Bitcoin is not a naughty child – it challenges China’s national control of its money. It shouldn’t have been born

Are you a naughty child evading punishment, or you are an enemy?

We already talked about the war between Qi and Lu. Qi was the most powerful kingdom for a long period in ancient Chinese history.

One king of Qi was a gourmet. His chef, 易牙,Yiya, cooked and served his son to the king. (More specifically, according to Han Feizi, 韩非子, steamed.) The chef earned himself the role of a prominent official. There were two other prominent officials in King’s court – one who left his family responsibilities to serve the king, the other who castrated himself to show his loyalty to the king. Such is the benefit and necessity of acting without being ordered.

Around 300 hundred years later, Qi invaded Lu, and General Wuqi became a legend. The question is: Why did chef Yiya earn prominence and power after killing his son, and General Wuqi sent into exile after killing his wife?

The answer is simple: Yiya was a fellow countryman, Wuqi a foreigner. He was originally born in a third country, too small for the career of a general. The difference is whether or not you are ‘one of us’. The contemporary narrative, the way Hollywood tells the story, is of a man holding a smoking gun and giving the eulogy: ‘Thanks for licking my shoes but sorry, you are not one of us.’

The stories have a simple moral. Not that the Chinese are horribly cruel (I did try to find a fairytale, but cruel stories from history always come in handy). The simple moral is this: acting on the Lord’s will without being ordered to is a good strategy, but whether or not it works depends on what you are. Are you one of us, or a foreigner? Are you a naughty child evading punishment, or you are an enemy?

Margin trading, which the exchanges vowed to stop, is vital to their competition – it is the next battlefield after the 0% trading fees. To say that these are the ‘son’ and ‘wife’ of the business is not exaggerating. ‘Self-regulation’ harms business. The exchanges are serving their Lord their business on a plate – but will it work? Are they the chef of Qi or the general of Lu? Is Bitcoin, or the exchanges, a disturbance to our harmony, a little wonton that our lord doesn’t bother to destroy, or is it an enemy of the state?

The answer makes a big difference. In the former case, you can play all those tricks: self-regulation, sacrificing your son and wife, and the Lord will judge you fit to survive. In the latter case, the Lord wants you to quit the business, out of the country for good.

→So what is the Lord’s real intention?