According to 8btc, Gao Xiaosong, host of the #1 talk show in China and Chairman of Alibaba Music, defended cryptocurrencies in an episode of “Morning Call” aired last Friday.
“I cannot figure out why so many people are mean to virtual currency. (After all) currencies at the very beginning are virtual.”
The clip has been viewed 4 million times, and syndicated versions of the show are said to reach 850 million viewers worldwide.
On “Morning Call” Gao described currencies as phenomena of “social consensus”:
“The essence of currency is not gold or silver, but lies in social consensus. It is exactly currency if it has exchange value,” he said.
According to 8Btc, Gao spoke to viewers about the traditional monetary system on the Island of Yap, where citizens used massive calcite stones quarried on distant islands to track wealth and debt. The system, oft-cited among Bitcoiners to back the notion of proof-of-work, is seen to have worked because everyone agreed to it and the stones were not easily acquired.
“This is the same case with bitcoin,” said Gao, “And both of them are featured by scarcity and community consensus.”
According to a source to Crowdfund Insider, Chinese citizens are managing to get around restrictions on crypto to trade it anyway, primarily by using offshore exchanges and hand-to-hand in what may often be, “pyramid schemes.”
A number of Western publications, including The Economist and The Diplomat, have lately reported on the “huge social harm” being wrought now by “business cults” in China.
A March 11 international edition of the South China Morning Post explains pyramid groups as, “targeting people from smaller inland centres…migrant workers, laid-off workers and fresh graduates.”
Scam cryptocurrencies Gemcoin and Onecoin both defrauded Chinese investors.
In January, Coindesk reported from a strongly-worded statement from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security regarding its stance on pyramid schemes:
“The public security organs…will continue to carry out special rectification in key areas and…concentrate on destroying the pyramid selling organizational system, severely punishing the members of the pyramid selling field, annihilate and destroy the network pyramid selling and criminal activities, [and] earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the general public as well as the economic and financial order.”