

Bitcoin Gets a Cautious Nod From China’s Central Bank - mrb
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/22/bitcoin-gets-a-cautious-nod-from-chinas-central-bank/?_r=0

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crystaln
It's unclear that the Chinese government understands that bitcoin is more than
just a security you can buy and sell, or a currency that you can wire in a
bank.

If someone buys $1M in bitcoin, that money could easily leave the country
forever, without the knowledge or control of the government.

Given that China has very strict rules on capital flow - wiring funds out of
the country, currency conversion, etc - I'd be very surprised if they are not
considering shutting down bitcoin exchanges in China and banning the use of
bitcoin for purchases.

If China does not clamp down on bitcoin, that would be a major policy change
I'm not sure China is prepared for. And I'm not sure why they would choose to
change their policy in this way for bitcoin, rather than continuing to capital
markets in a measured pace as they are now.

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Aqueous
I think they are hedging their bets and are making a trade-off between
allowing their citizens to put their savings into BitCoin and potentially
letting them run free financially, and also possibly wresting control of the
world financial system away from the Americans. They want the US Dollar to
stop being the world reserve currency. If they promote BitCoin they have an
opportunity to wrest control of the world's money supply away from the US. To
them, a currency that no one controls is better than a currency that the US
controls.

I think there's also the matter of the public ledger. An anonymized public
ledger is still more information than they currently have with even the yuan
about when currency is changing hands and where it is going. I think BitCoin
libertarians are fooling themselves if they think the public ledger isn't a
major asset to the government, who can now track money from point A to point B
if it enters and leaves the BitCoin economy at an exchange endpoint.

