Comment by crystaln | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crystaln | Hacker News Reader

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> I'm pretty sure that the Chinese have well polished ways and means of getting money out of China

What makes you "pretty sure"?

Certainly some Chinese have sophisticated methods of exiting money, through overseas corporations and the like. However most Chinese do not, and there are many, many financially unsophisticated rich Chinese.

The evidence is pretty clear that you are wrong. The 20-30% premium Chinese pay for bitcoin, and the inflated Chinese real estate market, both indicate the difficulty. Besides, I lived in China and faced this issue. It is not easy.

Further, Chinese regulators are very smart. The capital controls are there for a reason, and they are effective and enforced.

If the Chinese regulators are so smart and capital controls are so tight, then how would the Chinese get money out via bitcoin ?

What about the entire paper trail:

a) from bank deposits/tenpay deposits to BTC China where they convert to bitcoins

b) and then allegedly sell on a foreign exchange (bitstamp, maybe ?)

c) following which they withdraw to an overseas bank account ?

If we're talking about illegal money (not part of the banking system) then again BTC China isn't reportedly accepting any cash. So how would that work ?

The evidence isn't really that clear. What we see is the Chinese buying a lot of bitcoins.

There's no evidence that they then moved those bitcoins to a foreign exchange, cashed them out, and then moved that cash to an overseas bank account. Do you have anything at all that supports this ? Not even the bitcoin network transaction volume is in agreement with this kind of movement of coins.

Nobody knows or understands why the Chinese government is allowing so much purchase of bitcoin. I suspect they will not continue to allow it.

I did not say that Chinese were buying other currencies with their bitcoin en masse although I'd be surprised if many were not. Perhaps they are just diversifying. Some may have no account in place to sell bitcoin for other currencies.

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