As a user of the USD, I just don't see it in the economic numbers or in real life.  If anything I see continuing deflation since I've been interested in the real estate market lately, and my wages are such that food and fuel are not a large fractions of my expenses.  I really only detect devaluation because gold prices are going up so fast.

In contrast, my friend who is visiting China right now took a bus out of Chendu because the taxi fare has doubled since she was there a few years ago.  She tells me that the price of pork in Guangzhou is about the same as in the US and people's wages are really not up nearly that amount.

One hell of a lot of USD are being created so there is a clearly devaluation going on, but I think that the money creation is getting sucked into the shadow banking system and exported overseas so we on Main Street USA are not yet seeing it in a major way.  I do expect it to wash in like a tidal wave at some point however.  That is part of the reason I am interested in Bitcoin.

Well, price of food going up with stagnant wages has been happening here in the US as well.  It's a natural consequence of the higher fuel prices that all the envirowhackos are cheering about.

My friend's trip was from Chendu to around the giant Budda area.  At least a several hour drive.  She says it used to be about $50 and is now about $100.  When I visited Beijing shortly before the Olympics, the Great Wall, and the 'better' part which was a little farther away.  I don't recall exactly how much I paid, but it seems like somewhere around $30 sticks in my mind.  I did take public transportation down to the Peking Man site mostly just to find out for myself what it was like.  The rate was extremely low and I'm sure it must have been highly subsidized.

I do sense that the government controls things (like fuel prices) in a fairly hands-on manner, and also that the government tends to favor Beijing (to the chagrin of Shanghai in particular) and have read such.  I did not get any farther outside of Beijing than that, and have not yet been back.

I was quite amazed at how cheap food was.  It blew me away that a fish could be raised to a decent size, brought to the city alive, and cooked all for a few bucks.  The economics didn't seem to be there, but I never did really get my mind around people doing so much work for so little money.  We in the US are quite spoiled.

If there were a standalone TOR box, you bet it would be manufactured in China. We are all focused on control here, but I think the article is hinting at a good opportunity for China, which is, half jokingly, manufacturing of bitcoins.

If you are planning for long term control of minting, GPU's (and any other general purpose device) lose advantage, fast. China could produce specialized efficient BTC minting machines and start mining on them within months. If you are absolutely sure you will be able to process most of the transactions, and produce most of the coins, it makes sense to make Bitcoin popular for the rest of the world. With luck, you get to take some financial power away from the West with very little cost.

I do not refuse when an employee from the PBC staff proposes to control the bitcoin network. But if you can. Bitcoin technology is not a simple management technology. Leading technology experts are frustrated with tracking and managing terrorists using blockchain to anonymously in their operations. I think this is not workable.

I don’t think the Chinese government will use the top supercomputer to calculate
It takes a long time and resources are wasted. For scientists, this is a waste of their time.

amazing!

That's so cool if it istrue