[2019-08-15] Hong Kong Is Paying Higher Prices for Bitcoin Amid Political Unrest

cr1776

legendary

Activity: 4060

Merit: 1303

Quote from: hello_good_sir on October 14, 2019, 04:45:07 PM

It's a good move, I'd recommend to any person residing in Hong Kong to pick up some of their own BTC and keep it for the future, China wants to control everything and having some BTC in your pocket is a good move and they'd never be able to take that away from you.

Quote from: 1Referee on September 23, 2019, 07:07:26 AM

Quote from: Carlton Banks on September 18, 2019, 05:26:45 AM

in this case, BTCPay is less/not needed

How is it less or not needed? A lot of commercial businesses and non businesses use centralized payment gateways for the sake of convenience. Every payment goes through a filter where these payment gateways analyze the risk of each transaction, even when the nature of the transaction is innocent. The need hasn't ever been more pressing.

BitPay & Co have done nothing but signal the need for alternatives such as BTCPay. The more businesses adapt the more freedom people and businesses will have.

Speaking of such, Namecheap (largest domain registrar in the world) is exploring its routes to ditch BitPay after hundreds of complains of them being shady and because of their unfriendly checkout page. Several users have proposed BTCPay, so we'll see where it ends.

No buisness will accept a decentralized and unstable crypto-currency as a payment option, it's just way too risky on their site. Payment processors are able to provide a way for buisnesses to accept crypto-currencies without the risks.

Not just Hong Kong, but many places the world over. And there are plenty of people who don't need to convert to fiat, if I was selling something, I'd take bitcoin and not convert.

hello_good_sir

hero member

Activity: 1008

Merit: 531

It's a good move, I'd recommend to any person residing in Hong Kong to pick up some of their own BTC and keep it for the future, China wants to control everything and having some BTC in your pocket is a good move and they'd never be able to take that away from you.

Quote from: 1Referee on September 23, 2019, 07:07:26 AM

Quote from: Carlton Banks on September 18, 2019, 05:26:45 AM

in this case, BTCPay is less/not needed

How is it less or not needed? A lot of commercial businesses and non businesses use centralized payment gateways for the sake of convenience. Every payment goes through a filter where these payment gateways analyze the risk of each transaction, even when the nature of the transaction is innocent. The need hasn't ever been more pressing.

BitPay & Co have done nothing but signal the need for alternatives such as BTCPay. The more businesses adapt the more freedom people and businesses will have.

Speaking of such, Namecheap (largest domain registrar in the world) is exploring its routes to ditch BitPay after hundreds of complains of them being shady and because of their unfriendly checkout page. Several users have proposed BTCPay, so we'll see where it ends.

No buisness will accept a decentralized and unstable crypto-currency as a payment option, it's just way too risky on their site. Payment processors are able to provide a way for buisnesses to accept crypto-currencies without the risks.

smallrigcn

newbie

Activity: 17

Merit: 0

I also earn alot money from bitcoin yuppy

Carlton Banks

legendary

Activity: 3430

Merit: 3071

Quote from: 1Referee on September 23, 2019, 07:07:26 AM

Quote from: Carlton Banks on September 18, 2019, 05:26:45 AM

in this case, BTCPay is less/not needed

How is it less or not needed?

read the post, therein lies the answers ye seeketh

(tl;dr Hong Kong small with big economy, closed loop BTC-based economy easy)

1Referee

legendary

Activity: 2170

Merit: 1427

Quote from: Carlton Banks on September 18, 2019, 05:26:45 AM

in this case, BTCPay is less/not needed

How is it less or not needed? A lot of commercial businesses and non businesses use centralized payment gateways for the sake of convenience. Every payment goes through a filter where these payment gateways analyze the risk of each transaction, even when the nature of the transaction is innocent. The need hasn't ever been more pressing.

BitPay & Co have done nothing but signal the need for alternatives such as BTCPay. The more businesses adapt the more freedom people and businesses will have.

Speaking of such, Namecheap (largest domain registrar in the world) is exploring its routes to ditch BitPay after hundreds of complains of them being shady and because of their unfriendly checkout page. Several users have proposed BTCPay, so we'll see where it ends.

Tylev

full member

Activity: 854

Merit: 104

It seems that any destabilizing situation in a particular region, like the general economic crisis, will positively affect the price of cryptocurrency. Actually, this was one of the tasks when creating Bitcoin. It was also recently in the Asian region, with strained relations between the US and North Korea. Well, in this regard, the functionality of the cryptocurrency justifies itself.

layer1gfx

legendary

Activity: 2128

Merit: 1109

Graphic Design & Translation - BTC accepted here!

if you use any company to exchange your money into BTC using banks it is all well recorded on the blockchain - for anyone to track.
i think only OTC / in person deals are truly preventing govs or any interested parties to get data on you.
hongkongers are smart so i guess they will figure this out as well.

Carlton Banks

legendary

Activity: 3430

Merit: 3071

Quote from: 1Referee on September 15, 2019, 01:47:11 PM

Positive side of this bad news is that people will appreciate BTCPay Server more.

in this case, BTCPay is less/not needed

the beautiful thing about Hong Kong is that it's a powerful economy concentrated in a small geographical area. There will be a lot of opportunities in that kind of economy to transact only in BTC.

after all, the whole point of this phenomenon of using BTC in Hong Kong commerce is to reduce government (HK and Chinese) control, putting more power into regular people's hands. Any conversion to currency in a bank account is a risk under those circumstances (as if that's not risky enough already)

1Referee

legendary

Activity: 2170

Merit: 1427

Quote from: layer1gfx on September 14, 2019, 12:41:45 AM

Update from Leo Weese, Hongkong:

Quote

Bitcoin is decentralized, Satoshi didn’t ask for permission. The language of the Hong Kong Protest Movement feels very familiar to us.

----snip----

Localtechnews:
----snip----

Are Businesses Turning to Bitcoin in a Dangerous Way Following the Hong Kong Protests?

https://techstartups.com/2019/09/06/businesses-turning-bitcoin-dangerous-way-following-hong-kong-protests/

Bitcoin is indeed decentralized, but some of the entities collecting donations use centralized payment gateways such as BitPay that keeps blocking donations.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/never-use-bitpay-hong-kong-free-press-slams-bitcoin-donation-block

In other words, BitPay decides for you who can and can't receive money from you. There doesn't seem to be an end to all the negativity BitPay is involved in this year.

Positive side of this bad news is that people will appreciate BTCPay Server more. As always, people need to be reminded from time to time why Bitcoin exists, and why it's so important to support open source projects allowing you to circumvent middlemen.

layer1gfx

legendary

Activity: 2128

Merit: 1109

Graphic Design & Translation - BTC accepted here!

Update from Leo Weese, Hongkong:

Quote

Bitcoin is decentralized, Satoshi didn’t ask for permission. The language of the Hong Kong Protest Movement feels very familiar to us.

Localtechnews:

Are Businesses Turning to Bitcoin in a Dangerous Way Following the Hong Kong Protests?

https://techstartups.com/2019/09/06/businesses-turning-bitcoin-dangerous-way-following-hong-kong-protests/

rodel caling

full member

Activity: 952

Merit: 104

Quote from: ?? on ??

Quote from: Vishnu.Reang on August 18, 2019, 12:10:55 AM

With the relations between China and Hong Kong getting tense, these users may be left between the devil and the deep blue sea.

I think that there will be solutions to this problem, after all, there are quite a lot of investors and it will be impossible to leave all of them without a solution

Yeah that is true problem always have an solution, but I think nothing to worry about the relationship between chinea and hong kong givernment. We all know hong kong is a part of of china before but the people are want to have own government and law as independent country. So chnina need to respect the decision of hong kong government.

1Referee

legendary

Activity: 2170

Merit: 1427

Quote from: ?? on ??

I think that there will be solutions to this problem, after all, there are quite a lot of investors and it will be impossible to leave all of them without a solution

Then you don't know how relentless China is when it wants to get something done.

News came out today that China (when the protests weren't nearly as severe as they are today) has rejected a bill from HongKong's leader to find a mid-way solution to calm down the protesters. It's so retarded that China dictates what HongKong can and can't do. It's clear that China is only out to further destablize HongKong because of their own agenda. It's sickening.

I can't see this come to a good end. It's literally a battle between a rogue government versus the freedom of millions of harmless people. Undecided

layer1gfx

legendary

Activity: 2128

Merit: 1109

Graphic Design & Translation - BTC accepted here!

one of the most active twitter users reporting on scene is the bitcoin meetup organizer leo weese.

you can read an interview with leo here:

How did the Bitcoin ecosystem built itself in HongKong? Great read. A journey through the local Bitcoin Association history.

https://digfingroup.com/leonhard-weese/

Carlton Banks

legendary

Activity: 3430

Merit: 3071

Quote from: BitHodler on August 15, 2019, 05:17:36 PM

Then we have to ask ourselves what these coins are used for. If it's just a tool to move value between countries and have it converted back to fiat, then this specific form of use won't really add much value long term speaking.

there are reports that Hong Kong retailers are choosing to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a way of supporting Hong Kong's independence movement. If this continued, it might be surprisingly easy for Hong Kong to be the first jurisdiction in which cryptocurrency plays a major/dominant economic role. Hong Kong is very small and densely populated, and the independence activists are staunchly rebellious. This is actually more or less the perfect circumstances for such a thing to happen.

if anyone from Hong Kong is reading, I say:

you can do it

Vishnu.Reang

sr. member

Activity: 1974

Merit: 453

I am more worried about the cryptocurrency users from mainland China, who had registered to the exchanges in Hong Kong. After China outlawed the crypto-to-fiat trade in 2017, many of the users from mainland China had registered to various exchanges in South Korea and Hong Kong. With the relations between China and Hing Kong getting tense, these users may be left between the devil and the deep blue sea.

layer1gfx

legendary

Activity: 2128

Merit: 1109

Graphic Design & Translation - BTC accepted here!

up to 10% is fine because the bitcoin market price keeps moving. if you just wanna move funds out of the system, losing 10% is nothing... Wink

hatshepsut93

legendary

Activity: 2954

Merit: 2145

2% premium? That's nothing, my local exchange also has around 2% premium if you double convert to my local currency. Such fluctuations are everywhere, because liquidity on local exchanges isn't very big. When the price starts to differ by 10% or more, that's when people should be making news. If you go to coinmarketcap and look at Bitcoin markets sorted by price, you can find even bigger premiums, but they made this article about Hong Kong because it's makes a nice clickbat at this time.

1Referee

legendary

Activity: 2170

Merit: 1427

Quote from: layer1gfx on August 16, 2019, 04:39:44 AM

it would be also interesting to see if anything would change for the general bitcoin-friendly environment it has already established in the last years.
using bitcoin will definitely become more and more a political statement.

It could actually change for the worse if China gets more of a say in Hong Kong. In order to avoid running into problems later on, it makes sense for people there to convert a portion of their worth into Bitcoin and have it sit there until they need it. It's better prepare for worse and to not see it happen than to not prepare for worse and see it become reality and be trapped.

I have seen raw coverage of how ridiculously aggressive the cops are against people randomly walking by going to their work for example. I get it that the cops are instructed to go against those protesting, but focus on them instead of innocent people just trying to continue their day as normal as possible. Horrible situation. Undecided

joelsamuya

member

Activity: 532

Merit: 41

https://emirex.com

This Hong Kong story is another indication that Bitcoin has been playing a very important safe haven role whenever an economy or a country can be in trouble as more and more people are scrambling to protect their wealth and resources for possible downturn. People who are still doubting what Bitcoin can contribute to the global economy should look at what happened and happening not just in Hong Kong but many other countries as well.

layer1gfx

legendary

Activity: 2128

Merit: 1109

Graphic Design & Translation - BTC accepted here!

the question is now if HK will continue to be the economic center or not - the political situation looks rather not promising.
it would be also interesting to see if anything would change for the general bitcoin-friendly environment it has already established in the last years.
using bitcoin will definitely become more and more a political statement.

Topic: [2019-08-15] Hong Kong Is Paying Higher Prices for Bitcoin Amid Political Unrest (Read 307 times)