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Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

If I were Chinese, I'd want a cryptocurrency which:

1) Allowed me to "store value" in a variety of different assets (USD, various US stocks, commodities, etc.) -- NOT a single speculative currency.

2) Anonymous/no transaction records

3) Multiple issuers and thus multiple roots of trust; If I had $100k to store offshore, it wouldn't all be at risk to one entity.

4) Protocol designed for anonymity; wallet software or wallet providers who left no particular trace on your local machine, network traffic monitorable from your local machine, etc.

In short, some kind of open network of blinded token issuers, NOT bitcoin.

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Most of this is possible, if you use bitcoins to buy offshore assets, something which Chinese can't easily do.

It's really quite hard to move money to and from China. Bitcoin is a relatively secure way of doing so. It's probably not legal, but it's easier than Fedexing cash.

There have to be better China-specific ways of doing this. There is a relatively flourishing parallel banking system (for loans to SMBs); there has to be some hawala type system where you loan money to a producer in China, then receive retained earnings overseas.

The issue is not what to do with the money outside China; it's the first hop of being able (legally, or untraceably) to get the money out of China.

The other competitor seems to be "fly to Macau", which from what I saw at the tables, involves people who were "very new money" throwing down USD 50k at a throw of the dice. Presumably this is somehow connected to laundering money, and not purely entertainment.

Why would you want these things if you were chinese?

To hide my money from the government. If you're government connected, you just fly out of the country or otherwise invest directly in the Western financial markets, so this is for anyone else.

Do the Chinese govt regularly seize money from their citizens?

From Bitcoin you can convert some of your holdings into dollars in an exchange or in Ripple.

Yes, but the problem is the initial exchange. If you buy BTC from a Chinese provider (which is what you're going to do -- if you had a way to spend money internationally, you'd just go direct to S&P 500), that transaction exists forever. It's not hard to believe the Chinese government would roll up Chinese exchanges to get records, and then you're doomed, even if the value has been moved onward -- they'll just hold you/execute you/whatever.

There's a new Tor hidden service, TorBroker, that allows you to buy US securities anonymously using Bitcoin and the Tor network. It's like The Silk Road for stocks.

http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/04/torbroker-silk-road-...

To whoever is thinking of trying this:

1) Beware they haven't built any reputation yet.

2) Find a good guide about how to anonymize your bitcoins.

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