Quote from: semaforo on December 17, 2013, 08:28:21 PM

Anyway, it looks to me like China's move against bitcoin is a defensive one defending the yuan. They have been gearing up to unleash the yuan onto the global stage, and don't need a decentralized, non-governmental currency competing with the yuan in the domestic market. Obviously, bitcoin is innately superior to fiat currency and they want to prevent what essentially could become a run on the yuan in favor of bitcoin

True, the Chinese merely classified BTC as a commodity and banned it as a currency as a protectionist measure. They would be killing a lot of trade if they banned it outright.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/20/btc-china-ceo-attempts-to-calm-the-bitcoin-market-after-rmb-deposit-shutdown/

Quote from: granolageek on December 19, 2013, 07:32:48 PM

Umm, just how can the shadow economy have an official anything?

lol agreed, that's an oxymoron.
Also BTC is open-source (they used it to catch the guys from Silk Road) so I dunno how viable it is to use BTC for "black market" purposes.