pull down to refresh
50 sats \ 2 replies \ @leo 17h \ on: I’m Roger Huang, Bitcoin journalist and author of “Would Mao Hold Bitcoin”. AMA AMA
As I understand Bitcoin is relatively restricted in Mainland China, but it's also not illegal. How are people using Bitcoin there these days, and how do you stay up to date with news from China?
Good question, people are using Bitcoin and Tether mostly for trading and investing outside the Chinese financial system from what I can see. Merchant adoption is a non-starter because of the legal status, though I’ve seen anecdotal cracks in the restriction on use of Bitcoin as “currency” such as Nostr zaps. The one exception is HK where there’s a vibrant OTC/trading scene and where you can conceivably use Lightning/BTC as a way to get in/out of Hong Kong dollars.
Staying up-to-date - I browse Chinese social media (including RedNote), and keep in contact with Mainlanders who are building Bitcoin businesses/part of the Bitcoin VC scene. There’s a few Telegram groups I’m in that have Mandarin speakers and are focused on China/Asia and Bitcoin. I’m actually planning on being in Asia at the end of this year. For more general news, I usually follow Substacks like Following the Yuan and Bill Bishop’s Sinocism, or every once in a while, there are X rooms about trading/Chinese geopolitics in Mandarin that I go into.
reply
I wrote a more through writeup here on the bans: https://chinabitcoinbook.com/?p=158
Currently looking for lawyers at the frontlines of dealing with the restrictions - keep posted :)
Shoutout also to Colin Wu, who while being more “crypto-general” has a newsletter that covers a lot of terrain in the space (WuBlockchain).
There are also now 2 (!) Mandarin-language podcasts on Bitcoin-only and one crypto-general, 发现比特币 and 1sat, both are Bitcoin-only from the episodes I’ve listened to the latter, and the former I’ve been on and listened to extensively.
你好比特币 (more crypto/Web3 focused though with BTC in the name) is more news-focused from what I’ve gleaned
reply