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Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

reuters.com

201–210 of 302 posts

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#201

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…

Reversibility is the feature of credit cards, not drawback or limitation.

While true on some level, this is broadly incorrect.

The necessity for reversibility, and the inflexibility of being limited either to it, or some form of it, is indicative of an inherent, unfixable flaw in the system itself.

This flaw limits the systems growth, adaptability, and usefulness.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#202
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…

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.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#203
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.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#204
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).

* 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

And

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.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#205
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…

Something similar happened in Argentina. +60% interest rates with 45% "official" inflation and a constant exchange rate with the USD. I was able to get returns of more then 60% in USD because I sold my mutual funds and bought dollars before they chose to devaluate the peso.

The problem was they allowed the currency to devaluate in a matter of days. People with CDs or mutual funds with long withdrawal time lost a lot of money. I'm talking about going from 18pesos = 1 usd to 36 pesos = 1 usd in something like one week.

You can actually see how the lira is losing against the usd since 2008.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> This is the concept of "transaction finality", and with fiat it is very, very broken. Worked quite well for me when my credit card details were stolen and I could revert $8k of purchases immediately. If my wallet keys are stolen or cracked, I will lose everything with "transaction finality" - that would be a problem which is enabled not solved by crypto.

As we've seen with the development of centralised exchanges, institutional and retail custodial solutions, many of which are backed by various forms of insurance, the fact that the base layer provides for transactional finality (along with many other things), in no way prevents the development of custodial and insurance-backed solutions on top of it.

That crypto can do new things, and yet may also facilitate all of the (useful) old things, simply makes it a superior tool. There can be no fundamental argument against this.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#207

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.

Unless you’re paying cash, average final settlement time is ~90 days, in reality. That’s just been abstracted away from the credit card user. Bitcoin settles in 6 blocks (60 mins)

Now, on the UX topic, btc has a lot to improve. But I’m always surprised how rapidly people assume their transactions in fiat are settling as a comparative criticism for Bitcoin.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#208
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your transaction isn't settled instantly. The actual money that flows between institutions behind the scenes is way slower than bitcoin. You can use credit/debit card on Bitcoin too, and your payments seem to go through instantly with whatever tps the network supports.

Your transaction isn't settled instantly. The actual money that flows between institutions behind the scenes is way slower than bitcoin. ... and yet the world turns; and credit cards amount to $3tn of payments in the U.S annually. As it turns out, businesses do not actually care about instant settlement of payment transactions that much, what's important is instant authorization .

[deleted]

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#209
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your transaction isn't settled instantly. The actual money that flows between institutions behind the scenes is way slower than bitcoin. You can use credit/debit card on Bitcoin too, and your payments seem to go through instantly with whatever tps the network supports.

Your transaction isn't settled instantly. The actual money that flows between institutions behind the scenes is way slower than bitcoin. ... and yet the world turns; and credit cards amount to $3tn of payments in the U.S annually. As it turns out, businesses do not actually care about instant settlement of payment transactions that much, what's important is instant authorization .

Yeah and btc is instantly authd by the user. You sort of proved the other person’s point haha.

Re: Turkey bans use of cryptocurrencies for payments

#210
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s one of the most popular tourist destinations. The only issue is COVID.

>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.

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