[mahranch]

> Seems to me as though Bitcoin mining is kind of a backdoor way to move Chinese money offshore

Which is why China is trying desperately to get control. They limit how much money their citizens can move around, whether it's Yuan, stocks or foreign currency, everything is limited and monitored. Bitcoin is no exception. Except, I think it's more nefarious than that. Bitcoin stands for everything China is against. A (mostly) anonymous currency which is decentralized? It's practically the opposite of China's ideology, a country which has strict controls on just about everything within their borders.

If I was the PRC, I'd move to damage, corrupt or if possible, destroy bitcoin. At the very least, I'd dig my claws in somehow, someway so I had some (even if it's just a little) control. But if I was China, how would I do it? I couldn't just create "The Exchange of the People's Republic of China". I'd have to do it through a proxy of some sort. There were some rumors on reddit about Chinese nationalist Jihan and his company Bitmain being such a front. I'm no tinfoil hat kind of guy, but the more I think on it, the less of stretch it seems...

[rwcarlsen]

There are many who believe that the company Blockstream is a hostile takeover trying to prevent bitcoin's success. It just depends on where you read. Lots of censorship on r/bitcoin and lots of echo-chambering on r/btc.

Not that it's worth anything, but Jihan (although he has a suboptimally large amount of influence in/on the bitcoin community) has yet to demonstrate anything but a desire for it to succeed IMHO.