China, The End of an Era

We look to the 70s as the beginning of the modern age. Those that follow may look to the 20s as the beginning of theirs.

Not least because a generation gives way to a new one, at least in the ground, at least in the offices.

It may be this new era won’t have China as part of it, at least where bitcoin is concerned and obviously at least at an official level.

That’s if reports coming out of there are to be believed with local crypto media stating:

“Following Xinjiang, the province of Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, and Yunnan successively introduced regulatory policies for virtual currency mining. Sichuan, a major Bitcoin mining region, finally took the initiative…

The relevant departments of the Sichuan Province recently issued a notice requiring power generation companies to conduct self-examination and self-correction, and immediately stop supplying power to virtual currency mining…

The notice also requires that each city (state) government immediately carry out a dragnet investigation, and must immediately shut down the virtual currency mining projects found in the investigation, and report the clearance and shutdown before June 25.”

Once dominant, with 90% of global crypto trading and at some point even 90% of the hashrate, now it looks like China will be going down to about 10% of each.

That makes the country irrelevant where this space is concerned, quite a downfall from a big epicenter, with China seemingly becoming more isolationist economically.

They now have no friends, except Russia, but when matters came to a head, Russia was keen to point out it is not an ally of China.

China on the other hand has not been keen to point out anything, and while we speculated of detente over the years, it appears they have only doubled down and have become more irrational.

Irrational where logical analysis is concerned. How can there be bots without bot money, or an internet without a digital currency.

Where their own thinking is concerned, obviously they’ve concluded such acts are rational, for the greater good presumably, for the glory of imperial China and its rightful place to authoritarian world dominance.

Cryptos provide too much freedom, and yet China claims it is a democracy, in its own style. We have no illusions of it, and it must be this is not the only space wronged by bureaucrats who think they know what is the greater good, and who think they so smart they would never conflate their own good with that of the country, or so lucid that their own limited experience and knowledge does not delusion them to grandours.

Pride comes before the fall, and the above chart showing China’s GDP speaks of both. Here is Russia, the little big boy that has to serve two masters:

2000s, joined the west. 2010, semi-left the west. 2015 pretty much out. 10%-12% growth. 3%-5%. 0%-2%.

It is no wonder Putin dreads a policy of isolation and when it looked like it might happen, effectively begged. Not least because there are narrations and then there are the lions.

China is currently in a honeymoon of sorts. We watch it mock, we watch it pandemic, we just watch.

Because it is only right to give full chance to course correction considering the economic stakes for the 1.4 billion people.

The CCP of course thinks of us a mirror, and where the donkeys are concerned, they may even be right. But there is such a thing as humanism, the idea that anyone of us could have been born in China, in poverty or in richness. Or the idea that if energy can not be created or destroyed, then necessarily the atoms will once again gather in the current human form, and they may do so in China.

No one quite speaks of this much among some drums of nationalism, especially in China, but if their Marxist economic exploitation of China by the west critique is right, didn’t China benefit the most?

Globalization has its weaknesses, including our property under an authoritarian jurisdiction, but the aims and ambitions of our grandfathers after the atrocities and lessons of the global war, do find comfort on the hands of the lions upon which the fate of China stands.

It is theirs the judgment and decision, of the Chinese people and the Chinese government. We just watch.

If nationalism, we’ve dealt with it for centuries, we know how to deal with nazis and with communists. We know what works, and we know its weaknesses too, as well as its strengths.

And though we’re accused of plenty, we stand upon the highest intellectual foundations of man, proven in both logic and experience.

It is China that has to show why it chooses to diverge from what is self evidently right besides the ability of very few to successfully capture this entire country without any recourse by the captured populace.

China is not what it looks like, there’s much poverty here, it’s very different. We shouldn’t forget this is an authoritarian country, some 2016 devcon-ers whispered. The wi-fi is almost unusable, much control.

Yet we wanted to dream and still do of a great friendship which is interfered by a backwards ruling government stuck in a 19th century mentality that lacks energy or humanistic ambition to advance the entire human race.

And of course we do not quite know who is the Chinese government really, who is the CCP. Not least because it benefits them greatly to claim USA the boogyman as it may do our donkeys. But millennials play a different game for they think the ploys of their fathers belong to the century gone.

As such, the code itself will naturally fight any such irrational objection, with the history of man containing plenty of fights between science and deluded rulers.

Science has always won so far, and while the CCP might slow it down, it perhaps should see it more as a canary of its own weaknesses, it’s own human form.

This end of an era therefore has plenty of blessing, as objectionable as it may be that such fine aspirations won’t initially spread to all.

From a purely ‘the present’ perspective, bitcoin not made in China is a victory after they closed crypto exchanges as their isolationism is contained to themselves.

Bitcoin doesn’t care. Bitcoin has thrived instead and even kids are now going around setting up mines in Europe and the United States in a gold rush.

In fact in many ways no one cares outside of China about the decision of the CCP to harm its own people, especially after last year’s global peoples.

They can enjoy their downfall if so they choose, hubristically claiming a better way while rising because of our way.

The GDP chart proves as much, and so our poem, A Composure to Time:

Memories, at the end of day is manits atoms, in a collection to reunitewith memories in bones that went.This real present, with its vivid delighta stop of energy in the great cosmic dailai.By the breath of magic speaks this tonguein presence to the time memorialand fickle like thy dust at hands.So in thousand years, or trillion forthif these words reach your fortand think of us a time barbara people not, pitty lot…Whether in space, so reading thisto andromed, much achievedor in this land, if time gone downand see us here as height of manor if you are a people newincomprehensible to this do,let them all know we are of firewe hide from present in desireescape the world in thinking drumsyou’re carcatures, don’t know our lohove.So let me sing, to time it standsthat cosmic noise, immortal sohoulsand see in here allllll historythose that lived strongand they all live wooohoooo.By drums I speak this music,to angels high and angels deep,to you foremostsaturnosin glory journy to wondoros.Convey my message to yourselfand the airs on your handswith you we stand allll liberel.In storm and swingin dust and coldwe are iron loohoore.And rocks you meetyou kings of eastfind them of watatooo ee please.For snakes you may have in your sightbut lions jump to their delightif their fur yellow angel godpleases thy man, pleases thy heart.With courage go and run ooo,to saturna and jupitoto see what pleasure this brief timegrants to ouur delight mind.