
Ask HN: If Bitcoin is so great, why doesn’t it help the people in Turkey? - evibeefi
I thought bitcoin is great for exactly such situation like we see currently in Turkey. Is it being used?
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unixhero
It is not solving a pain point Turkey has. There are no capital controls,
black money market, extreme inflation or extreme lack of trust - for Bitcoin
to solve.

For that you must go to Argentina and Venezuela. Bitcoin is solving real
societal problems there, by simply existing and working as it promises.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z434a3/can-
bitcoi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z434a3/can-bitcoin-
still-thrive-in-argentina-without-price-controls-peso-dollar-mauricio-macri)

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Jeff_Brown
Economists distinguish between real and monetary problems. If the government
controls a big chunk of the real economy and makes bad decisions -- directing
too many resources, say, to last-century commodities like steel and aluminum
(the US), or building ghost cities (China) -- the monetary system isn't going
to undo that.

But suppose Turkey's problems were entirely monetary, so that an alternative
currency really could fix them. That currency has to fulfill some
requirements. It must be price-stable enough for people to be willing to hold
onto it. It must be convenient enough for people to be willing to use it. It
must be widely understood and popular enough (this is a bootrstap or "chicken
and egg" problem) that one can expect to be able to buy what one needs, when
one needs to, with it.

Bitcoin charges something like $4 per transaction lately, and they take on the
order of a day to process. It's unstable, and it's confusing to most people.

Maybe someday, though.

~~~
slededit
> Bitcoin charges something like $4 per transaction lately, and they take on
> the order of a day to process. It's unstable, and it's confusing to most
> people.

Bank transactions take that or longer to fully settle. The merchant and bank
are just giving you credit to bridge the gap when you use your card at the
checkout line. Your bank sends a best guess that you actually have the funds
but won't know for sure until the daily batch job is run. If you look at the
actual mechanics of bank transactions you'd find it much more confusing than
BTC - everyone just papers it over for you in exchange for a fee which you
probably don't know your paying.

You could do the same thing with BTC, look at the source addresses balance
since everything is public and make a short term credit decision.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
You're right. I was imagining bitcoin replacing cash, not bank transactions.
(I'm assuming Turkey is like most of the developing world, in that most
transactions are cash.)

That said, while the timing of bitcoin might be similar to bank transactions,
nobody would use a debit card that charged a flat $4 on every transaction.

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wmf
Several people have snarkily pointed out that BTC lost more value than the
lira this year. Cryptocurrencies are very risky which generally isn't
beneficial to people who are also facing huge political risk.

Uncensorable _stable_ cryptocurrency _might_ benefit people in the developing
world, but it's not clear such a thing is even possible.

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duxup
For bitcoin to help:

1\. Bitcoin would need to be more stable. No reason to think it couldn't drop
more than Turkey's currency.

2\. You'd have to predict that the lira was going to drop a fair amount of
time before it did... (meanwhile take the risk of #1... and ho man has it been
wild).

Neither of those are things and even if Bitcoin was say stable and predictable
#2 means you'd have to have "the people" speculating about currency.... that's
not something most people are good at.

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CyberFonic
From what I understand BTC transactions are slow and costly. For it to be
useful for millions of small transactions requires a very different
infrastructure. You have to remember that BTC mining and transaction
verification is extremely energy intensive, something that a country like
Turkey cannot afford.

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alt_f4
Cryptocurrency is to currency like Javascript is to Java.

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siruncledrew
Cryptocurrency doesn't protect against hindsight.

