I remember a few years back there were stories about how broken the savings system was in China; something like the only two legal investments were state banks, which gave 1% interest when there was double-digit inflation, and real estate, where you could buy apartments in empty cities on the premise that it was really hard to do worse than the negative 10% real rate of return you got from banks. In that environment I could see how an investment vehicle like BTC could really take off.
