China Officially Cryptic

leo25 said:
These articles are time wasters.
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I guess the commentary that usually is associated with such articles helps to highlight the similarities and differences between crypto and digital money. So it could at least be a little bit educational.

As @sgbuyer argued this move by the CPC probably enables them to keep an even closer track of consumption behaviour than is currently available with mainstream digital money. And we know the only motive behind it is to enhance political power. :(
 
mmm....shiney! said:
As @sgbuyer argued this move by the CPC probably enables them to keep an even closer track of consumption behaviour than is currently available with mainstream digital money. And we know the only motive behind it is to enhance political power. :(
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There is no need to do anything new, as the standard payment platforms in China like WeChat pay and Alipay are design from the ground up to track behaviour. And on top of that Chinese banks have a very tight integration with the government for anything else.
 
sgbuyer said:
I haven't really studied in detail but I believe it's different. For "digital currency", you can still withdraw paper notes and tracking transactions take time.

If I'm not wrong, crypty yuan may not be convertible to bank notes or other currencies, so it's forever tracked by the government. Of course, there are ways about it, you can buy gold or silver bars and sell it for dollars.
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Maybe someone here has recently spent time in China and could better describe what it's like there atm. But from my understanding (which could be wrong) no one uses cash. Almost everything is digital and is perfectly tracked atm, so using a cryptography merkle tree style backend doesn't make it more trackable.

Also like you already stated, there are always ways around restriction. Even if China stops all convertibility to cash, you can still buy other items and trade.
 
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leo25 said:
There is no need to do anything new, as the standard payment platforms in China like WeChat pay and Alipay are design from the ground up to track behaviour. And on top of that Chinese banks have a very tight integration with the government for anything else.
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Yes, they are all separate systems with separate management that are private, although technically, all companies, private or not, belongs to the government, but bureaucracy is bureaucracy. Even in the same government, the ministries may not want to cooperate.

A crypty with a centralised ledger for the entire world will be easier to track, especially if you want to track 3 billion users making 30 transactions a day. That's 90 billion transactions a day and 2.7 trillion transactions a month. :D
 
leo25 said:
There is no need to do anything new, as the standard payment platforms in China like WeChat pay and Alipay are design from the ground up to track behaviour. And on top of that Chinese banks have a very tight integration with the government for anything else.
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Yes, but what about outside of China? You can't always use WeChat and Alipay outside of China. If I were the Chinese government, I won't be happy with just knowing what people in China spends.

For example, the crypty might be "adopted" by Visa or Mastercard so even if you are outside of China and not using WeChat and Alipay, you will be tracked.
 
sgbuyer said:
Yes, they are all separate systems with separate management that are private, although technically, all companies, private or not, belongs to the government, but bureaucracy is bureaucracy. Even in the same government, the ministries may not want to cooperate.
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First ill start with a little laugh :D regarding the word "private" in China. Next, those payment systems are designed to be integrated with the social credit system, so all that data is easily accessible to government. I'm not sure about Alipay, but WeChat/Tencent is a government funded/owned company. Why do you think the government is encouraging everyone to use it.
 
leo25 said:
First ill start with a little laugh :D regarding the word "private" in China. Next, those payment systems are designed to be integrated with the social credit system, so all that data is easily accessible to government. I'm not sure about Alipay, but WeChat/Tencent is a government funded/owned company. Why do you think the government is encouraging everyone to use it.
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I've to admit that I don't know much about Alipay or Wechat payment as we have our own digital payment platforms. Cash is only used for convenience and to prevent dementia. It is faster to take out a dollar or two from the wallet then to launch an app.
 
mmm....shiney! said:
Especially if you've got to firstly fish your reading glasses out of your pocket before you can even read what's on the phone. :(
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Believe it or not, now we have to use phone to register whenever we enter a supermarket, mall or department store. They provide an app so I can't need to enter my details everytime, just scan and click. I installed the app so the government pretty much knows where I go shopping.
 
sgbuyer said:
Yes, but what about outside of China? You can't always use WeChat and Alipay outside of China. If I were the Chinese government, I won't be happy with just knowing what people in China spends.
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It doesn't matter if it's used outside of China, it's still processed in China. The Chinese government love that people use WeChat or AliPay outside of china, that way they can keep tabs on everyone.
 
leo25 said:
That kind of talk will get you labeled as a criminal in Australia :p
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Probably to crackdown on tax evasion. I noticed in HK many sole proprietor run shops prefer cash and don’t issue receipts. The goals are different.
 
sgbuyer said:
Yes, but what about outside of China? You can't always use WeChat and Alipay outside of China. If I were the Chinese government, I won't be happy with just knowing what people in China spends.

For example, the crypty might be "adopted" by Visa or Mastercard so even if you are outside of China and not using WeChat and Alipay, you will be tracked.
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there is facilities in place, for Chinese tourists to pay Ali/WeChat from airport, taxi..hotels tourists destinations (many countries already have this)
why people use it, it is your portfolios on your palm
you can check your bonds holdings, mmf, stocks, cash
buy stocks etc buy bit coins lol
do your online shopping, transfer money etc
most people from China have not been to bank for the last 5 years or more, they can do their banking on the apps
 
In my 20s, I didn't even want to use my debit card, prefer to withdraw cash from the ATM and force myself to limit my spending by the amount of cash in my wallet. The wallet becomes sort of like a petty cash account. And because I used cash all the time, I even had a coin pouch to keep the change. :D

Later, only after my workload increased, I started using cards and automatic payment methods to save on time. It's easy to over spend when payment is too easy.
 
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There seems a stubbornness here to delve into a particular thing:

Bitcoin et al. almost single handedly sparked an astonishing increase in the types of instruments that are arguably 'money.' And this thread was begun to discuss those nuances.

It's years since the shuttle blasted off from Planet More-or-less-the-same-as-it-is-now.
 
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