Chinese can now buy real estate with Bitcoin(finextra.com)
finextra.com
Chinese can now buy real estate with Bitcoin
http://www.finextra.com/Community/FullBlog.aspx?blogid=8475
10 comments
Funnily enough, the real estate market is exempt from most money laundering regulations.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-10/money-laundering-ex...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-10/money-laundering-ex...
^ this. The amount of "ultra-luxury" towers going on in my city is way too high. Who the fuck has $800,000 cash? Numbers don't add up.
FWIW, China seems to be tacitly approving Bitcoin. State-controlled CCTV has been broadcasting more and more news segments about the currency that are all very favorable and positive(!)
A lot of chinese Bitcoin users have reported this stance, eg: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320260.0
A lot of chinese Bitcoin users have reported this stance, eg: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320260.0
Why would China not like bitcoin? They can
- track all financial transactions by all people to find dissidents and find NGO funding sources
- throw 10% of a datacenter at it whenever they feel like it and pull off a 51% attack
- lock up a huge number of bitcoins via the above point
- track all financial transactions by all people to find dissidents and find NGO funding sources
- throw 10% of a datacenter at it whenever they feel like it and pull off a 51% attack
- lock up a huge number of bitcoins via the above point
> throw 10% of a datacenter at it whenever they feel like it and pull off a 51% attack
The rise of ASIC miners have made the BTC network essentially invulnerable to attacks from general-purpose devices. SHA is very amenable to being directly implemented in hardware, making general purpose computers useless for bitcoin.
Because of all the new hashing power coming from all the new asic miners, difficulty has risen to the point that you'd need more than four hundred million modern cpu cores to take over the network. Using top of the line GPUs, you'd need more than 5 million of them.
China could take over the BTC network, however, to do so they would have to attack it with ASIC miners. This would imply ~6 months of preparation, tens of millions in funding, and they'd have to make the decision to pull the trigger some 3-4 months in advance or the money would go to waste.
The rise of ASIC miners have made the BTC network essentially invulnerable to attacks from general-purpose devices. SHA is very amenable to being directly implemented in hardware, making general purpose computers useless for bitcoin.
Because of all the new hashing power coming from all the new asic miners, difficulty has risen to the point that you'd need more than four hundred million modern cpu cores to take over the network. Using top of the line GPUs, you'd need more than 5 million of them.
China could take over the BTC network, however, to do so they would have to attack it with ASIC miners. This would imply ~6 months of preparation, tens of millions in funding, and they'd have to make the decision to pull the trigger some 3-4 months in advance or the money would go to waste.
China spends $40MM/yr on Post-Its.
It would cost a lot more than $40 million to majority-attack Bitcoin. I estimate $3-4 billion or more. Mostly data center costs.
Let's assume an attacker is very good and needs only 6 months to design his own ASICs and build data centers to host the farm. The network is at 4 Phash/s today, so 6 months from now we should be around 4 * 2^6 = ~250 Phash/s (the network has been doubling in size every month for the past 10 months). The best ASICs, 28nm KncMiner, are approximately 100 ~Ghash/s and 100 Watt each. So an attacker would have to build 250 Phash/s of these to clearly outperform the network: that is 2.5 million chips at 250 megawatt total. And to plan for a potential delay of 30 days in his plan, an attacker would have to build not 250 Phash/s but 500 Phash/s of ASICs to attack the network. 5 million chips. 500 megawatt data center. For comparison, Facebook spent $210 million on their 28 megawatt Prineville data center. So a 500 megawatt data center would probably cost $3-4 billion. Even the well-funded NSA couldn't get their comparatively punny Utah data center to run correctly and it has been delayed by more than 1 year: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052960/nsa-data-center-suffe...
Is China seeing Bitcoin as a threat? No. And even if it was, is it big enough for them to be willing to spend $3-4 billions to destroy it? I don't think so.
Let's assume an attacker is very good and needs only 6 months to design his own ASICs and build data centers to host the farm. The network is at 4 Phash/s today, so 6 months from now we should be around 4 * 2^6 = ~250 Phash/s (the network has been doubling in size every month for the past 10 months). The best ASICs, 28nm KncMiner, are approximately 100 ~Ghash/s and 100 Watt each. So an attacker would have to build 250 Phash/s of these to clearly outperform the network: that is 2.5 million chips at 250 megawatt total. And to plan for a potential delay of 30 days in his plan, an attacker would have to build not 250 Phash/s but 500 Phash/s of ASICs to attack the network. 5 million chips. 500 megawatt data center. For comparison, Facebook spent $210 million on their 28 megawatt Prineville data center. So a 500 megawatt data center would probably cost $3-4 billion. Even the well-funded NSA couldn't get their comparatively punny Utah data center to run correctly and it has been delayed by more than 1 year: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052960/nsa-data-center-suffe...
Is China seeing Bitcoin as a threat? No. And even if it was, is it big enough for them to be willing to spend $3-4 billions to destroy it? I don't think so.
Bitcoin. It might work, as long as no large government in the world decides to make it stop working.
Governments cannot stop Bitcoin on a global scale for the same reason they cannot stop Internet on a global scale.
There is no cost-effective way to destroy a well-designed decentralized technology/protocol, plus it would require co-operation of most countries to destroy it.
There is no cost-effective way to destroy a well-designed decentralized technology/protocol, plus it would require co-operation of most countries to destroy it.
You mean, unless they buy enough asics.
Did I not demonstrate in a back-of-the-napkin way that it is out of reach of the NSA ($3-4 billion & deploying 500 megawatt within 6-7 months)? If the NSA cannot do it, no government can.
Never call something impossible when there are political and financial points to be scored by doing it.
$3-4 Billion is nothing for China. If they want to destroy it it's totally trivial.
Besides, I bet they can cook up more efficient devices than commercially available asics.
Besides, I bet they can cook up more efficient devices than commercially available asics.
Trivial? Let's assume attacking the Bitcoin network would be a project falling in the hands of the most well-funded Chinese government agency: the military. (It would not, but let's assume it). This represents about 3-4% of their annual budget (~$100B), which is not quite insignificant.
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I think this is what makes me nervous about electronic currencies. A country, even just a person, could easily abuse it by throwing these huge machines at it.
The only thing analogous to this with real currencies are printing presses that people somehow get a hold of and are able to print themselves. The nice thing about real currency though is we have some ways of knowing whether they're real or not (like looking under a light), but you can't really determine whether someone's bitcoins came from abuse because technically it's legit. Only solution I could think of would be if there's a way for the networks to have throttling so miners could only make so many per day or per hour or some other metric.
The only thing analogous to this with real currencies are printing presses that people somehow get a hold of and are able to print themselves. The nice thing about real currency though is we have some ways of knowing whether they're real or not (like looking under a light), but you can't really determine whether someone's bitcoins came from abuse because technically it's legit. Only solution I could think of would be if there's a way for the networks to have throttling so miners could only make so many per day or per hour or some other metric.
In addition to Tuna-Fish's excellent reply, bpodgursky, you need to ask yourself: what would be China's motive to destroy Bitcoin via a majority ("51%") attack? They have no particular reason to do so. On the contrary, they can instead economically benefit from being a participant in the Bitcoin ASIC design and manufacturing industry. (And they already are: Avalon, Blackarrow, ASICMINER/BlockErupter, etc, all these companies are operating primarily out of China).
Also: China "locking up" coins would do nothing to stop or destroy it. It would just drive the value of the remaining coins higher and as we are seeing right now, an appreciation drive the interest in Bitcoin up, not down.
Also: China "locking up" coins would do nothing to stop or destroy it. It would just drive the value of the remaining coins higher and as we are seeing right now, an appreciation drive the interest in Bitcoin up, not down.
Why the negative rating? I ask a question, state (multiple, verifiable) facts, and make a reasonable argument.
Ah, the mystery of HN ratings...
Ah, the mystery of HN ratings...
That would be one powerful data center if it has 5.1 times the hashing power of the bitcoin network.
It wouldn't take but a few thousand wafers of 65nm ASICs to overpower the rest of the network. With direct access to chip manufacturing facilities this can be pulled off fairly easily.
We've pretty much seen that no other currency is going to undermine the US dollar. It is the de facto reserve currency for the World. This has only been further cemented by globalization since everyone is now so far in bed with the US via trade that everyone has no choice but to let the US keep racking up a national debt. Questioning that debt and forcing default would be tantamount to economic mutually assured destruction. For China, it knows the Yuan is never going to be a real competitor to the US dollar, since there is even less trust in China, since it has been so willing to manipulate exchange rates with its own currency.
AFAICT bitcoin presents the only real existential risk to the US dollar. It's a long long road to get there and it might fail spectacularly or simply become just another currency, but even if there is only 0.1% chance of it upsetting the US dollar, that is 0.1% chance more than any other currency out there.
Personally, if this does play out, I see the US to be one of the last countries to get on the Bitcoin wagon and lose out. Our currency is the most fit and we have the least amount to gain in the short term from adopting it. But this does not change the fact that many countries with far less stable currencies and governments that have proven themselves untrustworthy with their monetary policies, where the citizens would flock to a currency like bitcoin once security and usability issues are addressed. I'd say that every country where inflation is over 4% per annum is a candidate for wanting to acquire bitcoins.
AFAICT bitcoin presents the only real existential risk to the US dollar. It's a long long road to get there and it might fail spectacularly or simply become just another currency, but even if there is only 0.1% chance of it upsetting the US dollar, that is 0.1% chance more than any other currency out there.
Personally, if this does play out, I see the US to be one of the last countries to get on the Bitcoin wagon and lose out. Our currency is the most fit and we have the least amount to gain in the short term from adopting it. But this does not change the fact that many countries with far less stable currencies and governments that have proven themselves untrustworthy with their monetary policies, where the citizens would flock to a currency like bitcoin once security and usability issues are addressed. I'd say that every country where inflation is over 4% per annum is a candidate for wanting to acquire bitcoins.
Well if BTC has a .01% chance to replace USD, the Euro has at least a .005% chance to replace the USD
The US is already holding the largest stash of Bitcoins in the world. They seized about 144,000 BTC from Silk Road.
Actually MtGox (japanese company) owned 400,000 BTC back in 2011. I would be surprised if their bitcoin-worth has decreased since then.
The bitcoins held by the US is only the largest held at a single address. MtGox's bitcoins are probably split between multiple addresses.
/me wonders if some high ranking party official bought a lot of btc and is using his nation to pump a bubble...
28000 CNY/sqm * ~.1 sqm/sqft * .16 USD/CNY = ~$448/sqft.
That's coming up on prices in SF, and a little bit more expensive than Boston. I had no idea.
That's coming up on prices in SF, and a little bit more expensive than Boston. I had no idea.
The Chinese property market/household market is a fickle thing -- a lot of it revolves around speculation. There is a suspicion that there will be a large migration of rural workers to urban regions.
And large is an understatement -- everybody is betting everything on it.
And large is an understatement -- everybody is betting everything on it.
> a lot of it revolves around speculation
Pretty much all of it. People in Shanghai, for example, use properties as a cash-storage mechanism, thinking it more secure than a CD.
This is all going to end badly.
Pretty much all of it. People in Shanghai, for example, use properties as a cash-storage mechanism, thinking it more secure than a CD.
This is all going to end badly.
One reason for Chinese government to dislike bitcoin, and it is probably the same reason for Chinese individuals to be interested in it: bitcoins make it very easy to hide cash in your pocket at the customs.
People may not realise it but the big issue for many Chinese or foreigner earning money in China is to get it out of the country. The contemporary art market is in fact fueled by this escaping money, because it is easy to under evaluate a piece of paper with two strikes on it, but recently there is a crackdown against that and experts are checking luggages. Bitcoin might be a much better alternative.
People may not realise it but the big issue for many Chinese or foreigner earning money in China is to get it out of the country. The contemporary art market is in fact fueled by this escaping money, because it is easy to under evaluate a piece of paper with two strikes on it, but recently there is a crackdown against that and experts are checking luggages. Bitcoin might be a much better alternative.
So, I own investment real estate that I wouldn't mind selling for bitcoins. Is there a good place to find buyers who want to pay with Bitcoin?
Most people, for good reason, use an escrow agent when buying and selling real estate (at least here in the US). As a buyer, I would be doubly uncertain about directly transferring someone Bitcoin since it's at least as irreversible as a processed wire, and probably harder to have good legal recourse for. If you can find someone who would do escrow with Bitcoin, you'd probably have better luck.
You'll also need to pay any titling, fees, insurance, and taxes in USD.
Take a look at BitPremier: http://www.bitpremier.com/. They advertise your high-value good on their site, and then once they pair you up with a buyer they also serve as an escrow agency.
Why would you care about in which currency you are paid?
It's not easy to buy $500,000 worth of bitcoins on the open market at "current value".
Someone bought ~$1mm on gox a few days ago without too much trouble I think
They did, but it sparked a frenzy of buying shortly afterwards...
Cost of conversion would be a potential reason.
Right, if there are supposedly buyers from abroad who want to buy, we can save money in currency conversions and transfers across borders.
Doesn't even have to be "from abroad" - if a buyer has a stack of bitcoins and I want a stack of bitcoins, going through an exchange is going to be expensive given the pretty broad spreads (if there's even the necessary liquidity).
I wonder how much of the current BTC price spike is due to new Chinese coming into the market?
A lot of the current price is because of the Chinese market. If you follow the price surges, usually the exchange BTCChina is the one that starts rising first, followed by the US exchanges. The Genesis Block did a good analysis on the Chinese markets a few weeks ago [1]. I really like the bottom chart in that article, which graphs the price differential between Chinese and US exchanges.
[1] http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-climbs-highest-price-sinc...
[1] http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-climbs-highest-price-sinc...
The real question is when they start selling real estate to use bitcoin to move their assets outside China where there is greater ROI.
I suspect that the whole Bitcoin thingy is a Chinese conspiracy.
Then it would have been clever and borderline perverse to use a Japanese disguise for the creation of bitcoin.
Anyway, I think the mystery around bitcoin I'd very captivating a story but probably the answer is more simple than these conspiracy theories, and I was surprised the day I read pg himself give credit to them.
Anyway, I think the mystery around bitcoin I'd very captivating a story but probably the answer is more simple than these conspiracy theories, and I was surprised the day I read pg himself give credit to them.
[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/uncomfortable-truth-chinas-pro...
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/10/28/in-china-the...