The last Sunday afternoon, some people began reporting that a Chinese state-owned newspaper Xinhua features Bitcoin on its first page.
In the People’s Republic of China, there is a newspaper that everyone knows and respects – Xinhua. Founded on 7 November 1931 with headquarters in Beijing, nowadays – it serves as the central spot for press-conferences and information exchanges between the big officials and the society.
“Bitcoin: the first Successful Application of Blockchain Technology” – such a message, millions of Chinese people are looking at today. Matthew Graham of Sino Global Capital was the one who set the alert on Twitter. As many westerners have big problems with reading those beautiful hieroglyphs, Matthew is using a translator to understand what’s in the piece.
Chinese state newspaper today (Xinhua)
Bitcoin: The First Successful Application of Blockchain Technologyhttps://t.co/85icR9FcAH pic.twitter.com/8ZOF6UBSzw
— Matthew Graham (@mg0314a) November 11, 2019
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It looks like the Chinese paper identifies Bitcoin as a currency and gives brief explanations on the topics of mining, storing, and network support. The article also explains where Bitcoin gains its value and how its price can change over time, depending on the market conditions and the code. Worth noting that the article says Bitcoin is the primary tool for darknet activity and that criminals mostly use it.
The Bank of China last year issued a report outlining the benefits of Bitcoin usage. The Bank of China is not the national bank, you should not mistake it for the People’s Bank of China. But it still has authority, and much different news kept rising around the crypto legalization in China. It seemed as if everyone knows about the elephant in the room, but nobody wanted to come to the regulation questions. The same situation is in Russia now, where the government keeps the legal discussions for over two years, instead of taking any significant steps towards the creation of laws.
The central state agencies forgot about chasing Bitcoin miners recently. They still push on small firms like it was pretty hard to mine in China earlier. Since 2017, the government was angry about miners stealing electricity from both the state and private corporations; traders were avoiding taxes and such. At the same time, around 70% of the entire network hash rate may very well be under control of Chinese miners, making the country a key influencer on Bitcoin’s network security model, and hence its future development.
However, it’s worth mentioning that now it has become clear that now China is not going to ban mining.
Fixed Supply, Warren Buffett and Bitcoin Pizza Guy Featured in the Story
Not only the article describes the principles of blockchain’s works, but it also outlines the story of cryptocurrencies featuring the most fun parts of it — for instance, the story of unfavorable valuations given by the Wall Street mogul Warren Buffett or that Bitcointalk forum guy who paid 10000 bitcoins for two pizzas.
As a side note, the paper mentions one of the key “features” of Bitcoin – its fixed monetary supply of 21 million coins. It makes it very similar to some form of a “digital gold” and may further help China to establish its cryptocurrency that is backed by gold reserves.
The Chinese government has been accumulating precious metals for the last few years. Now it may be the golden time both for China and cryptocurrencies (after the inspiring President’s speech) if every piece of a puzzle combined correctly.
