Quote from: Anon136 on December 18, 2013, 08:31:32 PM

Quote from: vtlaloc on December 18, 2013, 07:56:13 PM

Quote from: Bobsurplus on December 18, 2013, 03:04:45 PM

I think its very possible that all this news out of china is just so the Chinese government can scoop up all the coins for cheap and then just by changing there minds drive the price back up to the moon.

Think about it, all they have to do is turn around and say, "we made a mistake, bitcoin is great, you can all do business in it"

Man, what a scam!

Yes! the worlds second largest economy, made this announcement so then can steal the bread crumbs from your pocket. Because a country with 8.2 trillion in GDP and 1.3 trillion in held US debt needs to lower the prices of bitcoins in order to be able to buy some.

I'm not saying the price of bitcoins wont go back up, I'm saying that statements like this smell of panic.

see this is exactly what im talking about. any individual politician doesn't have direct access to the balance sheet of the state. they dont own the states balance sheet to the same extent that you and i own the funds on our banks balance sheet. even in the states an extremely competent politician may accumulate 100million dollars by the end of his career. this is pennies compared to the total tax revenues.

China may have a balance sheet of how ever many trillions of dollars but the individual politicians cant just go out and spend that on a yaht for themselves. What politicians do is throw around the weight of the states balance sheet in exchange for kickbacks. They may grant some corporation a billion dollars worth of benefits for a 1 million dollar kickback. Or they may use the leverage of the central bank to pump and dump the bitcoin market while getting their own PERSONAL finances in and out at the tops and bottoms.

This is a much more plausible argument than the OP.

Consider china for a moment: Strong capital controls, strong censorship of speech, vast resources dedicated to tracking personal activity, brooding civil unrest (in part do to corruption scandals). China's main objective in the next few decades is to manage it's social transformation, and they believe they can do it with government control; now do you think china would see bitcoins as a help or a hindrance to achieve this goals? lets face it there isn't a whole lot about bitcoins for the Chinese government to like.

Now its entirely possible for individuals within the government to act in self interest (and enrich themselves while bucking the party line) however surly there are more efficient and less public ways to do that (remember being a corruption sacrificial lamb in china is no joke).

I think the most probable explanation is that this is something China doesn't understand and cant control, thus they don't like it (don't blame them i wouldn't either in their position).

When people act rationally a conspiracy is unnecessary in order to explain their behavior.