[rficcaglia]

it would benefit China's economy if a bubble were to pop and wipe out huge amounts of savings

my guess: China will not allow ICOs but maybe after 10 years or so, blockchains and smart contracts will quietly infiltrate boring business use cases and financial services. especially if they can turn it into a centralized tool for control.

what better authoritarian tool could there be than a centralized ledger of all economic transactions, run by the government. in the name of reducing fraud/laundering/crime you could have absolute visibility and regulatory control on all economic activity.

EDIT: spelling

[aleh]

If the ledger is centralized, what is the advantage of using blockchain?

[rficcaglia]

probably none. that is a different discussion. there were many better solutions than http for the web, hotly debated, but http became the defacto standard. betamax vs vhs. lots of reasons why inferior technology sometimes wins mind/market share

i dont drink the blockchain kool aid myself as a silver bullet for every problem, read IBM's hyperledger marketing materials and they try to make a case for centralized permissioned blockchain. ymmv.

but if millions of your citizens are using blockchains, as an authoritative regime, you probably will want to control its use. you arent particularly interested in the best tech solution to a problem. just control.

and lest anyone think i am abusive of china, i fully expect the US to highly regulate the hell out of this eventually ... if not now under the Tweeter in Chief, when the Dems get control again.