It's trivial for them to block Bitcoin communications over their network, they have the most advanced proxy filtering systems in the world.
Maybe... But if the government were against it, why would they let it go on CCTV then?
that's the million bitcoin question
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PON-wNMIy_Y
my first visit to china was during the 08' olympics; imagine my surprise when i couldn't access my fav *ahem* video sites; well last year i noticed baidu (during a regular search for 'movie') started listing some sites; when i told my friends NO ONE believed me (but seeing was believing lol); so yeah there is progress (seems to be slow but steady)
In my mind, the bitcoin ecosystem here is still underdeveloped. BTCChina and it's competitors are a good start, but they aren't able to compete with the big Western exchanges in terms of security or useability (and that's not saying all that much -- aiming for parity is hardly shooting for the moon).
For the past couple of months, we've been working on a new China/Global BTC exchange that will hopefully change that. We plan to advertise online and in Shanghai's financial districts... including a 0.1 BTC giveaway for new users.
No URL yet -- we're still doing stress testing and getting all our ducks in a row. But watch this space. Next weekend, all going well...
are you planning to actually HOST the servers in shanghai as well?
which channels will you support for cny <=> btc at launch?
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fyi - btcchina is back up and it looks like the downtime was caused due to a switch over to cloudflare for ddos protection; their ip is now being sourced out of europe -- things are looking up for them