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Turkey Bans Cryptocurrency Payments
- liquidify 5y agoSeems like a bad idea unless they offer some other peer to peer alternative for digital payments. This is clearly something that people want. I can imagine they will be reversing this decision at some point.
- oneplane 5y agoThey aren't doing it for 'the people' obviously. Once you gravitate towards an autocracy it matters a whole lot less why you do things, or who it is supposed to be for. On the other hand, banning things in the digital realm is rather difficult. Unless you go completely offline in practical terms, there is no real way to stop this type of communication.
- LegitShady 5y ago>On the other hand, banning things in the digital realm is rather difficult. Unless you go completely offline in practical terms, there is no real way to stop this type of communication. Alternately all of the transaction history is public and recorded. Once you catch someone you will be able to trace all or their activity semi automatically, and you only need to make a few big examples to teach people what is more risky -turkish jail for financial crimes or not using crypto. The us or China could crash the value of these crypto currencies in a single act. It's a very fragile system.
- LegitShady 5y agoI don't think so at all. Crypto is an economy run by whoever can build the most computers and that is China. Unregulated crypto is a giant bubble that damages countries abilities to regulate their own economy. Crypto isn't required for peer to peer electronic payments. That's not an argument for crypto it's an argument for e-transfer.
- lupire 5y agoNot all governments are trusted stewards. Some (like Turkeyst Erdogan) are warlord tyrants.
- LegitShady 5y agoIt doesn't change how the world works in regards to crypto. I don't like my government does that give me the legal right to do financial crimes? Will my righteousness help me in court?
- Zamicol 5y agoHow can you send payment over the internet without cryptography? Also, PoW != Cryptocurrency.
- LegitShady 5y agoThey didn't ban cryptography they banned cryptocurrencies
- _trampeltier 5y agoIn todays world countrys can't just regulate there own economy. That time us gone. Already before Corona every country printet a lot of money. Now every counrty prints money really like nuts.
- LegitShady 5y agoI think this is a naive take. Crypto currency is a token of exchange. Of course it can be regulated just like everything else. All you need to do is make examples of people who get caught.
- joelbluminator 5y agoYou would imagine this is what people want. I'd generally think people want to leave in free, secular, uncorrupt societies. Turns out that's not always the case.
- xwolfi 5y agoOrder is often way above freedom, securalism and corruption. You first want your daughter not to be raped each time she goes out and THEN, maybe, make sure politicians don't take kickbacks from public tenders. And it's not easy to go out of the loop corrupt dictatorship -> poor population -> corrupt police -> easy crime -> order needed -> corrupt dictatorship supported
- iampims 5y agoI thought this was the kind of government actions that Cryptocurrencies were supposed to absolve us from.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoCapability does not confer legality. Why would crypto force a government’s hand? They’re the ones with the laws and the monopoly on force. Consider what would happen if you sent fiat to a group recognized as a supporter of terrorism. You can do so, but it is not legal. What remains to be seen is if Turkey is an outlier, or the start. Monetary and currency policy is power, and crypto's value store is fragile, teetering on the whims of nation states.
- codingslave 5y agoLegislating their country into irrelevance
- GrumpyNl 5y agoVenezuela is trying it, doesnt work out that good.
- _trampeltier 5y agoThe turkish lira lost A LOT of value the last years, so I guess it's more to stop the people to flee from turkish lira.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nyolfen 5y agothis is one of the best use cases for crypto -- as a popular disciplining measure against governments that devalue their currency. see venezuela, nigeria, argentina... my sympathies are solely with the ordinary people who would otherwise watch their savings evaporate.
- duxup 5y agoI'm concerned about the model of people in poor counties dabbling in speculation in a system with irreversible transactions protections ... seems like it just as easily could go horribly wrong.
- nyolfen 5y agothis argument is more than a little patronizing when the alternative is this: https://i.imgur.com/lSfdTfK.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/lSfdTfK.jpeg
- duxup 5y agoThe alternative is speculating and predicting that, and being wrong sometimes.
- kemonocode 5y agoAny port in a storm when you live in a country with zero trust towards your own legal tender.
- doggosphere 5y agoIronically they risk more by doing nothing.
- uncomputation 5y agoI still cannot understand how crypto advocates genuinely think governments will roll over and let cryptocurrencies take away one of the primary powers of the state: minting and control of the flow, supply, and thus value of the currency. Ironically, to me, crypto seems to already assume the utopia it aims to usher in (namely, the one in which decentralized currencies are legal and valid). Also the idea that we can bully or criticize governments into adopting crypto by calling the ones who don’t “tyrannical” is especially naive and hilarious to me. By virtue, the truly tyrannical do not care about being called such.
- clankyclanker 5y agoHow do they plan on enforcing this? Unless their enforcement strategy is “force international companies to do cryptocurrency business in other countries.”
- riffraff 5y ago> [the regulations] prohibit companies that handle payments and electronic fund transfers from processing transactions involving cryptocurrency platforms [...] > [the chief executive] officer of BtcTurk, one of Turkey’s largest cryptocurrency platforms in terms of number of clients [said] “This mainly targets electronic payment systems.”
- okareaman 5y agoI wonder if some bitcoin whales are fronts for oil companies that are buying up bitcoin as a way of increasing demand for electricity and thus maintain demand for fossil fuel power generation. Renewable energy is getting cheaper over time, which would tend to drive out fossil fuel electrical generation, so if demand is dramatically increased due to crypto currency mining then demand for fossil fuel plants to stay operating will be maintained.
- wishysgb 5y agointeresting theory but sounds more like a conspiracy theory.
- okareaman 5y agoYes, a theory. Maybe I'll get an idea about how to find evidence and test it.
- cowpig 5y agoMy first reaction to this was "most crypto mining is done on hydro power because it's cheaper," but then I remembered that demand for power is currently outpacing the growing supply of renewable energy, so many this theory isn't all that crazy. In any case, given that I have yet to see a single non-criminal, non-speculation use for crypto at any real scale, I find ideas that would normally sound a lot like conspiracy theories much more plausible.
- csomar 5y agoYou'll need oil companies and OPAC countries to plan such a thing. A single (or few) players don't have the financial means for such a conspiracy.
- imtringued 5y agoThey might be hyping it up, but I doubt that they are the driving force.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago> The Turkish central bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies as a form of payment from April 30, saying the level of anonymity behind the digital tokens brings the risk of “non-recoverable” losses. > A lack of regulation, supervision mechanisms or central regulatory authority, combined with the potential for criminal activity and the high volatility of their market value, mean digital tokens entail “significant risks,” the central bank said in a statement on its website. How is this different from any other raw material that one can use to purchase goods? If a store allow it, one can buy goods in gold, silver, chairs, or Magic: The Gathering cards, which come with all the same problems.
- boromi 5y agoRay Dalio totally right on this
- merricksb 5y agoEarlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26831162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26831162
- Causality1 5y agoI love the concept of Bitcoin but I can't help but notice that its effects on the world seem to be more negative than positive. Wasting power, supporting immoral enterprises, malware mining attacks, and the decimation of the GPU market. Like yay eff the government but I want to be able to buy a damn graphics card.
- xwolfi 5y agoAs if we organized in societies, countries, government, police forces and prisons for a reason 30 000 years ago.
- bitcoinmonger 5y agoIt's good to see a country finally take a firm stance against global warming.
- imtringued 5y agoThe fundamental problem is that Erdogan has no clue about economics. He is envious of US and EU countries because they have both low interest rates and low inflation. Interest rates can be controlled directly by politicians, so he thinks that by controlling one variable the other one will follow. He got it exactly backwards, interest rates are primarily determined by the market and the central bank is trying to follow the market rate, which theoretically is unknowable but usually inflation + some is good enough. This is why central bank independence is considered the primary predictor of low inflation, because the central bank can actually do its job. You have to look at the total investment rate and the total savings rate. Over the long term they should not drift apart and for low inflation you want the savings rate to exceed the investment rate. When people decide to cut back on consumption .i.e. they want to save, they will save regardless of what savings vehicle they end up choosing. The real interest rate (interest rate minus inflation) is way too low for the Lira. A bank account with Lira deposits is simply an extremely bad savings vehicle. People just stop saving, or they put their savings elsewhere, mostly USD, EUR and sometimes Bitcoin. Banning foreign or cryptocurrencies doesn't really do anything, it's akin to pointing a gun at someone and saying they should put their money into a bank account anyway. Ok, lets assume a perfect savings vehicle called SV exists (0% yield and 0% volatility). We can benchmark the yield of currencies against this savings vehicle. For the sake of the argument assume that Lira has 10% inflation and 0% interest then it will have -10% yield. Picking SV will grant you 0% yield, which is 10% more than the Lira. If you raise the interest rate to 10% then the Lira will have 0% yield. It will be equivalent to SV but SV is considered more trustworthy. SV has effectively set a lower bound for interest rates. Any lower and people will just run away from the Lira. Therefore the interest rate must be higher than inflation and this premium depends on how confident "savers" are. You are basically pricing in the default rate. Let's apply this to a different market. The US (corporate) savings rate is so high that negative interest rates are necessary, the problem is that treasury bonds put an effective 0% interest lower bound. Interest simply cannot shrink lower than that because lower interest rates will simply lead to purchases of treasury bonds. The answer in this case is to raise inflation instead because it acts as negative yield on excess savings. The easiest way is to simply print money and hand it out to those who plan to spend it, the increased spending will drive unemployment down. Another solution is to just increase the investment rate so that excess savings are being soaked up and interest rates will rise naturally.