It will be interesting to see how actively they enforce this new ruling. Given that paedo-tourists are effectively given a free pass in Thailand I find it odd that Bitcoin would work it's way to the top of the agenda.
The title's misleading: Bitcoin was never sanctioned in the first place - the laws presumably whitelist, rather than blacklist.
I don't think the political will exists, in either case - the political jockeying that currently stands in for the entire totality of both policy and political discourse doesn't leave much space for a quiet and novel campaign like this - I suspect, in fact, that the only thing that has fallen into the above category within the last ten years are CITES violations (drug stings should probably be credited to the DEA.)
Maybe not necessary, but I don't think it's out of place. It paints a picture of what the Thai government deems important and with a country like Thailand, with the issues it faces, comparing this non issue against a real issue makes mockery of Thailand's leadership. And they deserve to be made a mockery of.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information, but it isn't accurate. Paedophiles are regularly sent to prison in Thailand.
There is also some misunderstanding about who declared bitcoin illegal. The Central Bank deals specifically with monetary transactions - and they were asked for their opinion by a private company, and they gave that company their opinion.
That is the extent of what happened. The government of Thailand is not on a crusade against bitcoin.
What I find is that people consider "saying anything offensive" to be an ad-hominem attack, but completely omit very common forms of ad-hominem attacks such as attacks on supposed ideology or bringing or other views and arguing that their views are contradictory -- or arguing against another viewpoint that they hold -- in an attempt to refute their views.
To use a real example I recently saw: "Russ Feingold said the Patriot Act violates the 4th amendment, voted against it, and says we should repeal it; however, Feingold sponsored the McCain-Feingold act -- parts of which were found to have violated the first amendment -- so his argument against the Patriot Act is invalid because he and other liberals also violate the constitution". This is an example of not only an ad-hominem, but also false equivalence, and to-quoque -- but yet I see these arguments commonly asserted and unchallenged.
For the record I do think the grand-parent comment does not constitute a particularly strong argument to me: there's no proof that Thailand fails to punish paedophiles any more than any other country (keep in mind these kind of crimes are grossly under-reported) and even if that is indeed the case, there's no proof that the same dynamic would mean laws against bitcoin would not be enforced.
There is NO reason to bring racist stereotypes into the conversation. The Thai government has many many faults, but being soft on child-sex is not one of them. Thai people love their children as much as anyone else in the world. In fact the United States has poured millions into countries like Thailand and Cambodia to conduct paedophile witch hunts which have railroaded a number of innocent people when they couldn't find the hoards of sex-fiends that people like you think are lurking in the shadows.
This is not to say that the story makes Thailand look good. The ruling elite have a strong tendency to blame many things on foreigners, and since coming out against Bitcoin will effect practically no one in Thailand (which is not exactly a hotbed of Bitcoin usage) they get to blame another imagined foreign threat to the Kingdom and take credit for saving the country. Remember, they made a similar stance against, Open Source Software, not long after the military coup not that many years ago (and like Obama in Egypt, the Bush administration illegally continued to give them military aide without anyone in America even noticing).
