People’s Bank of China doesn’t intend to “suppress or discriminate against Bitcoin”

(BitcoinExaminer) China’s central bank addressed Bitcoin in a press conference
headed by the chief of its financial survey and statistics department.
Sheng Song Cheng transmitted the official stance given by the Chinese
authorities: “we don’t want to suppress or discriminate against Bitcoin, we are simply saying it is not a currency”.

The decision revealed during the
conference held this Wednesday (15) is being welcomed by the Bitcoin
community as a positive development in China’s apparent war against
digital money. The meeting was focused on the country’s 2013 financial
statistics, but Bitcoin popped up as the journalists started asking
questions about it.

“We took a look at Bitcoin and it
doesn’t have the characteristics of a currency. As far as I know, the
vast majority of countries does not recognize Bitcoin as a currency”,
Sheng Song Cheng answered.

Before confirming cryptocurrency’s
status in China as a “virtual good”, he also added that the “People’s
Bank and the relevant departments will continue to focus on Bitcoin and its associated risks,
strengthen the monitoring and analysis and guide the public to
establish a correct concept of money and investment philosophy”.

The authorities’ posture regarding
cryptocurrency falls under Sheng Song Cheng’s public opinion about
Bitcoin. Recently, he wrote an article
saying that “it would be difficult to see how Bitcoin could ever be
considered a currency in the future”. The English edition of the
newspaper Global Times even quoted Sheng as the author of a powerful
sentence: “Bitcoin is merely a utopia for technology supremacists and
absolute liberalists”.

Still, according to the opinion of some
Bitcoiners, this means that China is legitimizing Bitcoin, despite the
country’s successive warnings about the high risks of dealing with
the digital coin. For now, the authorities aren’t banning Bitcoin –
neither do they plan to do it -, only tightening the regulation and keeping an eye on the users and exchanges.

Coincidence or not, the price of Bitcoin in China has registered a slight improvement on BtcChina in the last few hours, surpassing the ¥5,000 mark.