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In late March, Zijin Supermarket in Yichun, Jiangxi Province, China, (the largest supermarket in the area) abruptly closed without prior notice
There is this common practice in China -- customers purchase e-vouchers (like prepaid cards) to gain benefits like special discounts. But these prepaid fund balances are, of course, not protected and when the music stops, those customers are left with nothing more than worthless IOUs.
When news of this supermarkets upcoming closure was out, the customers with unredeemed e-vouchers swarmed the store -- buying anything on the shelves, as redeeming your prepaid vouchers for even a box of toilet paper today is better than getting nothing for the vouchers tomorrow.
This video (and the channel) is a little hyperbolic on things there, but the middle class Chinese are now starting to realize how screwed they really are, and that nobody is coming to save them.
133 sats \ 0 replies \ @quark 12 Apr
reminds me to banking and the monetary system. and here is a quote: "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
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131 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 12 Apr
There are so many scams in China. People get sucked in all the time. They think they'll save a few cents by buying up prepaid cards or high interest loans. Always ends in tears.
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This is one of the possible forms of fractional reserves on a bitcoin standard.
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Did you mean forms not possible?
Or ???
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No, stores can absolutely keep offering in-store credit in quantities that they can't actually redeem and people will behave as though those are "as good as real bitcoin", until they get rugged.
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Oh -- now I understand.
Also, these are kind of like a trap. For the convenience in being able to shop with a prepaid balance (like I might enjoy when using my Starbucks app), I might think keeping a smaller balance, something like $25, lessens my risk of a loss to being rugged. No -- the impact of being rugged isn't less, it's just that my exposure is smaller.
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quite insightful info. i suppose that china at some point needs to look for such specific solution to this issue or else the majority of middle class will somehow sufffer from severe consequence for next years to come
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