
Poland’s Central Bank Secretly Paid YouTubers to Slander Cryptos - imartin2k
https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/02/17/polands-central-bank-secretly-paid-youtubers-slander-cryptos
======
viraptor
So here's some more context about the campaign, because this article is very
biased as well. The information campaign is owned by both the central bank and
the financial supervision committee (not sure if there's an official
translation of that name). It's not a local idea, but rather a local
implementation of the European effort. You can find more details here:
[http://www.eba.europa.eu/-/esas-warn-consumers-of-risks-
in-b...](http://www.eba.europa.eu/-/esas-warn-consumers-of-risks-in-buying-
virtual-currencies)

The committee's involvement is not surprising in this case. One of the
agency's goals is to provide information about financial risks. It even keeps
a public registry of companies reported for not paying their debts (think
credit score for businesses). It's very much what they should be involved in.
In case anyone thinks they're on the banks' side - they're involved in
prosecuting banks and pension funds regularly.

As for the contents of the campaign's site
[https://uwazajnakryptowaluty.pl/](https://uwazajnakryptowaluty.pl/) \- it's
very reasonable. I couldn't find anything outright wrong on it. It doesn't
even tell you that you shouldn't buy Bitcoin. The repeated information and
claims are not very different from what you sign when you open a share dealing
account - you can lose money, gains are not guaranteed, these investments are
not insured, lack of liquidity is possible, etc.

The social advertisement campaigns are also nothing uncommon in Poland. Sober
driving, don't dive in shallow water, read to your kids, and similar topics
are the common target of the social ads / PSAs that are created when some
issue gets too common in the country.

The fact that the are no gov logos in the video clip is weird. (Also the clip
is _extremely_ cheesy - think high school video project about misinformation
surrounding cryptocurrencies) But the campaign itself seems fine. The post is
very sensational.

~~~
gocartStatue
Polish people tend to have very low knowledge about any form of investing.
First of all it is economically unavailable to at least ~50% of our citizens,
earning dominant income of ~6400 USD _per year_. People with serious investing
skills and knowledge are a bunch within top few percent of highest-earning
citizens. I work as a programmer in software company. Many of my high-earning
colleagues "invest" in Bitcoin because it's hot, while they know next to
nothing about investing, markets etc. So I would agree that informational
campaign is generally a good idea, learning a lesson from our history with CHF
mortgages and scams like AmberGold. As to "lack of access to information in
English language" and issues with internet access, this is just funny. We have
literally the cheapest internet in the world, good LTE coverage, FTTH in
cities and fiber-to-every-school programme. Silicon Valley has far worse
internet than most of our country, for what I've heard :)

------
londons_explore
A central banks role is to provide the monetary system for the exchange of
goods and services in a country.

If a countries citizens go and spend their personal money on risky or stupid
investments, it is _also_ the countries problem. If those investments fail,
you will now probably have to use government funds to bail them out in some
way. Bankruptcy is a government bailout of sorts.

Therefore it does not seem unreasonable for a central bank, whose role is
ensuring a strong monetary system, to try to educate it's indirect users on
good and bad risks to take to try to make the country as a whole more
competitive.

If the video should have had attribution is a policy issue for YouTube and the
country. Given that attribution would probably have reduced it's
effectiveness, I can see why the country would want it without attribution.

~~~
aianus
This isn't education. An analogy would be a sex "education" campaign that
teaches everyone they will get pregnant or AIDS the first time they have sex
and that the only way to avoid such things is abstinence.

Making up lies with the hope that it will influence behavior in the "right"
way is not education and is not the way a government institution should
behave.

~~~
notahacker
Do you speak enough Polish to evaluate the video, whether it "lies" or not,
whether it is clearly presented as a hypothetical worst case scenario that
actually happens to some people like government media advertising usually does
(and for that matter whether it is likely to have had any editorial oversight
from the Polish govt)? It would actually be interesting to hear the views of
some of the Polish speakers here.

Because unless there's an awful lot lost in machine translation, the
government information website it links to might be anti-crypto slanted but is
pretty bland and factual about the risks involved in crypto and its status
under Polish law.

(Of course, what's easier to evaluate is the judgement of English language
crypto websites like Trustnodes which attack the SEC for "effectively calling
investors stupid" for having the temerity to suggest they might not be in
possession of all the facts and for the "draconian" halting ICOs that were
"legitimate" in every way except perhaps being precisely the sort of unlawful
securities offering the SEC is tasked with shutting down. So there's a
distinct possibility they just might be exaggerating a tad here)

~~~
rando444
I can speak some basic polish, but it's pretty clear from the video that this
is all hypothetical.

The basic moral of the video is kind of a combination of don't just assume
you're going to get rich off of crypto investing and on a broader stroke,
don't put all of your eggs in one basket. (e.g. - don't invest your daily
spending money)

------
pjc50
This article is itself propaganda, of course, being from a pro-cryptocurrency
"news" site. It's a little tricky to establish corroboration of the claims as
all other sources are in Polish.

> "usually, within a democracy, it is illegal for state actors or contractors
> to engage in propaganda directed at their own citizens."

This isn't true, or at least I'm not aware of places where it is; this would
make it very hard to do "public information" advertising.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I wish it were more true. Commuting between Hayward and San Francisco, I got
to see lots and lots of advertising, mostly government propaganda. It fell
into two categories:

1\. "Instead of killing yourself, why not call a suicide hotline?" I guess
BART tracks see elevated levels of suicide. I don't really have much of a
problem with this one.

2\. "If you let your infant sleep in the bed with you, you are a bad parent."
I have a problem with this. What a disgusting thing for the government to be
doing.

~~~
jdietrich
>What a disgusting thing for the government to be doing.

There is a significant association between bed-sharing and infant death. An
adult bed presents far more hazards of entrapment, suffocation and
strangulation than a properly-designed crib or bassinet. I haven't seen the
advert in question and can't comment on how accurately it conveys the
evidence, but I think that it's absolutely right to strongly warn parents
about the risks of bed-sharing.

If you think that it's disgusting for a government agency to try and save the
lives of babies, that's your prerogative.

[http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/10/...](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/10/20/peds.2016-2938)

------
pjf
I'm Polish and I feel offended by this article, especially the last paragraph.
Whatever our national bank did, it's not OK to write about it in such a tone.

~~~
xchaotic
Indeed. The author of the article seems to be implying certain things without
any evidence. Most people in Poland dabbling in crypto are very well aware of
information in English and use exchanges and websites that are in English
anyway, so not sure where that article conclusion came from...

~~~
viraptor
According to Wikipedia Poland's got 37% people who can speak English. That's
across all population/ages. So yeah, claiming lack of access to primarily-
English information is just silly.

~~~
gocartStatue
Since nineties English class is mandatory at school on any level. B1 English
is required to get our "bachelors" equivalent.

------
creo
"Poland’s lack of access, in general, to English language information" Im
laughing so hard at this.

------
devwinportable
well that's still an uneven balance between ICO fraudsters spending zillions
on "get rich quick" scheme videos...

------
jxub
Interesting note: Polish government wanted to implement a Polish
cryptocurrency backed by the Polish currency PLN (similar to Tether) named
dPLN, but then backed off the project [1] (link in Polish). Has anyone got any
insider info on this?

[1] [http://www.wirtualnemedia.pl/artykul/kryptowaluta-digital-
pl...](http://www.wirtualnemedia.pl/artykul/kryptowaluta-digital-pln-
ministerstwo-cyfryzacji-wycofuje-sie-z-patronatu-nad-projektem-polskiego-
bitcoina)

~~~
wowoc
No, it wasn't the government - just a private company running within a state-
sponsored accelerator. The government withdrew their funds after finding out
about it.

------
nukeop
Of course they did, because cryptos are a dire threat to their hegemony. Visa
introduced changes to charge more for purchasing cryptos with their cards.
Some banks block cards that are used for purchasing cryptos. Sometimes even
your credit scored is lowered just for purchasing them.

The banking cartels have a vested interest in discouraging the public from
taking any interest in cryptocurrencies at all, and they're only getting
started. They will bring out the big guns soon, an you'll seeplain as day that
the only thing they're interested in is they're bottom line, which is
dependent on them controlling all your finances and taking a cut of every
transaction you make.

Cryptos are a way to circumvent their control, and it's like cutting off their
oxygen supply, if they become too popular the big banks and credit card
companies will wither and die.

~~~
viraptor
> Sometimes even your credit scored is lowered just for purchasing them.

Got any links about it? That's at least unexpected. One of the parties in the
transaction would have to explicitly report that. I'd like to see what that
credit line would look like.

The rest I'd expect, since those issues are directly related to Visa / banks
protecting themselves from specific transactions. It doesn't even matter that
it's specifically cryptocurrency on the other end. Just like they charge more
for using credit cards for preorders at standard currency exchanges.

~~~
pja
What they /probably/ mean is that VISA set a higher charge level for
cryptocurrency exchanges than for other vendors.

Since the charges imposed by VISA are intimately related to the level of fraud
they expect to see from a given vendor & the cryptocurrency space is stuffed
to the brim with fraudsters and con artists this ought to be entirely
unsurprising.

No cryptic (hah!) conspiracy theory required.

