Live data from Hacker News

Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

reuters.com

171–180 of 302 posts

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They can put people in jail for using crypto, which is a strong enough deterrent that 99% of people won't do it.

Yeah because it worked so well for piracy. /s

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#172
post #4

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?

one district did ban crypto: Inner Mongolia

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#173
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.

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).

Do you live in a country with runaway inflation? If not, shut up.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#174
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

But OP talked about "all central banks", he didn't say anything about trusting Erdogan, which we can all agree is a bad idea.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#175

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 :-)

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.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#176
post #2

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…

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 gover…

While this is true, as other have said, there is a high chance that inflation is higher than what is shown (although i doubt that this is as much as 50%). But another issue is that the government as been trying to fix its own deficit, due to the lasting crisis, by adding taxes to almost anything. You now pay taxes for buying a phone (second hand or not), for buying gold, for buying a car (fairly common but it is much higher now), taxes on alcohol are now at an all time high, ... And in general, foreign good cost a lot more. As an example, some of my acquaintance in Turkey are asking me to buy some electronic device (like computer, playstation, ...) here in France and they will send me the money, because the price of those goods in France is overall cheaper, even when you include the cost of converting lira to euro.

Now, this should in fact raise the inflation, but it seems that they indeed chose a way to compute inflation that doesn't show this effect as much.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#177
post #7
post #2

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…

Basically one of the exact reasons why Crypto should exist.

or you can transact in USD. which is what the world does for oil, for example.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#178
post #42
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turkey isn't in the EU and hopefully it never will be.

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

As long as Cyprus is a member, Turkey will never be. Member countries have veto power.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#179
post #2

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…

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.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#180
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_Tur... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

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.

"why it would be a good idea to take away the ability of all central banks to perform monetary policy to stabilize the economy." laughing in central banker.
Post reply on HN