The Strange Case of Bitcointalk’s Chinese Ban

In a move no less curious than its previous attempts, China has blocked a popular Bitcoin website from being accessed on its domestic servers – but why?
China’s ‘Great Firewall’ has long been the subject variously of wonder and bewilderment, and now it is the turn of arguably the most active Bitcoin forum, Bitcointalk.org, to have the lights turned off.
According to a Reddit thread, requests submitted to the testing site greatfirewallofchina.org came back unsuccessful from all provinces’ IP addresses at present. The shift in accessibility came as a surprise to many, especially as it seems to be a one-off instance and not part of a wider concerted effort, as has been previously been the case.
Attention was further drawn to a response by user u/alanX, who commented, ‘I’m at the Bitcoin Conference in Shanghai, and I can access Bitcointalk.org just fine. Google and google drive, no. Can’t access them, but no problem accessing Bitcointalk.org.’

This post was published at Coin Telegraph on 2014-09-25.