21 ms·

Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

323 points by imartin2k 6y ago

asah 6y ago
In other news, Turkey bans the number 0x86e821a162fb2819e5601abb2ce45be4e22d56cada7b8ac3d4b88d94daaa075e69ca375cdc94996a6d35bf55ef17151f
maeln 6y ago
For context: Turkey has been facing an several year long financial crisis with the Turkish Lira plummeting in value. Erdoğan has done nothing good to solve the crisis and is just firing the central bank administrator one after the other. The central bank has brought so much lira with its foreign currency reserve to try to maintain the price that it is almost running dry of any foreign currency, making the future look even bleaker. Because of this, the population has been rushing in putting their money in other currency/assets (like euro, gold, dollar, ...), which is making the situation worse, so the government has been actively trying to force people to keep their money in lira and even buy more lira if they can. So whatever they say about it, it is just another move in this direction. They want to prevent people from buying cryptocurrency and further risking depreciating the lira.
- fisf 6y ago
  Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.
  - dandanua 6y ago
    Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments and substitute it with a system that has 7 tps cap in which the majority of coins belongs to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin).
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
      So you don't think it's valuable to give people power over their incompetent government? 7tps on the base layer, you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, as a matter of fact, unless you're buying directly from a miner, the single transaction that you use to put it in your wallet actually corresponds to many other transactions elsewhere. > (supposedly of criminal origin) Big bold claims also require some proof. It's a decentralized protocol that can't be controlled by anyone. Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart?
      - dandanua 6y ago
        Here [1] is just a recent proof, the complete list of proofs is too big. I don't have much trust in my government either (Ukraine), but at least I know who they are. Also there are many other ways to store a value. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111
        rawtxapp 6y ago
        So an exchange get's hacked and that makes the origins of Bitcoin criminal? That's like if a bank got hacked and we said US dollar's origin was criminal, it doesn't make any sense. So if you don't trust them, why would you let them control your money, knowing them doesn't change much. Sure there are other ways and people are free to choose whichever one they prefer.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        > Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart? On a scale of 0-1, representing my estimate of P(no catastrophic economic/valuation failure in any given year), my trust is: {Government (German): 0.99, Government (UK): 0.85, Politicians (UK): 0.67, Bankers (collectively and internationally): 0.95, BTC: 0.15, Cryptocurrencies in general: 0.05}. > you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, Thus negating all the so-called benefits of the Blockchain, but without the benefits of a double-entry bookkeeping database audited by professionals and with public liability insurance.
    - fidelramos 6y ago
      Bitcoin was never supposed to be capped at 7 transactions per second, there are no technical reasons for that limit to exist anymore (it was added in 2010 as a temporary measure). Until (if) Bitcoin BTC decides to scale people can use the Bitcoin Cash [0] fork, which today has ~32 times more capacity, with a roadmap to continue scaling to universal usage while keeping fees low [1]. [0] https://bitcoincash.org/ https://bitcoincash.org/ [1] https://whybitcoincash.com/ https://whybitcoincash.com/
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - zapdrive 6y ago
        I don't know who is down voting you.. But you are right. That temporary limit has been abused by a faction of people (funded by banks) trying to control Bitcoin. That's why there's a surge of other coins that have removed the limitation. And one of the reasons why Bitcoin's dominance stands below 54% today.
        fidelramos 6y ago
        There are a lot of BTC maximalists that see any alternative cryptocurrency as a scam, something which is definitely not true for many of them that have thousands of daily active users. I also feel that many BTC maximalists don't appreciate how Bitcoin Cash makes apparent the limitations of BTC, as it processes more transactions than BTC while keeping fees under 1 cent. txstreet [0] makes for a great visualization, check the statistics at the bottom. Personally I wish Bitcoin Cash didn't even need to exist, if BTC had scaled as it was originally planned by Satoshi Nakamoto (increasing the maximum block size before it got full). It was sad watching the adoption rate halt and then regress. Remember when BTC was becoming accepted by Steam, Microsoft, Dell, NewEgg and others back in 2015-2016? There is no doubt in my mind that if BTC had scaled properly almost every online shop and a lot of real-world shops would be accepting BTC by now (and incidentally BTC price would be even higher than it is today). [0] https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc
      - Graffur 6y ago
    - o_p 6y ago
      Poor finance guys, they have it so rough.
    - dangerlibrary 6y ago
      In fairness, "the majority of coins belong to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin)" is only a small rephrasing away from a description of Erdogan's government / political party [0]. And they are scarier for Turkish citizens than BTC, since he also aggressively punishes dissent and is a de-facto dictator [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Tur... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Auth...
      - m12k 6y ago
        Sure, but the fact that Turkey is becoming increasingly corrupt isn't really a good argument why it would be a good idea to take away the ability of all central banks to perform monetary policy to stabilize the economy.
        o_p 6y ago
        >Sure these guys are clearly corrupt but that doesnt mean you shouldnt trust them with your money! Are you serious? Honest question.
        riffraff 6y ago
        he's saying "the fact that there are corrupt people in position X should not disqualify every other people in position X". There are bad surgeons, you should still probably want surgery if you're sick.
        o_p 6y ago
        But there are no many surgeons here, theres only one, one central bank. The inflation rate of Turkey is 15%, is anyone really telling people to just "trust the goverment"? Would you put your life savings in the Turkish Lira?
        SiempreViernes 6y ago
    - zeepzeep 6y ago
      You don't need an on-chain transaction for most things, as you can just instantly send BTC over Lightning Network, a second layer on the BTC blockchain. There's no speed limit, it's not on the chain, only nodes between you and the node you paying are involved. It's pretty neat.
      - zapdrive 6y ago
        Lol, you are not serious, are you? Oh, I get the sarcasm now. "Lightning Network" is only "6 months away", right? Wink wink!
        VMG 6y ago
        there are a number of lightning wallets and a number of stores where you can pay using lightning transactions
        ajkdhcb2 6y ago
        I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. Waiting to contact wallet developers. It still doesn't work
        noch 6y ago
        > I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. The sats will return to you in 2 weeks. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-completing-the-puzzle-and-closing-the-channel-1466178980 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the...
        zeepzeep 6y ago
        6 months away, what? I use it on a regular basis. Before covid I could even buy beer & burgers in my city. You can get coupons for everything, many online stores accept it.
        6y ago
    - Galanwe 6y ago
      Sure, if you're in a developed country with proper economical policy and access to an open banking system, your argument stands. But if you're in a country where your money have been dropping 10% per annum for the last 10 years, and where the concentration is anyway not that different from bitcoin, then things start to make more sense. Also, most people in this situation are not looking for a day to day transactional currency, but rather for a store of value to hedge against their falling native currency.
    - zoshi 6y ago
      Lightning and sidechains can handle thousands of TPS. Monero has adaptive block sizes, and is estimated to be able to perform 1500-2000TPS. Privacy is a feature, not a bug. I don't want people knowing how much money I have.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Sounds like you’re agreeing that BTC itself is not a solution to anything you care about?
      - threatofrain 6y ago
        If money is opaque then it also cannot be taxed or seized by judicial process. IMO this moves further towards an aristocratic society as possession goes from 90% → 100% to the law.
        zoshi 6y ago
        Cash is opaque, yet governments have been funding themselves via taxation for thousands of years. If government charged a flat rate for its services, tax evasion would become impossible. One would simply show a proof of payment. This would only be ~$10k/year in US according to its current tax receipts and population. Property tax is also impossible to evade.
        iamben 6y ago
        Yes, but most people don't keep cash in a box under the bed - they keep it in a bank. This means my elderly mother's house doesn't get broken in to on a regular basis by people trying to take her life savings. Furthermore, her cash in a bank is protected by the government, and there are safeguards in place to help protect her from people trying to scam anything she has saved away from her. There are also mechanisms in place that when things 'go wrong' she's looked after. I'm not arguing for or against cryptocurrency, but there is some value to having a society where those that earn more help those that earn less by paying more taxes. I'm also pretty happy to pay for police, and firemen, and someone to pick up my bins, pave my roads, medical care etc. etc. All too often it seems the crypto argument is "I don't want to pay taxes, it's MY money" - yeah, it hurts, but the benefit of doing so is very real. The caveat, of course, is I say this living in a country with great free medical care, that's actually a pretty nice place to live, even if I really don't agree with some of our politicians. I appreciate not everyone lives in such a country.
    - chr1 6y ago
      Most governments on earth are of certainly known criminal origin. In the best case they are taking away 2-5% of your money every year by printing more. And in pathological cases, like Erdoghan, they take 30% and spend it on mega-palace or war with neighbours.
    - argvargc 6y ago
      This is very misleading. Cryptocurrencies developed on 10+ year old tech, that have stayed in that state throughout may indeed have very poor tps as you state. However, this is absolutely not the majority, as that base tech has iterated both at the base level, and in the application of layers. Typical these days are tps-handling in the 1k's - 10k's, and beyond. This will only keep improving as the technology progresses. Many systems capable of such throughout are heavily under-utilised, showing that crypto technology is generally ahead of those needs. That there have been hiccups have been more due to "brand loyalty", not tech deficiency, but even those technologies (Ethereum, mainly), are in the process of being upgraded. Given tps in the fiat world is somewhat of an inapplicable metric, as fiat transactions typically take in the order of days to complete - it's even more of a misleading comparison. Credit cards achieve 30k tps throughput only with the considerable caveats of reversibility and 30 day (or longer) finality. Crypto suffers from no such limitations. The majority of worth in the space is absolutely not of "criminal origin", demographics of crypto holders have been studied extensively and are readily available.
      - dash2 6y ago
        Brand loyalty is probably less important than network effects. NewTechCoin may be way better than Bitcoin but nobody's going to buy it until everyone else is buying it.
        megameter 6y ago
        Well, that's what makes cryptocurrency a worthwhile market for speculation. Many folks look to the "market cap ranking" to see what's hot in the space, and going down the list and positioning yourself in a rank 400 coin - a good one that shows promise as a tech platform, a more efficient coin, a useful financial instrument or whatever - is one of the most straightforward ways to see 1000% returns, because even if it doesn't make it all the way up to the top 10, its valuation can grow faster than the market as a whole. (It can also get hit with huge drawdowns when the bear market hits. It's not all roses...) While it is the case that most things get priced relative to BTC, and this does have a network effect since you end up exiting to BTC and thus reenforce its price, it's increasingly common to see trading pairs for ETH, LTC, USDC/USDT. There is interest in getting more liquidity into the market and that's a large part of "DeFi". It's not that BTC is self-perpetuating lock-in, it's that they're all growing but everything else is running several years behind, so on a day to day basis BTC still holds relatively more of the market.
    - VMG 6y ago
      even if your silly "7tps" number was true, the answer would be YES
    - insert_coin 6y ago
      > Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments... Governments do that on their own they don't need any help from crypto.
    - asah 6y ago
      Artifacts of Bitcoin, not fundamental flaws in cryptocurrency.
    - cblconfederate 6y ago
      governments are pretty good at destroying financial systems as well
    - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      Look up Lightning Network.
      - usrusr 6y ago
        Lightning Network. Making Bitcoin payments practical next year since 2015. Banning crypto payments is like an airport refusing landing clearance to bicycles.
    - Siira 6y ago
      Do you live in a country with runaway inflation? If not, shut up.
    - matheusmoreira 6y ago
      > let's destroy financial systems of governments I'm fine with that. Current monetary policy sucks.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      Those financial systems are destroying themselves. At the very least, BTC is a check on irresponsible fiscal behavior from central banks and governments. Manage your currency well or get vaporized.
    - dmos62 6y ago
      The quality of this comment is not what I'd like to see on this forum. Firstly, do you really have to participate in this derogatory, sarcastic tone? Secondly, transactions per second are cryptocurrency-specific, so your point (about BTC, I presume) is irrelevant. Thirdly, majority of cryptocurrencies belonging to unkowns is fine, what's your point? Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? Please, put some thought into your comments.
      - cableshaft 6y ago
        > Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? I think their point is criminals are bad, so anything they use is also bad. Like guns, and drugs, and cars, and food, and beds, and houses, and air. All bad. We shouldn't use those things, and we should ban them at the earliest opportunity.
        fvv 6y ago
        There are things very useful for criminals and not so much for common people , air doesn't belong go this category, ak-47 and bitcoin yes, are both vastly more useful to criminals that common people, in countries where governments is not oppressive amd against the people (in those countries good and bad behavior may be more or less inverted depending on situation)
        dmos62 6y ago
        You're arguing against privacy. It's weird to have to rehash this debate, ever since tracking and data collection has become a widely recognized problem. Would you like to see Tor shut down as well? Same argument could be made for "unlicensed" encryption. Which feature of cryptocurrencies would you say is useful to criminals, but not to not-criminals? I'd argue that there's no such feature.
      - xtracto 6y ago
        Imagine when he learns the currency that the majority of criminals use ... I agree with you. Comments like that have such a low intellectual effort that they are mainly noise. People in stable countries (us, uk, western Europe) don't understand the lack of confidence that citizens of underdeveloped countries have in their own government and financial institutions.
    - dogman144 6y ago
      * False on criminal origin majority, majority is non-criminal [1] * roughly false on unknown entities for two reasons. 1) btc is fairly easy to surveil [1], and see Chainalysis 2) logic here doesn’t make sense. Are you saying you know all owners of cash deposits, or just assuming someone does? A lot of folks keep cash “in a mattress.” Is that bad as well, as it’s a mirror of holding crypto? [1] https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance And https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoin_in_Illicit_Finance.pdf https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi..., for the primary source.* * Is this source from a crypto lobbying group - yes. Is the author the deputy director and twice acting director of the CIA, so he probably knows bitcoin’s use for criminal payments more than the average critic - yes.
      - tgv 6y ago
        [1] doesn't say anything like that.
        dogman144 6y ago
        Did you miss this... - me: criminal activity not a majority of btc use and severely overstated overall, and it enables surveillance, aka intelligence gathering for LEO/IC if properly utilized. - 30 year veteran, ex-deputy director of the CIA: “However, based on our research and discussions with industry experts, I have confidence in two conclusions: • The broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated. • The blockchain ledger on which Bitcoin transac- tions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can be used more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and dis- rupt illicit activities. Put simply, blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.” “ All of this together suggests a broader point—that the illicit use of cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular, as a share of total market activity, is cer- tainly not higher than it is in the traditional banking system and is most likely less” Quite literally does say something/anything like what I said.
        tgv 6y ago
    - koonsolo 6y ago
      You are talking about Bitcoin, I thought the article was about cryptocurrencies. (And the comment you replied to said 'Crypto')
    - wavepruner 6y ago
      Unfortunately the financial systems of governments are getting destroyed and we are powerless to stop it. Cryptocurrencies are not destroying government run financial systems. They are just an alternative. Bitcoin's 7 tps is a base-layer limitation. Layer 2 technologies like Lightning aim to address this issue. Lightning is functioning well and growing rapidly. I don't think it's fair to say most Bitcoin holders are unknown entities. The AML/KYC requirements for converting crypto into spendable fiat are strong. The criminal use of Bitcoin is a small compared to it's legitimate use as a store-of-value.
    - agumonkey 6y ago
      Even if you take all decentralized currency fads failures, it's hard not to root a little bit for them compared to your own government ruining your life constantly.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    or why they won't work to solve this kind of issues
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Everyone else just uses dollars.
  - me551ah 6y ago
    You do realize that in a war of Government Vs Crypto, the government will win. Governments can ban crypto but the opposite isn't true.
    - xvector 6y ago
      Governments cannot ban crypto. They may ban exchanges, but if crypto ever establishes a value of its own as a currency, the government cannot do anything. At least not without basically turning off the internet. Which is, well, not out of the question for Erdogan as he is a dictator.
      - valdiorn 6y ago
        They can put people in jail for using crypto, which is a strong enough deterrent that 99% of people won't do it.
        Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
        Yeah because it worked so well for piracy. /s
        abduhl 6y ago
        This sarcastic and snarky view is a bit shortsighted, isn’t it? Piracy worked because it was decentralized distribution. If the government goes after the gatekeepers in the same way they went after piracy they’re not just shutting down distribution - they’re taking the asset too. When someone takes over a coinbase or a binance they’re taking the coins. Not your keys, not your coins. Your response now will, of course, be “well that’s why you rotate your coins out into cold storage” which is sort of like me saying “you just convert your lira to dollars at the end of the day when you’re done buying food and water.”
        thehappypm 6y ago
        It's a good comparison but the value here is orders of magnitude off. A pirate might download a few hundreds of dollars' worth of music and movies. Crypto can be millions of dollars in a transaction. Government goes after the whales, the whole ecosystem dies.
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    or you can transact in USD. which is what the world does for oil, for example.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    That's a bizarre statement. Corruption is causing the devaluation of the currency in this case. The devaluation is already a method for hurting the ones responsible. I'd think that the ones that are corrupt would be able to store their currency in crypto, while the rest of the citizens are not. Crypto doesn't help anything. It could help some who know how to use it ( and will not forget their password)
  - cryptica 6y ago
    I was also thinking that this is the perfect excuse for them to dump their fiat monetary system and let their citizens adopt crypto... I'm pretty sure all other countries' fiat monetary systems will also fail soon, Turkey has a unique opportunity to allow their citizens to amass large amounts of crypto ahead of every other country... And yet they choose to pass up on that opportunity due to a fear of the unknown. Imagine if the Turkish government had allowed their citizens to use DogeCoin a few days ago before the big pump, they'd already be out of their recession ;p
    - webinvest 6y ago
      How do you think they will fund their government budget deficits with crypto? Rhetorical question — they can’t!
  - loceng 6y ago
    Easy counterargument: Policy like the Magnitsky Act can't be implemented as a pre-physical confrontation approach against known bad actors. If Bitcoin is global currency system then there's no chance of using such a mechanism-tool-lever, however with current system of governments it can be used; Biden's recent financial acids actions against Putin's actions against the US is another example of this.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  The first thing would be to ban free exchange of foreign currencies. But that would be hard to do in the tourist country.
  - tsss 6y ago
    After turning the country into a dictatorship, regularly arresting and torturing foreign tourists, and now corona, I doubt that there are any tourists left at all.
    - nly 6y ago
      ... which is pretty sad. I've been to Turkey twice as a tourist, and it was lovely.
      - boraoztunc 6y ago
        Most of the countries are lovely when you are a tourist. Sadly being local under a suppressed government, without solid democracy, justice and freedom of speech, with high taxes and very little services, corruption to the bone, destroyed education, political religion, shitty health care, no woman rights, or any equality at all, is not that lovely. You are in a thin line in Turkey, your life can change dramatically in a blink of an eye, and where you find yourself in really dangerous positions for very basic reasons.
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations. The only issue is COVID.
      - ur-whale 6y ago
        >It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations. The only issue is COVID. Not true. Since Erdogan took over and increasingly showed his true face (he started as a moderate muslim democratically elected leader and and basically turned into an Ayatollah since then) many folks in Europe (France, Germany) are very reluctant to travel there for vacation.
- ctafur 6y ago
  Also with gold. Some news headlines: "Turkey tightens regulation of jewellers after demand for gold soars", "Turkey's Erdogan repeats call for citizens to convert forex, gold holdings".
- nly 6y ago
  Could be heading to much higher central bank rates there soon then? Historical context: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/interest-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/interest-rate
  - TicklishTiger 6y ago
    Is that the interest rate at which the turkish central bank lends out money?
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    See, Erdogan has this unorthodox economical theory that if you lower the interest rates, the inflation will decrease and the Turkish lira will stabilize. The last central bank head was fired after increasing the rates. Erdogan consistently installed figureheads to high ranking positions to implement his theories and those who failed at it were swiftly removed. The previous Ministry of Treasury and Finance is married to his daughter, for example. The new governor of the central bank is a low grade academician who was paddling Erdogan’s theories in his column at a pro-Erdogan newspaper. Turkey is that close to become Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan at least has gorgeous horse statues.
- neilwilson 6y ago
  "The central bank has brought so much lira with its foreign currency reserve to try to maintain the price that it is almost running dry of any foreign currency, making the future look even bleaker." All it needs to do is stop doing that and make it clear to the market that it will no longer do that. That removes the patsy from the market and the currency will find its level. What you have to do is make lira scarce. And you do that by putting taxes up, stop paying interest on lira savings, and putting into administration any firm borrowing in foreign currency but earning in lira, and then refinancing them with lira loans. All of which is the precise opposite of the view suggested by the "Washington Consensus". Unfortunately Erdogan is a sound finance guy. Like Putin he thinks money is gold coins and that we're playing some D&D game. He needs to understand its about the flow of money, not the stock. People holding savings in Gold, Crypto or dollars is a benefit to the lira economy, since it means lira will flow more freely and rapidly increasing economic velocity.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I agree about one thing, the turkish central bank has kept inflation above 2% and real interest rates are roughly at 2%%, therefore it doesn't have to do anything anymore, it just has to wait for the market to do its own thing. Of course COVID caused massive problems that need a one time fix but Turkey is not in the position of the USA where excess corporate savings are dragging inflation down. If inflation is in the double digits, then people are simply not saving enough. The only thing the central bank needs to do to encourage saving is to keep the interest rate above inflation and it did. The Turkish government can also raise taxes to reign in inflation as you said. If inflation falls faster than the interest rates this would further encourage savings.
  - freddie_mercury 6y ago
    Using the phrase "Washington Consensus" just indicates you're out of touch and it makes it hard to take any argument you make seriously. The Washington Consensus was on life support by the year 2002 -- that's two decades ago -- and was completely dead by 2008 -- well over a decade ago. Making strawman arguments against things 15 years out of date doesn't make your argument look stronger.
- bilekas 6y ago
  16.19% inflation seems quite scary..
- imtringued 6y ago
  The interest rates set by the Turkish central bank are so high I honestly can't even comprehend why anyone would flee the Lira. You lose 17% to inflation but you also get back 19% from interest. The problem isn't the currency. The problem is that nobody wants to invest into a corrupt regime, people are fleeing Turkey, not the Lira. If Turkey was a trustworthy nation the US government could just purchase Turkish government bonds and solve the problem in an instant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - duman 6y ago
    As a Turkish citizen I can say that the real inflation is much higher than 17% but they are trying to make it look lower by changing the formula constantly so they don't have to raise government employee's salaries so much. I would say the real inflation is closer to 50%.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I didn't do much research so lets assume you are right but at the same time I hope you do not confuse asset prices with consumer prices. The PCI in the USA is correct and people still cry that it is manipulated. If the government is under reporting inflation that is a problem with the government. The obvious solution is to just report correct inflation. Once the government has reported correct inflation numbers the Turkish central bank must raise interest payments and that would mean at least 52% interest. The fundamental problem doesn't change though. People are still fleeing the influence of the Turkish government, not the currency. You need to trust the government and the government must eliminate internal corruption.
    - reducesuffering 6y ago
      50% per year? How and where are you storing your savings in this circumstance?
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    The value of the Lira has plummeted far far more than 19%. That's exactly why people are trying to get their money out of Turkey. ...which is exactly why they're turning to crypto. ...which is exactly why Turkey enacting currency export controls, like banning crypto.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  If people can't spend crypto directly, they'll just convert it to fiat and spend that instead. Why would anyone want to hold a depreciating fiat currency when even dogecoin increases in value? They should just stop fighting it and let it happen.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  But the article specifically mention payments, not investment. The way I understand it, you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies and store your money into Bitcoin instead of lira. However you can't say, "I will sell you this for X BTC", instead you have to sell it for Y lira (or euros, dollars, ... I suppose). How the buyer gets the money and what the seller does with it, including selling/buying cryptocurrencies is not part of the payment process, what matters is that there is no BTC on the bill, and presumably, the payment has to be traceable. How it relates to currency stability, I don't know, but it looks more like an anti money laundering / tax evasion law.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't depreciate the lira. Bitcoin is just meant to protect people when Erdogan depreciates the lira all by himself.
rozularen 6y ago
>In a statement explaining the reason behind the ban, the bank said these assets were "neither subject to any regulation and supervision mechanisms nor a central regulatory authority," among other security risks. That's exactly what they made for, duh
- gregoriol 6y ago
  Being made for something doesn't mean it's right or good though
Jonnax 6y ago
I remember reading on HN someone saying that China had banned trading and mining of crypto. Is that true? With a lot of crypto activity happening in China, would a crackdown there cause a fall in the market?
- angio 6y ago
  Considering lots of miners are from China, no what you've read is not completely true. What's true is that Chinese users have no easy/legal way to convert between crypto and fiat (other than mining, that is).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- adhoc32 6y ago
  Ah yes, China banning Bitcoin. This rumor has been circulating since 2013.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Just like China banned drugs, they even have death penalty, yet they probably export more drugs than any other country.
- Havoc 6y ago
  They banned coins with ICO type mechanisms since they had issues with scammy ICOs. Certainly not banned outright though. Parts of Chinese gov have actively invested cash into ICO-less projects Blockchain in general is also on their five year plan - though at a regional level not the national five year plan
- singularity2001 6y ago
  one district did ban crypto: Inner Mongolia
villgax 6y ago
Just use it as a value store, lest they start telling people what to spend money on like expensive paintings, jewellery, artefacts or NFTs...
varispeed 6y ago
Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away? As if people will think "oh it's banned, I guess I'll stop using it then". It's another weapon against the poor, as those people are the ones who feel consequences of such actions (good example is the war on drugs - poor people are in jail, rich bankers powder their noses as they please).
- hosteur 6y ago
  They know exactly what they are doing.
- kasperni 6y ago
  > Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away? But it probably would. Not completely, but few people would risk putting their life savings or any significant amount of money into something that was illegal.
  - argvargc 6y ago
    Unless it's their only option to be able to eat and stay alive.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    It's more practical than that. It means you cannot do the bank transfer to move your Liras to a crypto exchange. It definitely puts a meaningful barrier on buying crypto.
- africanboy 6y ago
  > Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away? because people don't like to go to jail > "oh it's banned, I guess I'll stop using it then" that's exactly what's gonna happen in Turkey though. But even if it wasn't Turkey which is ruled by an autocrat, a ban would steer away casual users that usually means the thing banned won't succeed in the long run. imagine if YouTube was banned in some country and the ban would stay even after public protests (admitting that public protests were allowed) YouTube usage would immediately drop to a number very close to zero.
1cvmask 6y ago
Payments is controlled by the banks. They see this as a threat to them.
- going_to_800 6y ago
  more countries will follow.
  - pelorat 6y ago
    More likely they will create their own centralized crypto similar to XRP.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Why? Every time cryptocurrencies get discussed here, the talking points are “crypto is trust-less” (incompatible with centralised), and “government can’t be trusted” (ditto). I can believe they’ll make a new currency, might even call it a “cryptolira” or whatever as branding, but there is exactly zero value in a government-run money Blockchain. Databases already exist, much lower energy cost, well studied, easy to audit and backup or rollback.
qwerty456127 6y ago
Good! Negative news about crypto are quite valuable nowadays. Now we can buy some at cheaper prices before it goes up again! UPDATE: It's fun watching how this comment votes keep fluctuating up and down :-)
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Cynical take: your comment's votes keep fluctuating because those who upvote agree, and those who downvote do it because the comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.
dudeinjapan 6y ago
The lira is a cryptocurrency in the sense that Sasquatch is a cryptobeast.
qwertox 6y ago
What are the consequences of being left out? For example, assume that the EU bans crypto, but the US is fine with it. The US will then continue developing solution with and for it, eventually building the next big thing, revolutionizing a market. Wouldn't that then place the EU in a position of a consumer until they can then catch up eventually, if that would even be possible?
- tsss 6y ago
  Turkey isn't in the EU and hopefully it never will be.
  - zaik 6y ago
    Hopefully Turkey joins the EU as by then it will have become a democratic and financially stable country.
    - CodeGlitch 6y ago
      > democratic and financially stable country ...glances at Greece
      - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
        Greece was never stable. It corrupted the auditors to lie about their financial situation and did nothing to improve it. I have both the feeling that we should have just dropped them to not have a weight on us, and I am empathic to the people who lived there (who were avoiding taxes as well, so that may not be the correct feeling I should have)
        patates 6y ago
        I'm a mixture of Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian, and am now a German citizen. I understand that it's impossible for me to be impartial in such discussions but it may help others in the discussion being more civil if you could say something to the tune of "there needs to be consequences" instead of saying that "we" should have dropped "them" not have a "weight" on "us".
pantelisk 6y ago
A government antagonizing its own citizens, what an odd mindset. The rule always is "Stifle innovation -> Get left behind."
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  It does not matter that much to the ruler. If they know that they will be fine then they will not care. OTOH they were elected by their population so statistically the population should be happy (this is the case in Poland, where the corrupted/hypocrite government is elected I think now three times in a row. This is pitiful to the population that is against them but at some point you have the country you have, or you leave)
sureklix 6y ago
A regulatory move in the same direction from the US wouldn't be that surprising, by the end of this year. Also an overlooked detail in the article: "Last week, Turkish authorities demanded user information from crypto trading platforms." Your BTC can be an asset that can be seized as part of a confiscation procedure –also in Turkish law... Seriously, not your keys not your money. DEX is under-appreciated in this ecosystem.
quickthrower2 6y ago
"Hit's Bitcoin Price" - I haven't witnessed it. To count as a hit you need minimum 20% drop in a day to cut through the noise of the volatility.
geniium 6y ago
So because of the Lira loosing it's value, they probably noticed a lot of people trying to get away and save themselves by buying some crypto. They are printing too much money for the rich and not helping/saving anyone and want to block all from getting away. That's probably not gonna work. Banning something has proven to never work in history.
- lxgr 6y ago
  > Banning something has proven to never work in history. By definition there are lots of banned things in every legal system, and I'd argue many of them for very good reasons. What's usually ineffective is banning something without providing a viable alternative.
  - Karsteski 6y ago
    What are some examples of banned items that have good reasons to be banned, in your opinion? (excluding explosives)
    - africanboy 6y ago
      smoking in public places. alcohol sold to minors. unlicensed doctors. guns. hard drugs. tanks as private vehicles. old polluting cars. the list is endless.
      - Karsteski 6y ago
        Hmm... I only agree that two of these should be illegal, which are alcohol sold to minors and tanks as private vehicles. Every other one has many aspects that I don't want a government involved in. But there's a lot to be written about that.
        qJ25D3vAzmfp 6y ago
        I guess you are American from the US. See, the problem is that you are savages, no offense. Of course smoking in public offices must be restricted by the government, which represent the voters and which in turn are elected to govern the State. The public cannot harm the health of the citizens that it has to protect by mandate. If you wanna smoke and harm yourself (I am a smoker myself) do it on private property, away from people that have to be there for reasons beyond their will (for example testify at a trial). Of course the government is the solely ultimate responsible of controlling (i.e. banning for some uses) hard drugs. Who would you put in charge of it? Of course it has to control guns, you can't let it control to private entities that profit from arms, it would be crazy! You would see kids that go to school and shoot other kids. Lucky us nobody in the World has ever thought of not strictly controlling guns! That would be a nightmare! Of course it is the only one who can ban diesel cars from cities and all of the above, you need laws to make it happen, the parliament writes and approves them, it's government's duty to enforce them. Government is not the enemy, government is the average of public opinion that becomes ruling class for a brief period of time depending on how many votes that coalition of ideas and (of course) interests can get from the citizens. The idea that the government is formed by aliens who come from another galaxy to ruin our otherwise beautiful peace and harmony is idiotic at best.
submeta 6y ago
It hasnt‘t to be banned officially to be banned effectively. - Here in Germany buying and owning crypto currencies is not illegal. But try to transfer only 20k Euros from your bank account to Kraken.com to buy some crypto assets. Then you might get a letter from your bank telling you they just cancelled your bank account, without telling you why. And they will refuse to explain anything. - Trying to get background infos from insiders on reddit, you‘ll hear that there are departments focusing on money laundering that get noticed whenever largish amounts are being transfered to crypto marketplaces. And that their prefered action is to quit an account instead of investigating details. In the end you realize that it‘s officially not forbidden, but that you rather don‘t touch these assets. This is the world we are in 2021. Officially these are measures trying to prevent money laundering and tax evasion, but eventually we wake up in a pretty darn restrictive world where you can‘t even transfer 10k euros from A to B without having to explain things. (If and when you get the chance to explain.)
- vm646m80v4 6y ago
  mind sharing which bank closed your account?
  - submeta 6y ago
    Fidor. But I hear this happens with other banks as well, regularly.
    - Graffur 6y ago
      So what happens to your money when a bank closes your account?
      - submeta 6y ago
        You name another bank account number, they will transfer your funds. ## Edit But banks cancelling your account is not something without consequences. Your credit rating may and propably will suffer.
o_p 6y ago
This shows how scared goverments are. And its a great way for the people to put pressure in their goverments, get your sh*t together or Im not trusting you with my money, when people deem bitcoin more stable than your local currency you know things are pretty bad.
manfredz 6y ago
The risks cited may have to do with the irreversibility of transactions and the lack of a deposit guarantee scheme when using cryptocurrency.These are valid concerns. This will however not help with their financial crisis, because the national issuing of money and collection of taxes is still in Turkish Lira. All payment by the government for goods and services is in Lira and needs to be converted to cryptocurrency and all cryptocurrency needs to be converted back to Lira to pay taxes.
bellyfullofbac 6y ago
Another article about cryptocurrencies, another comments thread where I shake my head at the Cryptozealots spouting "It's the solution to everything! Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!". I read something interesting about this behavior a while ago, if you've put money into crypto, of course you're going to be cheerleading it, nobody puts money in something expecting to lose it (oh wait... I can see the /r/wsb crowd raising their hands). And the more people you recruit into your ponzi scheme, the more profit you stand to gain, so consciously or not, you'll be trying to convince everyone to get in on this whole scheme. On the flipside, the skeptics are convinced it's a bubble that can implode any time and that the argumets "it will replace fiat and central banks!" are just silly delusions. And yes this is how I think. To be honest, I like money too, and I wished I had put some money in BTC. Someone's going to reply "Sour grapes!" under here, but still, I'm in the opinion, the rise of BTC is irrational. Then again, it can be argued that the current world economy is also running on galactic amounts of irrationality...
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  > if you've put money into crypto, of course replace crypto with $TSLA or $XXXX , people will try to justify their whatever decisions
- adhoc32 6y ago
  Resistance is futile peasant! You will be assimilated!
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Geri Ryan mascot incoming.
- sekai 6y ago
  Crypto clearly has a use in this scenario, Lira is plummeting.
  - yoavm 6y ago
    What so "clearly" about this? Is the Lira plummeting because it's a fiat currency? Are cryptocurrencies inherentially stable? They can't technically plummet? I don't get how crypto is "clearly" a solution here. Turkey has a financial issue, an economical crisis. The Lira isn't in troubles because people want to audit the database and they can't.
jonas_kgomo 6y ago
the idea here is that they will manage to bin exchanges like Binance, which recently launched Binance Turkey for that purpose.
bilekas 6y ago
I'm not sure how they're planning to enforce this though.. And as the article lays out, for sure all those potential fintech companies who would like to participate with crypto are not going to touch Turkey.. Seems like a counter productive action for a struggling economy.
csomar 6y ago
Four weeks ago: https://www.ft.com/content/86bef727-66dd-45cf-8ca6-85e846a276fd https://www.ft.com/content/86bef727-66dd-45cf-8ca6-85e846a27... Two weeks ago: https://www.dailysabah.com/business/finance/turkey-demands-user-information-from-cryptocurrency-platforms https://www.dailysabah.com/business/finance/turkey-demands-u... Two days ago: https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-gold/turkey-tightens-regulation-jewellers-after-demand-gold-soars https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-gold/turkey-tightens-regulation... This has nothing to do with Crypto, or Istanbul not understanding how Crypto markets work. Citizens of Turkey could exchange their Liras freely (cash) on the many small exchanges that exist. If I was there, I would know that these days are over; and capital/exchange controls are just a few days (weeks at most) of being implemented.
ur-whale 6y ago
The hole they're digging themselves into is getting deeper and deeper. Shame really, up until not long ago (before Erdogan) Turkey was a really nice place to visit and on its way up economically (and the food, yum). But now, they're headed straight back to the dark ages.
ur-whale 6y ago
Whatever naysayers may think, it looks like the "BTC as a store of value" case is pretty strong if even dictatorial govts are feeling the need to act against it (and Turkey isn't the first, see Venezuela and their various attempts at taking BTC down). "BTC, timeless store of value, as acknowledged by many dictators around the world" (tm)
- africanboy 6y ago
  this is quite incorrect. In Venezuela they haven't banned cryptos, they banned mining, especially if it's done on state funded electricity (for obvious reasons)/and because other cryptos compete with the state backed crypto, the Petro. Dictators love cryptos, especially bitcoins. If they didn't, criminals wouldn't use them.
  - crazypython 6y ago
    A currency linked to the price of oil would be a good idea for reducing volatility. That doesn't appear what the Petro is, though.
    - africanboy 6y ago
      that's what they advertise the Petro as > A total of 100 million Petros will be sold, with an initial value set at $60, based on the price of a barrel of Venezuelan crude in mid-January. Unfortunately we know that its purpose is raise cash because they can't repay their huge national debt. Which is why every dictator loves cryptos if they can control them as they control state currencies. The narrative can be shifted to we are all in this together, we live and die together. If they'd allow bitcoins for the general population (they love them only for themselves) some would become richer, but the country as a whole would not benefit a bit from it. And failing at that is something no politician can survive.
taylodl 6y ago
Such bans should be seen as a litmus test - this should be seen as a vote of no confidence on the part of the Turkish government in their own currency. Their currency should therefore plummet.
crazypython 6y ago
Download a Bitcoin full node. It only uses 5GB of disk space and a bit of RAM. It can be run over Tor. https://bitcoinknots.org/ https://bitcoinknots.org/ Custodial solutions like Coinbase can be banned. Full nodes are much harder to ban.
blondie9x 6y ago
Please can we regulate the carbon use of cryptocurrencies. This is getting out of control and governments are too slow. Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than the entire country of Argentina uses now. I do not want to hate on Bitcoin but climate change is getting out of control and there is little time left to reverse course. Last year with a global pandemic CO2 still rose by near record amounts. Bitcoin mining does have something to do with this. There is a connection. Please be open to the idea that we need to regulate the energy that Proof of Work mining cryptocurrencies use. I don't want to stop crypto. I just want us to use types that require less energy to mine. The planet is running out of time and this is FACT offsetting lots of progress on reducing emissions. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html Please don't downvote because you love crypto. I do too. I just want us to do better at preventing CO2 emissions from rising because of its mining.
almost_usual 6y ago
Good. Hopefully fiat conversions are banned everywhere. You have your pure Bitcoin economy now.
_heimdall 6y ago
What exactly do they expect a cryptocurrency to be used for if not payments?

323 points by imartin2k 6y ago

asah 6y ago

In other news, Turkey bans the number 0x86e821a162fb2819e5601abb2ce45be4e22d56cada7b8ac3d4b88d94daaa075e69ca375cdc94996a6d35bf55ef17151f

maeln 6y ago

For context: Turkey has been facing an several year long financial crisis with the Turkish Lira plummeting in value. Erdoğan has done nothing good to solve the crisis and is just firing the central bank administrator one after the other. The central bank has brought so much lira with its foreign currency reserve to try to maintain the price that it is almost running dry of any foreign currency, making the future look even bleaker. Because of this, the population has been rushing in putting their money in other currency/assets (like euro, gold, dollar, ...), which is making the situation worse, so the government has been actively trying to force people to keep their money in lira and even buy more lira if they can. So whatever they say about it, it is just another move in this direction. They want to prevent people from buying cryptocurrency and further risking depreciating the lira.

fisf 6y ago
Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.
- dandanua 6y ago
  Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments and substitute it with a system that has 7 tps cap in which the majority of coins belongs to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin).
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    So you don't think it's valuable to give people power over their incompetent government? 7tps on the base layer, you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, as a matter of fact, unless you're buying directly from a miner, the single transaction that you use to put it in your wallet actually corresponds to many other transactions elsewhere. > (supposedly of criminal origin) Big bold claims also require some proof. It's a decentralized protocol that can't be controlled by anyone. Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart?
    - dandanua 6y ago
      Here [1] is just a recent proof, the complete list of proofs is too big. I don't have much trust in my government either (Ukraine), but at least I know who they are. Also there are many other ways to store a value. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811111
      - rawtxapp 6y ago
        So an exchange get's hacked and that makes the origins of Bitcoin criminal? That's like if a bank got hacked and we said US dollar's origin was criminal, it doesn't make any sense. So if you don't trust them, why would you let them control your money, knowing them doesn't change much. Sure there are other ways and people are free to choose whichever one they prefer.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      > Do you really trust that your gov and the politicians/bankers have your best interest at heart? On a scale of 0-1, representing my estimate of P(no catastrophic economic/valuation failure in any given year), my trust is: {Government (German): 0.99, Government (UK): 0.85, Politicians (UK): 0.67, Bankers (collectively and internationally): 0.95, BTC: 0.15, Cryptocurrencies in general: 0.05}. > you're ignoring layer 2s and all other places where you can exchange crypto without it being recorded on the blockchain, Thus negating all the so-called benefits of the Blockchain, but without the benefits of a double-entry bookkeeping database audited by professionals and with public liability insurance.
  - fidelramos 6y ago
    Bitcoin was never supposed to be capped at 7 transactions per second, there are no technical reasons for that limit to exist anymore (it was added in 2010 as a temporary measure). Until (if) Bitcoin BTC decides to scale people can use the Bitcoin Cash [0] fork, which today has ~32 times more capacity, with a roadmap to continue scaling to universal usage while keeping fees low [1]. [0] https://bitcoincash.org/ https://bitcoincash.org/ [1] https://whybitcoincash.com/ https://whybitcoincash.com/
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - zapdrive 6y ago
      I don't know who is down voting you.. But you are right. That temporary limit has been abused by a faction of people (funded by banks) trying to control Bitcoin. That's why there's a surge of other coins that have removed the limitation. And one of the reasons why Bitcoin's dominance stands below 54% today.
      - fidelramos 6y ago
        There are a lot of BTC maximalists that see any alternative cryptocurrency as a scam, something which is definitely not true for many of them that have thousands of daily active users. I also feel that many BTC maximalists don't appreciate how Bitcoin Cash makes apparent the limitations of BTC, as it processes more transactions than BTC while keeping fees under 1 cent. txstreet [0] makes for a great visualization, check the statistics at the bottom. Personally I wish Bitcoin Cash didn't even need to exist, if BTC had scaled as it was originally planned by Satoshi Nakamoto (increasing the maximum block size before it got full). It was sad watching the adoption rate halt and then regress. Remember when BTC was becoming accepted by Steam, Microsoft, Dell, NewEgg and others back in 2015-2016? There is no doubt in my mind that if BTC had scaled properly almost every online shop and a lot of real-world shops would be accepting BTC by now (and incidentally BTC price would be even higher than it is today). [0] https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc https://txstreet.com/v/bch-btc
    - Graffur 6y ago
  - o_p 6y ago
    Poor finance guys, they have it so rough.
  - dangerlibrary 6y ago
    In fairness, "the majority of coins belong to unknown entities (supposedly of criminal origin)" is only a small rephrasing away from a description of Erdogan's government / political party [0]. And they are scarier for Turkish citizens than BTC, since he also aggressively punishes dissent and is a de-facto dictator [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Tur... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Authoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan#Auth...
    - m12k 6y ago
      Sure, but the fact that Turkey is becoming increasingly corrupt isn't really a good argument why it would be a good idea to take away the ability of all central banks to perform monetary policy to stabilize the economy.
      - o_p 6y ago
        >Sure these guys are clearly corrupt but that doesnt mean you shouldnt trust them with your money! Are you serious? Honest question.
        riffraff 6y ago
        he's saying "the fact that there are corrupt people in position X should not disqualify every other people in position X". There are bad surgeons, you should still probably want surgery if you're sick.
        o_p 6y ago
        But there are no many surgeons here, theres only one, one central bank. The inflation rate of Turkey is 15%, is anyone really telling people to just "trust the goverment"? Would you put your life savings in the Turkish Lira?
        SiempreViernes 6y ago
  - zeepzeep 6y ago
    You don't need an on-chain transaction for most things, as you can just instantly send BTC over Lightning Network, a second layer on the BTC blockchain. There's no speed limit, it's not on the chain, only nodes between you and the node you paying are involved. It's pretty neat.
    - zapdrive 6y ago
      Lol, you are not serious, are you? Oh, I get the sarcasm now. "Lightning Network" is only "6 months away", right? Wink wink!
      - VMG 6y ago
        there are a number of lightning wallets and a number of stores where you can pay using lightning transactions
        ajkdhcb2 6y ago
        I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. Waiting to contact wallet developers. It still doesn't work
        noch 6y ago
        > I have money stuck in limbo right now because of a failed LN transaction. The sats will return to you in 2 weeks. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-completing-the-puzzle-and-closing-the-channel-1466178980 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/technical/understanding-the...
      - zeepzeep 6y ago
        6 months away, what? I use it on a regular basis. Before covid I could even buy beer & burgers in my city. You can get coupons for everything, many online stores accept it.
        6y ago
  - Galanwe 6y ago
    Sure, if you're in a developed country with proper economical policy and access to an open banking system, your argument stands. But if you're in a country where your money have been dropping 10% per annum for the last 10 years, and where the concentration is anyway not that different from bitcoin, then things start to make more sense. Also, most people in this situation are not looking for a day to day transactional currency, but rather for a store of value to hedge against their falling native currency.
  - zoshi 6y ago
    Lightning and sidechains can handle thousands of TPS. Monero has adaptive block sizes, and is estimated to be able to perform 1500-2000TPS. Privacy is a feature, not a bug. I don't want people knowing how much money I have.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Sounds like you’re agreeing that BTC itself is not a solution to anything you care about?
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      If money is opaque then it also cannot be taxed or seized by judicial process. IMO this moves further towards an aristocratic society as possession goes from 90% → 100% to the law.
      - zoshi 6y ago
        Cash is opaque, yet governments have been funding themselves via taxation for thousands of years. If government charged a flat rate for its services, tax evasion would become impossible. One would simply show a proof of payment. This would only be ~$10k/year in US according to its current tax receipts and population. Property tax is also impossible to evade.
        iamben 6y ago
        Yes, but most people don't keep cash in a box under the bed - they keep it in a bank. This means my elderly mother's house doesn't get broken in to on a regular basis by people trying to take her life savings. Furthermore, her cash in a bank is protected by the government, and there are safeguards in place to help protect her from people trying to scam anything she has saved away from her. There are also mechanisms in place that when things 'go wrong' she's looked after. I'm not arguing for or against cryptocurrency, but there is some value to having a society where those that earn more help those that earn less by paying more taxes. I'm also pretty happy to pay for police, and firemen, and someone to pick up my bins, pave my roads, medical care etc. etc. All too often it seems the crypto argument is "I don't want to pay taxes, it's MY money" - yeah, it hurts, but the benefit of doing so is very real. The caveat, of course, is I say this living in a country with great free medical care, that's actually a pretty nice place to live, even if I really don't agree with some of our politicians. I appreciate not everyone lives in such a country.
  - chr1 6y ago
    Most governments on earth are of certainly known criminal origin. In the best case they are taking away 2-5% of your money every year by printing more. And in pathological cases, like Erdoghan, they take 30% and spend it on mega-palace or war with neighbours.
  - argvargc 6y ago
    This is very misleading. Cryptocurrencies developed on 10+ year old tech, that have stayed in that state throughout may indeed have very poor tps as you state. However, this is absolutely not the majority, as that base tech has iterated both at the base level, and in the application of layers. Typical these days are tps-handling in the 1k's - 10k's, and beyond. This will only keep improving as the technology progresses. Many systems capable of such throughout are heavily under-utilised, showing that crypto technology is generally ahead of those needs. That there have been hiccups have been more due to "brand loyalty", not tech deficiency, but even those technologies (Ethereum, mainly), are in the process of being upgraded. Given tps in the fiat world is somewhat of an inapplicable metric, as fiat transactions typically take in the order of days to complete - it's even more of a misleading comparison. Credit cards achieve 30k tps throughput only with the considerable caveats of reversibility and 30 day (or longer) finality. Crypto suffers from no such limitations. The majority of worth in the space is absolutely not of "criminal origin", demographics of crypto holders have been studied extensively and are readily available.
    - dash2 6y ago
      Brand loyalty is probably less important than network effects. NewTechCoin may be way better than Bitcoin but nobody's going to buy it until everyone else is buying it.
      - megameter 6y ago
        Well, that's what makes cryptocurrency a worthwhile market for speculation. Many folks look to the "market cap ranking" to see what's hot in the space, and going down the list and positioning yourself in a rank 400 coin - a good one that shows promise as a tech platform, a more efficient coin, a useful financial instrument or whatever - is one of the most straightforward ways to see 1000% returns, because even if it doesn't make it all the way up to the top 10, its valuation can grow faster than the market as a whole. (It can also get hit with huge drawdowns when the bear market hits. It's not all roses...) While it is the case that most things get priced relative to BTC, and this does have a network effect since you end up exiting to BTC and thus reenforce its price, it's increasingly common to see trading pairs for ETH, LTC, USDC/USDT. There is interest in getting more liquidity into the market and that's a large part of "DeFi". It's not that BTC is self-perpetuating lock-in, it's that they're all growing but everything else is running several years behind, so on a day to day basis BTC still holds relatively more of the market.
  - VMG 6y ago
    even if your silly "7tps" number was true, the answer would be YES
  - insert_coin 6y ago
    > Yeah, let's destroy financial systems of governments... Governments do that on their own they don't need any help from crypto.
  - asah 6y ago
    Artifacts of Bitcoin, not fundamental flaws in cryptocurrency.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    governments are pretty good at destroying financial systems as well
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    Look up Lightning Network.
    - usrusr 6y ago
      Lightning Network. Making Bitcoin payments practical next year since 2015. Banning crypto payments is like an airport refusing landing clearance to bicycles.
  - Siira 6y ago
    Do you live in a country with runaway inflation? If not, shut up.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    > let's destroy financial systems of governments I'm fine with that. Current monetary policy sucks.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    Those financial systems are destroying themselves. At the very least, BTC is a check on irresponsible fiscal behavior from central banks and governments. Manage your currency well or get vaporized.
  - dmos62 6y ago
    The quality of this comment is not what I'd like to see on this forum. Firstly, do you really have to participate in this derogatory, sarcastic tone? Secondly, transactions per second are cryptocurrency-specific, so your point (about BTC, I presume) is irrelevant. Thirdly, majority of cryptocurrencies belonging to unkowns is fine, what's your point? Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? Please, put some thought into your comments.
    - cableshaft 6y ago
      > Lastly, some of those unknowns are criminals: again, what's your point? I think their point is criminals are bad, so anything they use is also bad. Like guns, and drugs, and cars, and food, and beds, and houses, and air. All bad. We shouldn't use those things, and we should ban them at the earliest opportunity.
      - fvv 6y ago
        There are things very useful for criminals and not so much for common people , air doesn't belong go this category, ak-47 and bitcoin yes, are both vastly more useful to criminals that common people, in countries where governments is not oppressive amd against the people (in those countries good and bad behavior may be more or less inverted depending on situation)
        dmos62 6y ago
        You're arguing against privacy. It's weird to have to rehash this debate, ever since tracking and data collection has become a widely recognized problem. Would you like to see Tor shut down as well? Same argument could be made for "unlicensed" encryption. Which feature of cryptocurrencies would you say is useful to criminals, but not to not-criminals? I'd argue that there's no such feature.
    - xtracto 6y ago
      Imagine when he learns the currency that the majority of criminals use ... I agree with you. Comments like that have such a low intellectual effort that they are mainly noise. People in stable countries (us, uk, western Europe) don't understand the lack of confidence that citizens of underdeveloped countries have in their own government and financial institutions.
  - dogman144 6y ago
    * False on criminal origin majority, majority is non-criminal [1] * roughly false on unknown entities for two reasons. 1) btc is fairly easy to surveil [1], and see Chainalysis 2) logic here doesn’t make sense. Are you saying you know all owners of cash deposits, or just assuming someone does? A lot of folks keep cash “in a mattress.” Is that bad as well, as it’s a mirror of holding crypto? [1] https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance And https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoin_in_Illicit_Finance.pdf https://cryptoforinnovation.org/resources/Analysis_of_Bitcoi..., for the primary source.* * Is this source from a crypto lobbying group - yes. Is the author the deputy director and twice acting director of the CIA, so he probably knows bitcoin’s use for criminal payments more than the average critic - yes.
    - tgv 6y ago
      [1] doesn't say anything like that.
      - dogman144 6y ago
        Did you miss this... - me: criminal activity not a majority of btc use and severely overstated overall, and it enables surveillance, aka intelligence gathering for LEO/IC if properly utilized. - 30 year veteran, ex-deputy director of the CIA: “However, based on our research and discussions with industry experts, I have confidence in two conclusions: • The broad generalizations about the use of Bitcoin in illicit finance are significantly overstated. • The blockchain ledger on which Bitcoin transac- tions are recorded is an underutilized forensic tool that can be used more widely by law enforcement and the intelligence community to identify and dis- rupt illicit activities. Put simply, blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.” “ All of this together suggests a broader point—that the illicit use of cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in particular, as a share of total market activity, is cer- tainly not higher than it is in the traditional banking system and is most likely less” Quite literally does say something/anything like what I said.
        tgv 6y ago
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    You are talking about Bitcoin, I thought the article was about cryptocurrencies. (And the comment you replied to said 'Crypto')
  - wavepruner 6y ago
    Unfortunately the financial systems of governments are getting destroyed and we are powerless to stop it. Cryptocurrencies are not destroying government run financial systems. They are just an alternative. Bitcoin's 7 tps is a base-layer limitation. Layer 2 technologies like Lightning aim to address this issue. Lightning is functioning well and growing rapidly. I don't think it's fair to say most Bitcoin holders are unknown entities. The AML/KYC requirements for converting crypto into spendable fiat are strong. The criminal use of Bitcoin is a small compared to it's legitimate use as a store-of-value.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    Even if you take all decentralized currency fads failures, it's hard not to root a little bit for them compared to your own government ruining your life constantly.
- africanboy 6y ago
  or why they won't work to solve this kind of issues
- imtringued 6y ago
  Everyone else just uses dollars.
- me551ah 6y ago
  You do realize that in a war of Government Vs Crypto, the government will win. Governments can ban crypto but the opposite isn't true.
  - xvector 6y ago
    Governments cannot ban crypto. They may ban exchanges, but if crypto ever establishes a value of its own as a currency, the government cannot do anything. At least not without basically turning off the internet. Which is, well, not out of the question for Erdogan as he is a dictator.
    - valdiorn 6y ago
      They can put people in jail for using crypto, which is a strong enough deterrent that 99% of people won't do it.
      - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
        Yeah because it worked so well for piracy. /s
        abduhl 6y ago
        This sarcastic and snarky view is a bit shortsighted, isn’t it? Piracy worked because it was decentralized distribution. If the government goes after the gatekeepers in the same way they went after piracy they’re not just shutting down distribution - they’re taking the asset too. When someone takes over a coinbase or a binance they’re taking the coins. Not your keys, not your coins. Your response now will, of course, be “well that’s why you rotate your coins out into cold storage” which is sort of like me saying “you just convert your lira to dollars at the end of the day when you’re done buying food and water.”
        thehappypm 6y ago
        It's a good comparison but the value here is orders of magnitude off. A pirate might download a few hundreds of dollars' worth of music and movies. Crypto can be millions of dollars in a transaction. Government goes after the whales, the whole ecosystem dies.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  or you can transact in USD. which is what the world does for oil, for example.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  That's a bizarre statement. Corruption is causing the devaluation of the currency in this case. The devaluation is already a method for hurting the ones responsible. I'd think that the ones that are corrupt would be able to store their currency in crypto, while the rest of the citizens are not. Crypto doesn't help anything. It could help some who know how to use it ( and will not forget their password)
- cryptica 6y ago
  I was also thinking that this is the perfect excuse for them to dump their fiat monetary system and let their citizens adopt crypto... I'm pretty sure all other countries' fiat monetary systems will also fail soon, Turkey has a unique opportunity to allow their citizens to amass large amounts of crypto ahead of every other country... And yet they choose to pass up on that opportunity due to a fear of the unknown. Imagine if the Turkish government had allowed their citizens to use DogeCoin a few days ago before the big pump, they'd already be out of their recession ;p
  - webinvest 6y ago
    How do you think they will fund their government budget deficits with crypto? Rhetorical question — they can’t!
- loceng 6y ago
  Easy counterargument: Policy like the Magnitsky Act can't be implemented as a pre-physical confrontation approach against known bad actors. If Bitcoin is global currency system then there's no chance of using such a mechanism-tool-lever, however with current system of governments it can be used; Biden's recent financial acids actions against Putin's actions against the US is another example of this.
vbezhenar 6y ago
The first thing would be to ban free exchange of foreign currencies. But that would be hard to do in the tourist country.
- tsss 6y ago
  After turning the country into a dictatorship, regularly arresting and torturing foreign tourists, and now corona, I doubt that there are any tourists left at all.
  - nly 6y ago
    ... which is pretty sad. I've been to Turkey twice as a tourist, and it was lovely.
    - boraoztunc 6y ago
      Most of the countries are lovely when you are a tourist. Sadly being local under a suppressed government, without solid democracy, justice and freedom of speech, with high taxes and very little services, corruption to the bone, destroyed education, political religion, shitty health care, no woman rights, or any equality at all, is not that lovely. You are in a thin line in Turkey, your life can change dramatically in a blink of an eye, and where you find yourself in really dangerous positions for very basic reasons.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations. The only issue is COVID.
    - ur-whale 6y ago
      >It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations. The only issue is COVID. Not true. Since Erdogan took over and increasingly showed his true face (he started as a moderate muslim democratically elected leader and and basically turned into an Ayatollah since then) many folks in Europe (France, Germany) are very reluctant to travel there for vacation.
ctafur 6y ago
Also with gold. Some news headlines: "Turkey tightens regulation of jewellers after demand for gold soars", "Turkey's Erdogan repeats call for citizens to convert forex, gold holdings".
nly 6y ago
Could be heading to much higher central bank rates there soon then? Historical context: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/interest-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/interest-rate
- TicklishTiger 6y ago
  Is that the interest rate at which the turkish central bank lends out money?
- mrtksn 6y ago
  See, Erdogan has this unorthodox economical theory that if you lower the interest rates, the inflation will decrease and the Turkish lira will stabilize. The last central bank head was fired after increasing the rates. Erdogan consistently installed figureheads to high ranking positions to implement his theories and those who failed at it were swiftly removed. The previous Ministry of Treasury and Finance is married to his daughter, for example. The new governor of the central bank is a low grade academician who was paddling Erdogan’s theories in his column at a pro-Erdogan newspaper. Turkey is that close to become Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan at least has gorgeous horse statues.
neilwilson 6y ago
"The central bank has brought so much lira with its foreign currency reserve to try to maintain the price that it is almost running dry of any foreign currency, making the future look even bleaker." All it needs to do is stop doing that and make it clear to the market that it will no longer do that. That removes the patsy from the market and the currency will find its level. What you have to do is make lira scarce. And you do that by putting taxes up, stop paying interest on lira savings, and putting into administration any firm borrowing in foreign currency but earning in lira, and then refinancing them with lira loans. All of which is the precise opposite of the view suggested by the "Washington Consensus". Unfortunately Erdogan is a sound finance guy. Like Putin he thinks money is gold coins and that we're playing some D&D game. He needs to understand its about the flow of money, not the stock. People holding savings in Gold, Crypto or dollars is a benefit to the lira economy, since it means lira will flow more freely and rapidly increasing economic velocity.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I agree about one thing, the turkish central bank has kept inflation above 2% and real interest rates are roughly at 2%%, therefore it doesn't have to do anything anymore, it just has to wait for the market to do its own thing. Of course COVID caused massive problems that need a one time fix but Turkey is not in the position of the USA where excess corporate savings are dragging inflation down. If inflation is in the double digits, then people are simply not saving enough. The only thing the central bank needs to do to encourage saving is to keep the interest rate above inflation and it did. The Turkish government can also raise taxes to reign in inflation as you said. If inflation falls faster than the interest rates this would further encourage savings.
- freddie_mercury 6y ago
  Using the phrase "Washington Consensus" just indicates you're out of touch and it makes it hard to take any argument you make seriously. The Washington Consensus was on life support by the year 2002 -- that's two decades ago -- and was completely dead by 2008 -- well over a decade ago. Making strawman arguments against things 15 years out of date doesn't make your argument look stronger.
bilekas 6y ago
16.19% inflation seems quite scary..
imtringued 6y ago
The interest rates set by the Turkish central bank are so high I honestly can't even comprehend why anyone would flee the Lira. You lose 17% to inflation but you also get back 19% from interest. The problem isn't the currency. The problem is that nobody wants to invest into a corrupt regime, people are fleeing Turkey, not the Lira. If Turkey was a trustworthy nation the US government could just purchase Turkish government bonds and solve the problem in an instant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- duman 6y ago
  As a Turkish citizen I can say that the real inflation is much higher than 17% but they are trying to make it look lower by changing the formula constantly so they don't have to raise government employee's salaries so much. I would say the real inflation is closer to 50%.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I didn't do much research so lets assume you are right but at the same time I hope you do not confuse asset prices with consumer prices. The PCI in the USA is correct and people still cry that it is manipulated. If the government is under reporting inflation that is a problem with the government. The obvious solution is to just report correct inflation. Once the government has reported correct inflation numbers the Turkish central bank must raise interest payments and that would mean at least 52% interest. The fundamental problem doesn't change though. People are still fleeing the influence of the Turkish government, not the currency. You need to trust the government and the government must eliminate internal corruption.
  - reducesuffering 6y ago
    50% per year? How and where are you storing your savings in this circumstance?
- koheripbal 6y ago
  The value of the Lira has plummeted far far more than 19%. That's exactly why people are trying to get their money out of Turkey. ...which is exactly why they're turning to crypto. ...which is exactly why Turkey enacting currency export controls, like banning crypto.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
If people can't spend crypto directly, they'll just convert it to fiat and spend that instead. Why would anyone want to hold a depreciating fiat currency when even dogecoin increases in value? They should just stop fighting it and let it happen.
GuB-42 6y ago
But the article specifically mention payments, not investment. The way I understand it, you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies and store your money into Bitcoin instead of lira. However you can't say, "I will sell you this for X BTC", instead you have to sell it for Y lira (or euros, dollars, ... I suppose). How the buyer gets the money and what the seller does with it, including selling/buying cryptocurrencies is not part of the payment process, what matters is that there is no BTC on the bill, and presumably, the payment has to be traceable. How it relates to currency stability, I don't know, but it looks more like an anti money laundering / tax evasion law.
cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
Bitcoin doesn't depreciate the lira. Bitcoin is just meant to protect people when Erdogan depreciates the lira all by himself.

rozularen 6y ago

>In a statement explaining the reason behind the ban, the bank said these assets were "neither subject to any regulation and supervision mechanisms nor a central regulatory authority," among other security risks. That's exactly what they made for, duh

gregoriol 6y ago
Being made for something doesn't mean it's right or good though

Jonnax 6y ago

I remember reading on HN someone saying that China had banned trading and mining of crypto. Is that true? With a lot of crypto activity happening in China, would a crackdown there cause a fall in the market?

angio 6y ago
Considering lots of miners are from China, no what you've read is not completely true. What's true is that Chinese users have no easy/legal way to convert between crypto and fiat (other than mining, that is).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
adhoc32 6y ago
Ah yes, China banning Bitcoin. This rumor has been circulating since 2013.
varispeed 6y ago
Just like China banned drugs, they even have death penalty, yet they probably export more drugs than any other country.
Havoc 6y ago
They banned coins with ICO type mechanisms since they had issues with scammy ICOs. Certainly not banned outright though. Parts of Chinese gov have actively invested cash into ICO-less projects Blockchain in general is also on their five year plan - though at a regional level not the national five year plan
singularity2001 6y ago
one district did ban crypto: Inner Mongolia

villgax 6y ago

Just use it as a value store, lest they start telling people what to spend money on like expensive paintings, jewellery, artefacts or NFTs...

varispeed 6y ago

Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away? As if people will think "oh it's banned, I guess I'll stop using it then". It's another weapon against the poor, as those people are the ones who feel consequences of such actions (good example is the war on drugs - poor people are in jail, rich bankers powder their noses as they please).

hosteur 6y ago
They know exactly what they are doing.
kasperni 6y ago
> Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away? But it probably would. Not completely, but few people would risk putting their life savings or any significant amount of money into something that was illegal.
- argvargc 6y ago
  Unless it's their only option to be able to eat and stay alive.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  It's more practical than that. It means you cannot do the bank transfer to move your Liras to a crypto exchange. It definitely puts a meaningful barrier on buying crypto.
africanboy 6y ago
> Why politicians still think that if they ban something then it will magically go away? because people don't like to go to jail > "oh it's banned, I guess I'll stop using it then" that's exactly what's gonna happen in Turkey though. But even if it wasn't Turkey which is ruled by an autocrat, a ban would steer away casual users that usually means the thing banned won't succeed in the long run. imagine if YouTube was banned in some country and the ban would stay even after public protests (admitting that public protests were allowed) YouTube usage would immediately drop to a number very close to zero.

1cvmask 6y ago

Payments is controlled by the banks. They see this as a threat to them.

going_to_800 6y ago
more countries will follow.
- pelorat 6y ago
  More likely they will create their own centralized crypto similar to XRP.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Why? Every time cryptocurrencies get discussed here, the talking points are “crypto is trust-less” (incompatible with centralised), and “government can’t be trusted” (ditto). I can believe they’ll make a new currency, might even call it a “cryptolira” or whatever as branding, but there is exactly zero value in a government-run money Blockchain. Databases already exist, much lower energy cost, well studied, easy to audit and backup or rollback.

qwerty456127 6y ago

Good! Negative news about crypto are quite valuable nowadays. Now we can buy some at cheaper prices before it goes up again! UPDATE: It's fun watching how this comment votes keep fluctuating up and down :-)

PartiallyTyped 6y ago
Cynical take: your comment's votes keep fluctuating because those who upvote agree, and those who downvote do it because the comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.

dudeinjapan 6y ago

The lira is a cryptocurrency in the sense that Sasquatch is a cryptobeast.

qwertox 6y ago

What are the consequences of being left out? For example, assume that the EU bans crypto, but the US is fine with it. The US will then continue developing solution with and for it, eventually building the next big thing, revolutionizing a market. Wouldn't that then place the EU in a position of a consumer until they can then catch up eventually, if that would even be possible?

tsss 6y ago
Turkey isn't in the EU and hopefully it never will be.
- zaik 6y ago
  Hopefully Turkey joins the EU as by then it will have become a democratic and financially stable country.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    > democratic and financially stable country ...glances at Greece
    - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
      Greece was never stable. It corrupted the auditors to lie about their financial situation and did nothing to improve it. I have both the feeling that we should have just dropped them to not have a weight on us, and I am empathic to the people who lived there (who were avoiding taxes as well, so that may not be the correct feeling I should have)
      - patates 6y ago
        I'm a mixture of Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian, and am now a German citizen. I understand that it's impossible for me to be impartial in such discussions but it may help others in the discussion being more civil if you could say something to the tune of "there needs to be consequences" instead of saying that "we" should have dropped "them" not have a "weight" on "us".

pantelisk 6y ago

A government antagonizing its own citizens, what an odd mindset. The rule always is "Stifle innovation -> Get left behind."

BrandoElFollito 6y ago
It does not matter that much to the ruler. If they know that they will be fine then they will not care. OTOH they were elected by their population so statistically the population should be happy (this is the case in Poland, where the corrupted/hypocrite government is elected I think now three times in a row. This is pitiful to the population that is against them but at some point you have the country you have, or you leave)

sureklix 6y ago

A regulatory move in the same direction from the US wouldn't be that surprising, by the end of this year. Also an overlooked detail in the article: "Last week, Turkish authorities demanded user information from crypto trading platforms." Your BTC can be an asset that can be seized as part of a confiscation procedure –also in Turkish law... Seriously, not your keys not your money. DEX is under-appreciated in this ecosystem.

quickthrower2 6y ago

"Hit's Bitcoin Price" - I haven't witnessed it. To count as a hit you need minimum 20% drop in a day to cut through the noise of the volatility.

geniium 6y ago

So because of the Lira loosing it's value, they probably noticed a lot of people trying to get away and save themselves by buying some crypto. They are printing too much money for the rich and not helping/saving anyone and want to block all from getting away. That's probably not gonna work. Banning something has proven to never work in history.

lxgr 6y ago
> Banning something has proven to never work in history. By definition there are lots of banned things in every legal system, and I'd argue many of them for very good reasons. What's usually ineffective is banning something without providing a viable alternative.
- Karsteski 6y ago
  What are some examples of banned items that have good reasons to be banned, in your opinion? (excluding explosives)
  - africanboy 6y ago
    smoking in public places. alcohol sold to minors. unlicensed doctors. guns. hard drugs. tanks as private vehicles. old polluting cars. the list is endless.
    - Karsteski 6y ago
      Hmm... I only agree that two of these should be illegal, which are alcohol sold to minors and tanks as private vehicles. Every other one has many aspects that I don't want a government involved in. But there's a lot to be written about that.
      - qJ25D3vAzmfp 6y ago
        I guess you are American from the US. See, the problem is that you are savages, no offense. Of course smoking in public offices must be restricted by the government, which represent the voters and which in turn are elected to govern the State. The public cannot harm the health of the citizens that it has to protect by mandate. If you wanna smoke and harm yourself (I am a smoker myself) do it on private property, away from people that have to be there for reasons beyond their will (for example testify at a trial). Of course the government is the solely ultimate responsible of controlling (i.e. banning for some uses) hard drugs. Who would you put in charge of it? Of course it has to control guns, you can't let it control to private entities that profit from arms, it would be crazy! You would see kids that go to school and shoot other kids. Lucky us nobody in the World has ever thought of not strictly controlling guns! That would be a nightmare! Of course it is the only one who can ban diesel cars from cities and all of the above, you need laws to make it happen, the parliament writes and approves them, it's government's duty to enforce them. Government is not the enemy, government is the average of public opinion that becomes ruling class for a brief period of time depending on how many votes that coalition of ideas and (of course) interests can get from the citizens. The idea that the government is formed by aliens who come from another galaxy to ruin our otherwise beautiful peace and harmony is idiotic at best.

submeta 6y ago

It hasnt‘t to be banned officially to be banned effectively. - Here in Germany buying and owning crypto currencies is not illegal. But try to transfer only 20k Euros from your bank account to Kraken.com to buy some crypto assets. Then you might get a letter from your bank telling you they just cancelled your bank account, without telling you why. And they will refuse to explain anything. - Trying to get background infos from insiders on reddit, you‘ll hear that there are departments focusing on money laundering that get noticed whenever largish amounts are being transfered to crypto marketplaces. And that their prefered action is to quit an account instead of investigating details. In the end you realize that it‘s officially not forbidden, but that you rather don‘t touch these assets. This is the world we are in 2021. Officially these are measures trying to prevent money laundering and tax evasion, but eventually we wake up in a pretty darn restrictive world where you can‘t even transfer 10k euros from A to B without having to explain things. (If and when you get the chance to explain.)

vm646m80v4 6y ago
mind sharing which bank closed your account?
- submeta 6y ago
  Fidor. But I hear this happens with other banks as well, regularly.
  - Graffur 6y ago
    So what happens to your money when a bank closes your account?
    - submeta 6y ago
      You name another bank account number, they will transfer your funds. ## Edit But banks cancelling your account is not something without consequences. Your credit rating may and propably will suffer.

o_p 6y ago

This shows how scared goverments are. And its a great way for the people to put pressure in their goverments, get your sh*t together or Im not trusting you with my money, when people deem bitcoin more stable than your local currency you know things are pretty bad.

manfredz 6y ago

The risks cited may have to do with the irreversibility of transactions and the lack of a deposit guarantee scheme when using cryptocurrency.These are valid concerns. This will however not help with their financial crisis, because the national issuing of money and collection of taxes is still in Turkish Lira. All payment by the government for goods and services is in Lira and needs to be converted to cryptocurrency and all cryptocurrency needs to be converted back to Lira to pay taxes.

bellyfullofbac 6y ago

Another article about cryptocurrencies, another comments thread where I shake my head at the Cryptozealots spouting "It's the solution to everything! Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!". I read something interesting about this behavior a while ago, if you've put money into crypto, of course you're going to be cheerleading it, nobody puts money in something expecting to lose it (oh wait... I can see the /r/wsb crowd raising their hands). And the more people you recruit into your ponzi scheme, the more profit you stand to gain, so consciously or not, you'll be trying to convince everyone to get in on this whole scheme. On the flipside, the skeptics are convinced it's a bubble that can implode any time and that the argumets "it will replace fiat and central banks!" are just silly delusions. And yes this is how I think. To be honest, I like money too, and I wished I had put some money in BTC. Someone's going to reply "Sour grapes!" under here, but still, I'm in the opinion, the rise of BTC is irrational. Then again, it can be argued that the current world economy is also running on galactic amounts of irrationality...

cblconfederate 6y ago
> if you've put money into crypto, of course replace crypto with $TSLA or $XXXX , people will try to justify their whatever decisions
adhoc32 6y ago
Resistance is futile peasant! You will be assimilated!
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Geri Ryan mascot incoming.
sekai 6y ago
Crypto clearly has a use in this scenario, Lira is plummeting.
- yoavm 6y ago
  What so "clearly" about this? Is the Lira plummeting because it's a fiat currency? Are cryptocurrencies inherentially stable? They can't technically plummet? I don't get how crypto is "clearly" a solution here. Turkey has a financial issue, an economical crisis. The Lira isn't in troubles because people want to audit the database and they can't.

jonas_kgomo 6y ago

the idea here is that they will manage to bin exchanges like Binance, which recently launched Binance Turkey for that purpose.

bilekas 6y ago

I'm not sure how they're planning to enforce this though.. And as the article lays out, for sure all those potential fintech companies who would like to participate with crypto are not going to touch Turkey.. Seems like a counter productive action for a struggling economy.

csomar 6y ago

Four weeks ago: https://www.ft.com/content/86bef727-66dd-45cf-8ca6-85e846a276fd https://www.ft.com/content/86bef727-66dd-45cf-8ca6-85e846a27... Two weeks ago: https://www.dailysabah.com/business/finance/turkey-demands-user-information-from-cryptocurrency-platforms https://www.dailysabah.com/business/finance/turkey-demands-u... Two days ago: https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-gold/turkey-tightens-regulation-jewellers-after-demand-gold-soars https://ahvalnews.com/turkey-gold/turkey-tightens-regulation... This has nothing to do with Crypto, or Istanbul not understanding how Crypto markets work. Citizens of Turkey could exchange their Liras freely (cash) on the many small exchanges that exist. If I was there, I would know that these days are over; and capital/exchange controls are just a few days (weeks at most) of being implemented.

ur-whale 6y ago

The hole they're digging themselves into is getting deeper and deeper. Shame really, up until not long ago (before Erdogan) Turkey was a really nice place to visit and on its way up economically (and the food, yum). But now, they're headed straight back to the dark ages.

ur-whale 6y ago

Whatever naysayers may think, it looks like the "BTC as a store of value" case is pretty strong if even dictatorial govts are feeling the need to act against it (and Turkey isn't the first, see Venezuela and their various attempts at taking BTC down). "BTC, timeless store of value, as acknowledged by many dictators around the world" (tm)

africanboy 6y ago
this is quite incorrect. In Venezuela they haven't banned cryptos, they banned mining, especially if it's done on state funded electricity (for obvious reasons)/and because other cryptos compete with the state backed crypto, the Petro. Dictators love cryptos, especially bitcoins. If they didn't, criminals wouldn't use them.
- crazypython 6y ago
  A currency linked to the price of oil would be a good idea for reducing volatility. That doesn't appear what the Petro is, though.
  - africanboy 6y ago
    that's what they advertise the Petro as > A total of 100 million Petros will be sold, with an initial value set at $60, based on the price of a barrel of Venezuelan crude in mid-January. Unfortunately we know that its purpose is raise cash because they can't repay their huge national debt. Which is why every dictator loves cryptos if they can control them as they control state currencies. The narrative can be shifted to we are all in this together, we live and die together. If they'd allow bitcoins for the general population (they love them only for themselves) some would become richer, but the country as a whole would not benefit a bit from it. And failing at that is something no politician can survive.

taylodl 6y ago

Such bans should be seen as a litmus test - this should be seen as a vote of no confidence on the part of the Turkish government in their own currency. Their currency should therefore plummet.

crazypython 6y ago

Download a Bitcoin full node. It only uses 5GB of disk space and a bit of RAM. It can be run over Tor. https://bitcoinknots.org/ https://bitcoinknots.org/ Custodial solutions like Coinbase can be banned. Full nodes are much harder to ban.

blondie9x 6y ago

Please can we regulate the carbon use of cryptocurrencies. This is getting out of control and governments are too slow. Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than the entire country of Argentina uses now. I do not want to hate on Bitcoin but climate change is getting out of control and there is little time left to reverse course. Last year with a global pandemic CO2 still rose by near record amounts. Bitcoin mining does have something to do with this. There is a connection. Please be open to the idea that we need to regulate the energy that Proof of Work mining cryptocurrencies use. I don't want to stop crypto. I just want us to use types that require less energy to mine. The planet is running out of time and this is FACT offsetting lots of progress on reducing emissions. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html Please don't downvote because you love crypto. I do too. I just want us to do better at preventing CO2 emissions from rising because of its mining.

almost_usual 6y ago

Good. Hopefully fiat conversions are banned everywhere. You have your pure Bitcoin economy now.

_heimdall 6y ago

What exactly do they expect a cryptocurrency to be used for if not payments?