In China, an article published on the China Central Television State Television website talked about the halving of Bitcoin and its recent price growth.
The article mentions the third halving as the likely reason for the recent price growth, referring to the $10,000 level it surpassed on May 8th.
It also cites Paul Tudor Jones, who recently revealed in a letter to investors that one of his funds is buying Bitcoin.
An interesting passage in this article is what he says:
“In 2012 the reward for miners went from 50 to 25 BTC, and the price rose by almost 8,200% in a year. In the 18 months following the second half of 2016, the price of bitcoin increased by more than 2,200%”.
This statement sounds a bit odd in a Chinese state TV article, especially since China is officially opposed to speculation on bitcoin, and in particular to the fact that its residents may invest local fiat currency in BTC.
Seeing as the Chinese state TV is in fact directly controlled by the government, this article seems to disprove the government’s mistrust of Bitcoin.
Sure, it may well be an anomalous article, or it may have escaped government censorship, although these are perhaps a bit of a wild guess.
They even added:
“The bitcoin halving scheduled for May 12th occurs approximately every four years. When triggered, it will reduce the number of bitcoins given as a reward to miners for their work. Since miners bring new bitcoins to the market by selling them, the halving will reduce the rate of introduction of new bitcoins [on the market]. Given the deflationary nature of bitcoin, any event affecting their supply will have a significant impact on the prices of the asset”.
This other passage is in stark contrast to what has always been argued by the Chinese government, which has never accepted their citizens investing in bitcoin because of its alleged deflationary nature.
One might even think that there might be a change in China’s attitude towards Bitcoin, although this too should be considered a bold hypothesis to date.
The fact that this is an anomaly is also highlighted by the head of marketing at HashKey Hub who, on Twitter, reveals:
“Whoa, first time saw a Chinese national media talking about bitcoin pump”.
Meanwhile, China is about to launch its digital currency and it’s not absurd to imagine that, as happened for example in Venezuela at the time of the launch of Petro, some of the scepticism about cryptocurrencies is being put aside precisely to encourage the launch of the digital state currency.
