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Bitcoin Crashes After China Bans New Deposits; PBOC Gets DDOSed In Retaliation
Yesterday it was the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that tightened its grip on businesses that accept Bitcoin. Today, it is China, where the world's largest Bitcoin exchange by trading volume, BTCChina announced that he had received word from "above" that his platform would no longer be able to accept renminbi from BTC buyers. "As of right now, we have received notice from our third-party payment company that they will disallow customers from making deposits into our exchange," Bobby Lee, a former Yahoo developer who co-founded BTCChina this year, told the Financial Times. The result, not surprisingly, is an overnight crash in BTC, which crashed by 50% from $900 two days ago to just $455 hours ago.
More from the FT:
With its booming market for commerce, China had been seen by Bitcoin enthusiasts as fertile ground for the virtual currency. However, regulators were concerned that people could use Bitcoins to skirt the country’s capital controls. They also grew alarmed at the rampant speculative demand for Bitcoins, warning it had the makings of a bubble.
The Chinese central bank took a hard line two weeks ago, banning the country’s financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions.
Although the People’s Bank of China said individuals were still free to trade it at their own risk, the ban on third-party payment service providers from doing Bitcoin business effectively makes new purchases of the virtual currency impossible.
“I’m not that surprised,” said Hong Hao, chief China strategist at Bank of Communications. “Even if the amount of Bitcoin in circulation wasn’t that large yet, it was a potential threat to the monetary system.”
Mr Lee of BTCChina said the emphasis of the notice was on deposits, meaning that customers with existing renminbi balances would still be able to withdraw their cash from the exchange. “They are completely safe,” he said, adding that people with money already deposited on the exchange still had the option of buying Bitcoins.
...
China’s capital controls mean it takes time for investors to arbitrage the difference between prices in and outside the country.
In a world where the central banks are actively engaged in gold capital controls (and have been for over 40 years), and the BIS has its own in-house gold prices suppression team, nobody could have possibly seen this coming.
We are, of course, joking. But some who apparently were angry and did not see this coming, were the computer hackers of the world. As @george_chen reports, the PBOC reported it was promptly DDOSed in retaliation for China's overnight crackdown on Bitcoin.
BREAKING NEWS: CHINA CENTRAL BANK (PBOC) WEB UNDER ATTACK; UNSTABLE FOR ACCESS; LOCAL MEDIA BLAME BITCOIN INVESTORS pic.twitter.com/uXEoPWfxoP
— George Chen (@george_chen) December 18, 2013
MORE: PBOC TOLD MEDIA THIS AFTERNOON "WAS FIXING WEB"; MEDIA BLAMED "FOREIGN BITCOIN INVESTORS" FOR DDOS ATTACK story:http://t.co/E1KCVS73X7
— George Chen (@george_chen) December 18, 2013
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I have no axe to grind re these currencies. I wish them luck. I am just too old and too slow to pick up on it. I am a Luddite and believe in held value. Thus I buy bullion.
These threads go on at length and I think many, particularly perhaps younger guys who have grown up online as it were, forget that Governments can and will shut down the www or any area of it they wish, when they wish.
Now unless you have been to China or Myanmar, for instance, you have not had a taste of that.
The PRC has a fairly clumsy filtering system; Myanmar, when I was there, simply threw the switch and nothing was available except a few Govt.-sanctioned Potemkin City Beautiful Myanmar sites.
This is why I will not throw any money at BTC nor any other crypto-currency at this point.
There are many other underground rivers to freedom, friends. Our Father's House has many mansions.
not currency, any more than a pink sheet scam is a currency. get a life
Cheer up bud, its almost Christmas. Did you buy bile instead of eggnog this year? oh and have a happy new year too! :D
Sandbox dreams but no Navy, no surprise, so naive as a slow motion arrow to the heart of the petrodollar swatted by Gozirra, radio-phonetic for Godzilla.
This might be a bitch for fonestar. Will it cost him more for the transaction that it is worth? It will be a transfer of 0.001. Six cents...from all of us. Transaction completed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag
Transfer to 18pGo9aLQUtz2r666aBAwQsFsD7wLvBxXb
What is with the vitriol here? BTC is another path to subvert the PTB, it may not be the only path or even that effective but it is a tangible action that establishes confrontation. Where is the fight gone from fight club? This fight is against the banking cartel. ANYTHING that hinders them or even annoys them should be promoted, right? The PTB are powerful but not so much as they think, unlitmately they are vastly outnumbered. Choose to believe what you will of the future, it is all imaginary. Our free will grants us the power to choose to believe, this is in fact our only choice. While you cower to the banking cartel and hoard guns and ammo, what imaginary vision of the future are you promoting? I know it is hard pressed for this forum to be optimistic about anything, fine, choose your demons, but at least the BTC community has created an alternative to just bitching. You may call it a trap but there is no evidence of that. The decentralized nature works more like a virus than a "system." The value of a BTC may drop but the idea is here to stay and as long as we have computers and a network the BTC will be a force of resistance to the centralizing authority dominating money and politics. IMHO the centralized model is coming to a close and the PTB are grasping at straws. Regards, J.D.
because PMs should be at least 5x higher than they are right now, and we all feel stupid and taken that they aren't.
that and BTC pushers are the most antagonistic and condescending assholes on the block.
LOL, don't take it personally!
Its renegade image is an illusion. It's NSA backdoored.
At least two NSA backdoors hiding in cryptography..
1. Its use of elliptic curves systems for public-key cryptography. As a cryptographer said, "Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-su...
2. NSA designed SHA-256, the Bitcoin cryptographic hash function and it can't be replaced in a backwards compatible way.
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/what-do-the-latest-nsa-leaks-mean-for-b...
no one but NO one has found such flaws in elliptic curves, RSA or IDEA used in the original PGP.
No one.
Provide peer-reviewed treatise indicating otherwise.
It's the windoze infected computers giving up keystrokes, passwords, unencrypted files, that will compromise use of the majority of bitcoin, not the encryption in the opensource algorithms.
certainly the links you provided and the links within those articles provided no such treatise, proof, even argument, just blanket assertion backed by nothing, reviewed by no one.
Dismissed.
"Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography"
THAT nonsense was in the Guardian article.
WORST ADVICE EVER.
Symmetric is EASILY intercepted using various methods whereas public key encryption requires interception ON BOTH ENDS not just one.
MOST secure: public key encryption to transmit one-time pads & using onetime pads (OTP) to transmit new OTP's for every next session + incoming message at that time.
no, BTC actually gives MORE power to the powers that be via the fiat exchanges.
The only way not to do this is to produce goods, ship them, sell them & to do so using only bitcoin.
This isn't happening.
I see fonestar is back to his rocket-riding antics.
That China allowed this NSA-backdoored mining fake money in the first place is the mystery.
Eventually, maybe or maybe not this round, it will go down far enough to appeal to your avg US citizen looking to escape soaring inflation. Then Bitcoin, complete with it Anti-Money Laundering regulations and ATM palm scans, will take off again.
There's only one thing you can do with a banker.
How about we let fonestar off the hook? The guy has never said anything that really pissed me off until he was backed into a corner. I'm not sure about the guy but I don't have anything against him. It will be up to fonestar as to how he wants to proceed. I think it is fair that he has a say...one time.
Fonestar, you know that you are being challenged. Can you lay down your arms and work with us? Or are you just a troll? Many ZHer's just want to get along as best they can but will not tolerate bullshit. I rose to the occasion and you received part of a bitcoin from me. Will you do the right thing?
Manip, If your still sending out the .0001 bitcoin shoot me over one and I will send it right back. 1LzkyAc7mtm9WKqisuH6f6z9kDdfqRBmX
I am also looking to see how a transaction will work.
when you paint yourself into a corner it's hard to blame people for handing him more paint buckets out of spite.
He wilfully kept painting.
BITCOIN WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT!!!!
No, it will scream and cry -50% at a time and the bag-holders with it will stare at their tiny basement "apartments" ... ok, let's say "dwellings" to be more accurate, and realize they're never, evarrrrr leaving. EvarrRRRRR.
Fonestar, assuring himself a spot in the ZH hall of fame or shame...either way its been irritating
Buying spree in China should show up nicely on coming trade deficit decrease, btfD
http://sexcoin-project.org/ ----- if you buy this cryptocurrency, you'll get an orgasm instantly each and every time.... thats why I prefer it over bitcoin.. the orgasm is the intrinsic value of it.
Why would anyone buy BitCoin when you can buy Namecoin, Litecoin, PPCoin, BitCoin2, BitCoin3, BitCoin4, ..., BitCoinAlephNull?
It seems that there are infinite quantities of cryptocurrency, so the objective exchange value of each unit would tend toward nothing.
Can someone shed some light on this?
Security of the network (hash power of the miners), and the number of other users and merchants who might want to trade for your crypto-currency at a later date.
the network is on tcp/ip, though some could additional use SSL or SSH. Are they? Doubting it.
bitcoin itself is NOT A NETWORK OR NETWORK PROTOCOL, it RIDES on the protocols that already exist. It has no control over speed, routing, priority & can't stop itself from being intercepted or blocked as it has NO physical interface.
Oh my. When do tax payers bail this out?
Politicians only bail out their friends. Hope this helps...
And you will know my name is Tha Bitcoin when I lay my electrons upon thee!
- Fonuel L. Jackstar
When you are trying to make your currency a world reserve currency you don't need no competition.
Awwww man. If only Vegas had a bet going for BitCoin's crash I'd have made out like a bandit!!!!!!
Well will you look at that- - Bitcoin already back to 715. Move along folks, not much to see here.
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