ty for your posts, really interesting.
could you please confirm if the following statements are true:
- huobi stops withdrawls/funding with third party payment processors tonight (prepaid-cards).
I am not their user. I read the same news in Chinese and do not doubt this.
- after 15th of april third parties are not allowed to deal as middle man between banks and bitcoin exchanges anymore.
This was already banned in December 2013, but no one punish the violation: PBOC seems to believed sheer threat would work. Now 3rd parties are getting orders directly, individually. There is still no one assigned to punish the violation (as far as I know) but they will not ignore direct orders. Conclusion: TRUE.
- you can withdraw from and fund fiat to exchanges using bank transfer.
You haven't read the news? Among 15 named exchanges, BT38, BTER, FXBTC ceased to offer
any way to fund fiat = only out, no in, opposite of MtGox fiasco. BTCIG is even worse, website is down. On withdraw: FxBTC's bank forced them to cease offering cash withdraw with bank transfer, their users are hurrying to withdraw from 3rd party before 15th, at which time it will offer no in, no out. Other exchanges (except the now-offline BTCIG) allows fiat withdraw with bank transfer.
FxBTC is a strange case, the only one who ceased bank-transfer withdraw. Sometimes local official over-execute higher orders in attempt to endear themselves to the above, I think FxBTC is simply unlucky to work with such an official. But it can also be possible as a deliberate move to make withdraw harder - FxBTC charges the highest bitcoin withdraw fee (0.01฿), a behaviour MtGox adopted when they can't fix TM bug, hinting FxBTC also had the same bug and perhaps lost some coins. With this considered, FxBTC users should withdraw now.
I wrote an editorial in detail (the site is in German but an English version is available after a small payment):
http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/04/03/exklusiv-eine-chinesische-perspektive-auf-die-situation-in-china/