Has China Nipped Bitcoin in the Bud?

In the year 2000, Bill Clinton famously quipped that trying to control the internet in China would be like "trying to nail Jello to a wall".

Fourteen years later and, for the most part at least , the Chinese government has managed to pull off what was then deemed impossible and make it stick.

The same phenomenon is repeating itself with the latest digital disruptor de jour, the crypto-currency bitcoin.

Many analysts believe bitcoin is at around the same level of development and recognition as the internet was when Clinton made those remarks.

Recognising the game-changing economic upside to the internet, the Chinese government accepted it, but on its own terms. Bitcoin has followed a similar logic.

In his new book Chomping at the Bitcoin, Shanghai-based financial analyst Zennon Kapron charts the recent history of bitcoin in China and sketches out the contours of its likely future there.

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