Taobao, China's largest online marketplace, will ban the sale of all cryptocurrencies, mining equipment and mining tutorials from 14th Jan, it said in a statement released today.A CoinDesk translation of the statement's major points is below: In order to promote healthy development and ensure the interests of our members, some adjustments have been made in compliance with the government’s legal requirements.Our list of banned items will include bitcoin, litecoin and other virtual currency ...The adjustment will take effect starting on 14th Jan.The statement specifies three categories of items, including a list of cryptocurrencies and related items: 1.Bitcoin, Litecoin, Beaocoin, Quarkcoins, Infinitecoin, Colossuscoin, CENT, PPCoin, Namecoin and other virtual currencies.Tutorials on bitcoin mining.Hardware and software that are used for mining bitcoin.Following its release, the price of bitcoin on major Chinese exchanges experienced a slight drop from 5,600 yuan to 5,000 yuan, before rebounding to 5,300 yuan within half an hour.

Taobao, a consumer marketplace similar to eBay, claims more than half a billion registered users and daily transaction volumes exceeding 20bn yuan.The marketplace is currently one of the few places beyond the exchanges where users in China can buy bitcoin.Taobao is owned by Alibaba Group, which also runs Alipay, China’s leading third-party online payment platform.The Chinese central bank last month banned financial institutions from dealing in bitcoin and barred payment companies from working with bitcoin exchanges.The move triggered a plunge in bitcoin prices.Although Taobao's statement doesn't bar merchants on the marketplace from accepting bitcoin for goods and services, financial consultancy Kapronasia reported a drop in the number of merchants willing to take bitcoin payments in the wake of the central bank ruling, according to the South China Morning Post.The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.

Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists?Contact us at [email protected]/* */.The reason PayPal freezes accounts selling BitCoin is that PayPal has a blanket prohibition against using their service to operate a currency exchange.Initially, people selling BitCoin was allowed to operate as long as they kept chargebacks low (probably because PayPal considered BitCoin to be a Virtual Good).PayPal later internally classified BitCoin as an eCurrency, and thus disallowed it./?topic=...But WHY does PayPal have policy against currency exchanges?While it is very tempting to make up conspiracy theories about PayPal cracking down on potential competition, like Conor Lynch, I think the explanation is way more simple.

Sidenote: I'm not naive enough to think that the guys in this business are above such practices (see Why did PayPal sell to eBay?)I just don't think it's the case in this instance.PayPal transactions are reversible.bitcoin nieuws nederlandVERY reversible - like 60 days after the transaction, I think.reddit bitcoin verifyThat is one of the big advantages of the system, from a consumer standpoint.litecoin mining profitabilityBitCoin, on the other hand, is probably the least reversible currency available (and is touted as one of the big advantages of the system).It's not even reversible with a court order, like eGold, which is disallowed on PayPal.If a PayPal balance was easily transferable to other currencies, especially in a non-reversible way, it would make PayPal much more attractive to crooks, because after scamming people, they would just immediately transfer the money out of PayPal (to eGold or BitCoin), way before PayPal could react and reverse the transaction.

If left uncontrolled, this would eventually destroy the biggest advantage of PayPal, which is perceived consumer safety.As Conor Lynch points out, PayPal does have other safeguards in place against money laundering schemes, such as a rolling 60-day hold on all transactions,  percentage-based holds reserved for handling elevated fraud rates, and other measures.But these measures are probably NOT fun and games for PayPal to implement, since they cost both a lot of manual labour, and annoys merchants.A lot of honest merchants get caught in the crossfire of these measures, which then (with righteous fury) describe their experiences on the Internet.As such, it makes sense to eliminate anything that makes the PayPal system attractive for fraudsters in the first place, and currency exchanges (again, this is not a ban against BitCoin in particular, which is most definitely a currency exchange) was probably high on that list.This might also not be PayPal's policy alone - VISA and MasterCard might not be super-happy about currency exchanges either.

The above problem does not exist with virtual goods (such as Facebook credits) because you cannot exchange it for another currency, such as dollars or euros, and is therefore not suitable for the money laundering scheme described above.And remember: If you liked a someones answer - vote it up, and consider following them!:)It seems pretty obvious to me.PayPal (product) is taking a preemptive step against a technology (Bitcoin) that it perceives to be a potential disruptor of it's core business.It's big business thuggery plain and simple.The good news is that while entrenched legacy businesses can often delay disruption, they can't prevent it from occurring.I don't know that Bitcoin is the answer, but the correct response to "What comes after PayPal?"is not "nothing" - as much as PayPal would love for that to be the case.Edit: Mattias Petter Johansson points out that there are technical reasons that PayPal might have for disallowing the trade in Bitcoins - specifically to prevent money laundering and fraud.

But while PayPal does have a legitimate need to prevent such activity, and while Bitcoin does in fact represent an excellent tool for potential money launderers, it doesn't follow that they would have to ban all trading in Bitcoins.Many if not most PayPal merchant accounts already have a rolling 60 day hold on money from all transactions, which is put in place so that customers can reverse fraudulent or otherwise unsatisfactory transactions.High risk accounts have additional reserve requirements placed on them - as a result of which money is held for months and sometimes as long as the lifetime of the account.To say that PayPal couldn't have solved this problem without banning the trade in Bitcoins is therefore a tad inaccurate.On whether or not it qualifies as a "conspiracy theory" to assert that PayPal might be acting on it's genuine interest in retarding the growth of a potential competitor, perhaps I'm not qualified to say.What I will say though, is that throughout history industry heavy-weights have always erected obstacles to prevent any upstarts from threatening their market dominance.

Sometimes this is accomplished through their influence on the legislative process./wiki/Sla...The gist of the case surrounded an 1869 Act of the Louisiana (state) legislature that gave a politically connected group of slaughterhouse owners the exclusive right to practice their trade in the state.A modern example is the phenomenon of "Too Big To Fail" - whereby the large banks are subsidized, and allowed to completely abandon all reasonable accounting standards while smaller regional competitors collapse and are gobbled up.Another modern incidence of this is the Telecommunications oligopoly in Canada, where the industry is dominated by three titans (Bell, Telus, Rogers) to the detriment of consumers.The only reason this state of affairs persists is because of industry support for the 1993 Telecommunications Act which prevents foreign competitors from entering the market.In other cases where a legislative solution isn't possible, an entrenched business might undercut a competitors price, even if it means they take a temporary loss on all goods sold.