Bitmain Rival’s Founder Arrested as War of Crypto Miners Heats up

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-16/crypto-miner-war-heats-up-with-arrest-of-bitmain-rival-founder

by utopian3 • 7 years ago

75 60 7 years ago

Zenst• 7 years ago

Seems more like a tactical lawsuit, if they win they kill of competition, if they lose - they end up delaying competition and in a market in which things move fast, it may well end up killing this competition.

aphextron• 7 years ago

Given that rule of law does not exist in China, it's safe to assume this is politically motivated. Who in the government wants him out of business, and why?

bhouston• 7 years ago

I do not know how it works in China, but could someone in the government be paid by Bitmain to care enough? In the US they call that move lobbying...

blacksmith_tb• 7 years ago

Lobbying in the US is a kind of corruption, but I don't think there's any way to lobby to have someone arrested, unless that's in slow motion, where you'd pay lobbyists to press for a law that could be used to arrest your opponent.

scottmsul• 7 years ago

It wouldn't be the government but the CCP. The CCP pretty much has ultimate authority on everything, so there's probably some close ties between people in Bitmain and people in the CCP that don't exist with MicroBT. Also a lot of it is based around favors more generally not just money.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi

solotronics• 7 years ago

There is rumor Bitmain (creaters of Antminer, see Ant Financial aka Alipay) was really owned by Jack Ma. Now everything that was Jack Ma is now owned by CCP I would bet Bitmain is the CCP.

dman• 7 years ago

Any pointers on why / how everything that was owned by Jack Ma is owned by CCP?

jacquesm3• 7 years ago

Jack Ma is on the record that this is nonsense:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/alibabas-jack-ma-denies-beijing...

Of course, conspiracy theorists would say 'of course he would say that'.

mperham• 7 years ago

First Russia with nginx just a few days ago, now this.

I'm starting to think despotic regimes are bad.

geogra4• 7 years ago

As if any other country is better.

neonate• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/Ed7kVS

PatrolX• 7 years ago

I can just see it now:

"Competition is bad, arrest him immediately!"

dmix3• 7 years ago

There's a reason all of the big western companies left China.

I'd bet money China's economy could be growing 10x faster if it had independent courts and foreign companies who become successful weren't treated like criminals.

Just imagine how many of us would be moving to China to start companies and how much more VC money would be flowing in. And all of the global HQs and products and innovation that would be happening there.

China's growth has been massive but it's a shadow of what it could be. Their growth rate should have been closer to SK, Singapore, and Taiwan by now. But they decided to go backwards:

https://croakingcassandra.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/ip-1.p...

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/scr...

zaptheimpaler3• 7 years ago

Having a bunch of US companies making profits in China isn't necessarily good for China.

If the choice is between, say letting AWS in and building their own. Building their own would put 5000 of their own people to work, the broad technical demographic it will take, and build up all the surrounding industries like servers, networking etc. All the profits stay within China, and they now have more skilled people who can start other companies etc. IMO its clearly a better long-term strategy, even though it will cost more in the short term.

ethbro4• 7 years ago

Would the leadership rather be absolute leaders of a slower-growing, still-globally-significant economy? Or lesser leaders of a faster-growing one?

I don't think the economic growth benefits outweigh their priorities.

powowow2• 7 years ago

meanwhile Sam Altman is writing essays about how China enjoys greater freedom than America.

If you think I'm kidding: https://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove

vkou3• 7 years ago

There's a reason all of the big western companies left China.

Are we on the same page, here?

Name two.

datashow• 7 years ago

Also remember China does not have a real bail system. If you get arrested, you are very likely end up in prison directly. You also can be disappeared (better than be suicided) during the process.

Edit: No. I wasn't referring to the Epstein case.

Also, Chinese police has a habit of using force to rob the corpse of the victim from the family who want to send the corpse to the 3rd party for examination. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishou_incident

cneurotic• 7 years ago

My bad, about the Epstein thing. Ungenerous assumption on my part. Sorry!

OrgNet• 7 years ago

is mining bitcoins still profitable with the value being this low?

qiaoliang89• 7 years ago

Yes. The only reason people are still doing it...

SkyMarshal• 7 years ago

Any way around the paywall?

Bitmain Rival’s Founder Arrested as War of Crypto Miners Heats up

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