personally. If you made a fortune off of bitcoin, congratulations. Good luck to you. But plenty of people have or will lose money too.
What strawmen have I beaten down, or things have I misrepresented?
I may have had a bit of childish name cal
Re: (Score:2)
Past Performance Is No Guarantee of Future Results
You'd have to link to some actual advice...
Did anyone tell people to sell at 60,000?
How did they know ahead of time to buy at 50,00 sell at 60,000. Buy again at 40,000 and cross their fingers?
Can you find the predictions.
Or did they say to buy at 60,000 because it will be 100,000 soon. And now they're crying because it's less than 40,000.
Anyone can predict the past. Show some predictions for the future.
Why hasn't Warren Buffett gone all in on Bitcoin I
This is the way (Score:1, Troll)
China is leading in banning cryptoscams.
Re:This is the way (Score:4)
They've probably realised how vulnerable they are to it.
Senior management at a company could install employees, who were secretly told to leave backdoors open, then the 'hackers' come along and hack their systems.
Company manager: "Oh no! How could this ever happen! We'll have to pay the ransom to get our system back! And no-one will ever be able to trace that money! You have no idea how terrible this makes me feel! I must resign in shame, to live a life of retirement in exile! Maybe some place with a beach, or the rule of law...."
Re: (Score:2)
good GPU's pricing needs to get back in line! (Score:4, Interesting)
good GPU's pricing needs to get back in line!
GPUs don't mine bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
good GPU's pricing needs to get back in line!
GPUs do not mine bitcoin, they mine etherium and various other alt-coins. Bitcoin moved beyond GPUs and on to ASICs long ago. Etherium is planning on transitioning from a proof-of-work based system (mining) to a proof-of-stake based system (non-mining). In theory this year. So don't expect GPU availability and prices to get back to "normal" earlier than 2022. Even then there will be the potential hazard of some alt-coin gaining popularity and becoming profitable to mine.
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What is the stake though? If it's just number of computers running the client then Raspberry Pis will be out of stock soon.
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The golden rule:
He who has the gold, rules.
Proof of stake coins are held hostage by the whales.
Re: GPUs don't mine bitcoin (Score:3)
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So basically if you already have money you can make more money, otherwise all you can do it sign up to help someone else get rich and accept the crumbs that fall your way.
I think I'll give that one a miss, unless there is some way to get 32 eth. for free.
Re: GPUs don't mine bitcoin (Score:2)
Staking doesn't make you rich, any more than investing in government bonds does. It's just a relatively low risk way to park money.
For the economy to work most people need to be incentivized to do or make something valuable, not play around with currency.
Re: (Score:2)
More accurately, the bitcoin progression was CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC
I quit mining after FPGAs (and made a nice profit on my ButterflyLabs miners). Just wish I had held onto the coins from then!
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Which bits worked better or were more prosperous 5000 years ago?
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Now the incentives are very short term oriented, you can't project yourself into the future, for instance real estate is too expensive for the younger generation. This is a consequence of money manipulations.
Bitcoin won't also be too expensive for the younger generations? It's rising faster then real estate.
For good or bad, the government can interfere and help young people to own homes. Can it do the same to help them own bitcoin?
You didn't answer this bit
Which bits worked better or were more prosperous 5000 years ago?
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Re: (Score:2)
using "bitcoin" like people use "Klenex".
Masturbation?
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You are correct. Alt coins will fill up all of the slack.
All of the existing mining hardware (GPU and ASIC) will be used for something. It's not just going away or worthless.
So there will be coins for ASIC and coins for GPU (here they make the algorithm excessively complicated, think little VMs and other tricks to prevent ASICs).
Don't expect demand to go away until alt-coins prove worthless (which I don't think they will). RVN and RYO are decent alt-coins (once ETH switches from proof-of-work).
The failure
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If China bans cryptocurrency mining, ASIC mining will drop in frequency. More of the mining rewards will go to GPUs miners. Do you really think this will make GPU prices go down?
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ASICs and GPUs compete for fab capacity. Yes, retooling takes several months, but the overall market is rather fungible. Net global capacity additions, by contrast, are on the order of years.
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In other words: In the short term, we can expect GPU prices to go up considerably, because GPU demand goes up before fab capacity is reallocated. In the mid term, we can expect GPU prices to go up, because GPU demand goes up while demand for ASIC miners gets reallocated across the entire industry (the increase in demand for GPUs will likely exceed the increase in supply of fab capacity that is used to make GPUs). In the long term, who knows, but we can see the trend.
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Why exactly in none of your scenarios does ASIC demand go down when bitcoin mining demand goes down?
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Who ever said that Bitcoin mining demand will go down? Bitcoin mining supply will go down when China bans it.
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Bitcoin mining demand corresponds with fees, which decline as Bitcoin interest declines.
In particular, a decline in fees reduces new purchases of hardware; existing hardware generally continues to operate until it's no longer worth the electricity cost.
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Fees have to do with how many people want to transfer Bitcoin. If you can show that a significant fraction of that demand is related to cheap Chinese electricity, please do so.
It seems to me that even if newly mined coins are sold quickly, somebody must be buying them. Because Bitcoin's network tries to keep the block rate roughly constant, the supply of newly mined BTC will not change that much, and so a Chinese ban on mining will not change the price of BTC.
If China were to impose an effective ban on cr
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Fees correspond with prices, and have always corresponded with prices, because more people have an interest in trading Bitcoin the more valuable it is, and particularly when its price is on an upswing.
It's a highly visible correlation in the data.
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And I am saying that Bitcoin prices have to do with Bitcoin demand, not with the number of miners. There is a correlation between BTC price and number of miners, but only because high prices causes more people to want to mine. When a government bans people from mining, it means the fees go to other miners -- increasing the incentives for them. Like I said at the very beginning of this thread, that can be expected to increase rather than decrease GPU prices.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/0... [cnbc.com] says China is home to 75% of Bitcoin mining, not 25%.
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If China bans cryptocurrency mining, ASIC mining will drop
China uses more ASICs, but they aren't going to toss them in a landfill.
If miners can't use ASICs in China, they will be shipped someplace like Iceland and put back in service.
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If China bans cryptocurrency mining, ASIC mining will drop
China uses more ASICs, but they aren't going to toss them in a landfill.
If miners can't use ASICs in China, they will be shipped someplace like Iceland and put back in service.
Iceland does not have the excess electrical capacity to increase mining by 10x. Plus they are more sensitive to carbon emissions so they may prefer to have their electricity being used to displace fossil fuel use.
Plus the expense of relocating the hardware, any new fees or costs, may make a lot of currently marginal ASICs unprofitable to relocated. ASICs are relatively heavy and bulky due to the heat sinks. Part of the low cost of China was minimal shipping costs from factory to colocation facility.
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At least one bitcoin observer said that he anticipates miners pushed out of China will set up operations in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan.
get out now but save the IRS cut or you may be in (Score:2)
get out now but save the IRS cut or you may be in for some big fines / even hard time if you don't pay.
took long enough (Score:1)
Can I get a GPU yet?! (Score:2)
The market should soon be flooded with GPU's of varying quality, if this is true.
What goes bad in these cards once folks have used them for mining 24/7?
--
I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds. - Mike Tyson
Re:Can I get a GPU yet?! (Score:4, Informative)
Bitcoin is mined with ASICs, not GPUs. Most altcoins are mined with GPUs.
Re:Can I get a GPU yet?! (Score:4)
Mainly the fans come to mind but that is a easy fix. The big issues is they overclock them, forcing more voltage through the chips. Sometimes to and over the recommended specs for months and years at a time. This leads to over heating and a break down of capacitors and power transistors.
My advice is if the market is flooded with a shit load of high end cards at basement prices, run away. Run far away.
Re:Can I get a GPU yet?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Miners do not overclock chips. They want peak performance per watt, not simply peak performance. Normally that means slight underclocking, to reduce power use.
Thus, mining cards are usually in excellent shape.
Re: Can I get a GPU yet?! (Score:2)
This is something I often read but it's not true in practice. At this point it sounds like miner 'apologism'.
In the real world mining rigs often cramp tens of GPUs closely toghether.
Furthermore the GPus are never removed or powered down, and as such gather large quantities of dust which is never cleaned. I've seen photos of mining GPUs that were so full of dust it's a wonder their fans spun at all.
Also, the components on GPUs were not built for 24/7 mining. For example the VRMs are constantly active duri
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This depends on how well the card was treated, in particular the cooling.
If the card was seen by the miner as a consumable item, it may be overclocked and run hot for a couple of years, knowing this will eventually lead to the failure of the card. A smart miner may count on the potential failure and sell the card before it fails - it will tend to become unstable running 24/7 at higher temperatures, once it starts crashing in the mining software, it may still run well enough when not overclocked and with dec
It actually would be the second turning point (Score:5, Informative)
"When all mining activities are banned in China, it will be a turning point for the fate of bitcoin, as a large chunk of its processing power is taken out of the picture."
We already had a turning point, that was when mining hash power centralized in China. Going back to being globally decentralized would be a very good thing. If that hashing power did not return the bitcoin network would simply readjust the difficulty level for whatever the currently available hashing power is. This happens automatically.
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Except that wait times for processing transactions are already ridiculous and will only get worse. It's kind of hard to buy many things when the transaction takes days to process.
Re: It actually would be the second turning point (Score:2)
More old coal plants getting taken out of the mothballs in the US would be pretty disastrous for Bitcoin's image, the lie about surplus hydro is easier to tell when it's all done in China.
As the mining profit rises, restarting old plants will be the main way to meet the demand ... because you can't exactly count on it lasting 3 decades.
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This is what bugs me. It is in China's national interest to have all mining power centralized, so a 51% attack can be done. Why would the Chinese government step on something that is of such national importance, unless manipulating the price of cryptocurrencies is more important.
Getting rid of the CO2 is more important.
Xi is trying to appear green. But bitcoin running off of dirty coal is making it harder to keep the numbers looking good.
Stopping money laundering and currency outflows is also a (the) major consideration.
( It is in China's national interest to have all mining power centralized, so a 51% attack can be done.
What would be the point of breaking bitcoin if you're already making the most money from it?)
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They got their profits on the run up. Time to cancel it because it doesn't align with the panopticon.
Nothing to do with Bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
I have serious doubts about that (Score:5, Interesting)
You have something that's using a ton of subsidized power, creating a ton of pollution in a country that already has major problems with pollution and on top of all that the primary use cases are risky speculation and crime.
While I'm sure maintaining control is a factor there are many, many good reasons to ban it. It won't even lead to more freedom. Crypto currencies are incredibly prone to currency manipulation. Meaning powerful people can exercise control over them and by extension you and your assets. It's a lose-lose.
This is not the direction the human race needs to be going.
Re: (Score:2)
It's about currency conversion (Score:2)
There's a related point, which is that the Chinese yuan is not freely convertible, nor is it likely to become so in the near future.
In any place where the currency is not convertible, but power and chips are available for purchase, a BitCoin miner can convert currency into power and chips, and thence into BitCoin.
Voila! An asset that can be traded for hard, convertible currency, without dealing with China's export/import banks [harrisbricken.com].
The other token convertibility play presently employed involves Tether (the cryp
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When the 1% have more assets and capital than the rest of the 99%, with 51% attacks, what makes you think that using bitcoins, etc. gives more control to the normal citizen. All it does it give more power to tech companies, who could further lock down the ability to mine, through either hardware, etc., while always maintaining 51% control.
In that scenario, why would anyone else still bother to use it?
Just use/make a different coin. We're not going to run out of imaginary coins.
Great for altcoins (Score:1)
According to Coindesk right now:
Bitcoin YTD returns: 34.16%
Ethereum YTD returns: 252.31%
Dogecoin YTD returns: 7,530.94%
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Now do 5 and 10 year.
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In Soviet Russia, market puts you in a bubble.
Jobs coming back to the USA (Score:2)
China's warning to bitcoin miners is certain to push many operations out of the country
just as
In upstate New York, a private equity firm bought and revamped an abandoned power plant just to mine bitcoin
NEVER going to happen (Score:1)
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As others have said- China will never ban Bitcoin. Once again lots of FUD and press, like every year, but...
The great firewall hasn't blocked port 8333.
That could be done in 2 seconds if they were serious.
This Is Disinformation (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all, the link to "announced a crackdown on mining" says nothing of the sort.
Second, none of this is new. China announced intentions to regulate bitcoin as an investment asset years ago.
Third, be very suspicious of all this FUD. All of Condé Nast's publications have very selective pitchforks up against Bitcoin right now, which makes me think a prominent investor has BTC shorted or else is buying the dip.
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First, the link to the actual CCP statement (through Google Translate) does indeed use the phrase "crack down on Bitcoin mining".
Second, "regulating Bitcoin as an investment asset" is not the same thing as banning mining.
Third, this post I'm replying to contains at least as much FUD as a hypothetical Condé Nast article that has not been cited, much less analyzed here.
Being under the Beijing microscope (Score:1)
Memo to Chinese nationals: Do yourselves a favor and have another revolution. Real democracy ain't no bed of roses but it's better than how you're treated right now.
Sincerely,
R.S.
Except (Score:2)
Banning non-destructive behavior leads to problems (Score:2)
Banning not-evil, not-immoral, non-destructive behavior will create stresses in the society. We saw it in the US with Prohibition and the ban on alcohol, and we're seeing it now with the ban on marijuana. Normal, decent people will do it because it's not a malum in se ("bad because of its nature") act, more of a malum que prohibida ("bad because it's prohibited") act. I guess it depends on the penalties. We have both speeding and mild drug use: one results in a fine and the other can result in prison time [norml.org],
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I don't see why there should be an arbitrary line drawn across "bad in nature" vs. "bad by law". Badness is a relative concept and the law is a codification of cultural norms. When a would-be criminal considers whether to perform the criminal act, potential legal penalties are just another consideration among many others.
Drug trafficking is an executable offence in China and a few other Asian countries. Family of the criminal pays for the bullet. Yet the Chinese populace fully supports this because cultural
Less mining = more appreciation of existing bitcoi (Score:2)
China might be preventing malinvestment (Score:2)
All those new coal plants being build for consumption driven by Bitcoin aren't paid for by the miners, they have to recoup investment over decades.
Even though Bitcoin mining brings in foreign currency, at some point the extra coalplants just become an economic liability.
That only makes them worth more. (Score:2)
If you stop mining then the ones that exist now are instantly more valuable. ... which then makes it more profitable to start mining again.
Re:Currency manipulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if Elon Must does the same thing.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Of course he is, and even if he isn't, what he's doing looks exactly like he is anyway. He's either manipulating the price of Bitcoin and Dodgecoin either for great personal gain, or he's doing it for the lulz and leaving billions of dollars of profit on the table. Which one is worse?
This article is very good reading:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com]
Re:Currency manipulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
uh, bitcoin has tanked since Musk wasted money on it... what "billions in profit on the table" are you referring to? Not much of a store of value if one person not in government power shooting their mouth off can make it swing wildly in value, but then it's a gambling token anyway.
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He bought it, talked it up, and then sold a heap of it.
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No, not a heap. Buying 43,000 bitcoin for 1.5 billion, then selling 4300 for 272 million dollars... that's chump change for Tesla.
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Buying bitcoin, making announcements from his company that caused the price of bitcoin to skyrocket, selling his bitcoins at a major profit, then making reverse announcements from his company that helped crash the bitcoin price once he was out.
If he did that same exact thing with penny stocks he'd be arrested for financial pump-and-dump fraud.
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that only shows what a pitiful gaming token Bitcoin is, driven by nothing but the smallest amounts of hope, hype and hooey and not any value or utility whatsoever.
A penny stock has more going for it than bitcoin, and bitcoin isn't a security so of course it doesn't matter what anyone pumping it does.
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If a one word tweet from a single investor with a tiny stake compared to the total capitalisation (Musk owned 43,000 out of 18,000,000,000 existing bitcoin) can cause an investment to plunge by such a large amount, you really need to be asking yourself if the investment really is worth what you think it's worth.
No-one could write a book about gold and trigger a similar change in it's value.
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If a one word tweet from a single investor with a tiny stake compared to the total capitalisation (Musk owned 43,000 out of 18,000,000,000 existing bitcoin) can cause an investment to plunge by such a large amount, you really need to be asking yourself if the investment really is worth what you think it's worth.
No-one could write a book about gold and trigger a similar change in it's value.
I think you need to examine your argument more closely. I am fairly certain that if Musk tweeted he was buying 1.5 billion in gold the price would spike tremendously as well. Him merely tweeting "Gamestonk" was enough to pump the price of Gamestop.
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Talked it up after buying, said Tesla would accept payments in bitcoins. Then he sold a bunch, and immediately announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoins because of environmental impact. LOL. I'm sure he's not planning on buying any when it bottoms out again.
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One man's billons of dollars of profits is another man's billions of dollars of losses.
How can people still pretend it's 'money' when the tweets of one guy can have such an impact?
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Re: Currency manipulation? (Score:2)
Or perhaps China is copying Elon's move. I don't think Tesla patented this business method.
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Really? How many people in China's 1.4B, I think it is, people use any cryptocurrency?
On the other hand, maybe China's deciding that it needs more electricity, and this is a waste of power?