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Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

reuters.com

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Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#111

Post by BrandoElFollito »

submeta wrote: post #53

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 in…

In France we have Tracfin, an institution that tracks the movement of money.

Once you make a transaction over 10k€, the bank has to report it and request from you the reason of the transfer and where the money comes from (initially). They cannot block the transfer but they have several flags attached to the report where they can hint that the transfer is illegal.

You buy a house and transfer the money to the notary? No problem.

You receive money from the UE, there is some explanation do but not that much.

You receive money from a shady place, or send to one (the definition of "shady" is up to the bank and Tracfin), you will need to explain really carefully the move, and you will be on a list.

All in all this is fine, the real problem is if you get into a situation where you are OK but your explanations are not - then you are in trouble.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#112

Post by fidelramos »

Graffur wrote: post #101
fidelramos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/ [1] ht…

HN always seems to have bitcoin cash fans. I don't get it. Bitcoin cash has 'leaders' in the space who are very quesitonable. Bitcoin cash also has no place if we take into account other cryptos (Monero or Algorand). Bitcoin cash exists only to dilute the bitcoin 'brand' imo.

Bitcoin Cash exists to continue the original scaling plan for Bitcoin: increasing the maximum block size. I watched the Bitcoin scaling debate back in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and every attempt was made to increase BTC's maximum block size without a hard fork, but every move was blocked by Bitcoin Core's developers. "Diluting the Bitcoin brand" was never a goal, but at some point the fork was the only way to scale.

About "Bitcoin cash also has no place if we take into account other cryptos (Monero or Algorand)", I completely disagree. Bitcoin Cash brings a lot to the table:

- Shared history with BTC up to the fork day (August 1, 2017).

- SHA-256d mining, like BTC.

- Much increased capacity, about 20 times higher, with plans to continue scaling to order of magnitudes more.

- Very low fees (less than $0.01), with a roadmap to keep them low as usage grows.

- Reliable almost instant 0-conf for smaller-to-medium transactions, with plans to improve its security.

- Privacy improvements such as CashFusion [1].

I wish Bitcoin Cash didn't need to exist because BTC scaled, but until then I will keep using it and advising others to do so.

[1] https://cashfusion.org/

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#113

Post by argvargc »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #83
argvargc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 progress…

I routinely buy things with fiat that complete in seconds. There's on order of trillions of completed fiat transactions per day. They don't generally take days. Only a tiny, tiny amount of them of a very limited class take days. It's disingenuous to imply all fiat transactions take that long.

On a per-value basis, what I have claimed is entirely true.

The bulk of fiat does not move around on peoples payment cards or in cash in their hands, it moves in bank-to-bank transfers that indeed do take days or even weeks, and further have an up to 10% failure rate.

It may well be that through the use of caveats you don't see or think about, you are able to execute small transactions quickly with fiat, but it is the counterparty to your transactions who is bearing the burden of fiats shortcomings in these cases.

For example, if we're comparing digitally, in most cases, you are able to arbitrarily reverse the transaction up to or even over a month later, claiming it as fraudulent, or rejecting it for some other reason justifiable to you, but for which the vendor has little recourse. This is the concept of "transaction finality", and with fiat it is very, very broken.

With cash a similar problem exists with counterfeit money, a vendor may collect up a weeks earnings, only to take them to the bank and have a percentage of them rejected.

All of these problems are solved by crypto, it improves on money in many key ways (these are just a couple), that's its point, and why people are excited about it enough to drive its collective value up to the region of Apple's stock value, around 4x faster than Apple took to do so.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#114

Post by BrandoElFollito »

africanboy wrote: post #106
varispeed wrote: post #13

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).

> 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…

> 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.

Let's take the real example of HADOPI in France, the illustration of the institution that was supposed to hunt bittorrent use in France.

When it was announced, some people dropped bittorrent, but not that much. You had zillions of tutorials on how to avoid it.

What is killing bittorrent is Netflix. As someone else put it very well in another comment: this is a viable alternative.

Now that bittorrent usage is stable and that lots of people moved to netflix because it is easier, HADOPI is slowly dying.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#115

Post by I_am_tiberius »

joshxyz wrote: post #105
submeta wrote: post #53

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 in…

Shouldn't someone with 20k € go through an otc desk instead of retail markets?

Why should that be necessary? I want to do with my personal money whatever I want.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#116

Post by BrandoElFollito »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #103
zaik wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully Turkey joins the EU as by then it will have become a democratic and financially stable country.

> democratic and financially stable country ...glances at Greece

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)

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#117

Post by zoshi »

iamben wrote: post #110
zoshi wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 i…

Taxation and financial privacy are not mutually exclusive. Taxation and cryptocurrency are not mutually exclusive. Cryptocurrency and banking are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#118

Post by Graffur »

fidelramos wrote: post #112
Graffur wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN always seems to have bitcoin cash fans. I don't get it. Bitcoin cash has 'leaders' in the space who are very quesitonable. Bitcoin cash also has no place if we take into account other cryptos (Monero or Algorand). Bitcoin cash exists only to dilute the bitcoin 'brand' imo.

Bitcoin Cash exists to continue the original scaling plan for Bitcoin: increasing the maximum block size. I watched the Bitcoin scaling debate back in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and every attempt was made to increase BTC's maximum block size without a hard fork, but every move was blocked by Bitcoin Core's developers. "Diluting the Bitcoin brand" was never a goal, but at some point the fork was the only way to scale. About…

Like it or not, nobody wants POW. IMO it's worth it for bitcoin but a new crypto is not going to get traction with POW.

Other coins have low fees and privacy. Neither are unique selling points.

Why not use Algo instead of bitcoin cash? https://algorand.foundation/the-algo/algo-basics

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#119

Post by BrandoElFollito »

pantelisk wrote: post #28

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

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)

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#120

Post by traek »

joshxyz wrote: post #105
submeta wrote: post #53

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 in…

Shouldn't someone with 20k € go through an otc desk instead of retail markets?

No, there’s no reason to want to go OTC for just 20k and most desks won’t will deal with you for that amount. That isn’t even half a BTC at current prices, every major exchange has the market depth to support that.
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