A Continuation of Absolute Shitfuckery
The other day, I had a call from one of my friends. The guy on the other end was saying that there was a news about the law enforcement of my country taking the illegality of crypto more seriously from now on! A few arrests were made, so he warned me to be more careful as he knew I dabble in crypto! Well, it's not news to me! While studying criminology, I have had the privilege of making some friends in the upper tier of our law enforcement! Well, by that, I mean I am friends with some of them who like to gossip about anything crime! So quite a few times, that has led me to some heated discourse among ourselves about crypto while I was on the side of how it has a high margin of probability to succeed and turn our world into a cashless society while they said otherwise!
If you carefully assess the outcomes in every other possible scenario of how the future looks like, crypto over paper money is what is bound to happen! A digital renaissance of sorts, one might say! Yet, along with a few other countries, like Bolivia or Vietnam, Bangladesh is one of the last remaining strongholds of paper money, even so much so that it has turned into some sort of fundamentalism against digital currency! No matter how absurd it sounds, to them, it is like forbidden fruit from the heavens! On the one hand, the Bangladesh government is poorly revising their policies so entrepreneurs can reap the benefits of branching out in eCommerce and the gig economy. On the other hand, they are discouraging the use of cryptocurrency, which might someday become the backbone of virtualization!
But that is not where the problem lies! The thing is, sentiment regarding bitcoin in this country has two contrasting dynamics! Such is the issue because crypto in this country has only a soft banking ban defined by obsolete old policies! Yet, the recent crackdowns are becoming harsher and kinda threatening as time progresses.
On the one hand, our government has a few vague policies under which cryptocurrencies fall, such as FERA 1947 and MLPA 2012, where the foremost one explains how citizens should approach trading in foreign exchanges, which in the context of crypto is exchanges like Binance and the lot, with caution. And the latter defines how money laundering using currencies not recognized by the central bank leads to a few separate and different crimes! And on the other hand, our tech sector is already knee-deep in blockchain technology, trying to understand what, in retrospect, decentralization could mean for the countries infrastructures and already is outsourcing for many of the big names!
Do you see where the hypocrisy in this scenario is? If you do not, please allow me to elaborate a bit more! Both of those two acts have a few significant loopholes. Primarily, Bangladesh stock exchanges are already paired with different international exchanges in commodity trades! Like the rest of the world. So, in that context, the debate of Binance and the similar exchanges being foreign, unregulated by a central authority and thus illegal does not work! Secondly, our central bank is yet to recognize crypto as either currency or commodity! So if anyone trades crypto in Bangladesh, they are in a way not violating any laws!
And the final apparent major problem that I see in this whole mess is that MLPA 2012 defines any trade using unauthorized currencies to be punishable and even as money laundering! Even if we are not violating any specific rules per se, we actively participate in money laundering if we are using crypto in any transaction! It is like that moral dilemma a lawmaker faces! Until you criminalize and politicize something to be a crime, it is not a crime! For example, throwing away trash in the streets in a clean urban neighbourhood might be considered loitering and thus punishable crime! As that is defined by law for that specific area! Outside of that area, it is not! In this example, that dilemma lies within how the policymaker draws a boundary where the law is applicable!
In the past fifteen days, law enforcements have made quite a few arrests! Some of them are innocent small-time traders and a few whose portfolio is filled with absolute maleficence! Most notably, a guy named Rayhan who has been running a money-laundering racket in quite a few countries! and he now has the opportunity to manipulate those aforementioned loopholes. As the provisions against such crimes are outdated and not adequately revised, that guy with the money he has, he will be out of jail in no time while letting the small fishes hang out to dry!
Except for the few countries that have banned crypto, the rest of the world understands that there is no clear direction to take against these loopholes! So what they are doing is instead of criminalizing, they are forming regulatory bodies so better tax provisions could be implemented! And here is our idiot morally corrupt policymakers missing out on the future only to further their selfish gains! But, Mass adoption is only a matter of time! Back when covid started to wallop us, a few hundred thousand RMG workers marched a few 100 miles and entered the capital only so that they could get paid what they are due! To them, dying from starvation was more frightening than the pandemic itself! And due to that, a mass infection spread covid to even the remotest corner! So imagine what could have happened if defi was mass adapted in that context! It could have actually saved lives!
Oh well, someday I might too go to jail simply because I write blogs on a decentralized platform that rewards its authors in cryptocurrency! Such a crude joke, one might say:3
Here is something if you want to learn more about this!
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See you there! Nothing to say more then that.
The situation will change someday i hope!!:)
Well this is sad..
Crypto currency has also been banned here in Nigeria too. Banks are closing accounts of people who performed transactions that had anything to do with crypto.
They're all fighting a war they can't win.
Yeah! They always do dont they!
I am not sure if I have understood everything correctly. You'll probably think of me as a killjoy too, who knows? But I don't think governments -also not your government - are or will continue to be against crypto trading and cryptocurrencies per se. They are only against the fact that people have entered the crypto market on their own initiative and some with the interest of breaking the money monopoly.
What governments and what banks want is not only to keep the money monopoly, but also to continue to control it centrally. That's why I don't think that platforms that simply establish a complementary currency that others then jump on will remain decentralised in the long run without more powerful interests intervening and knowing how to regulate the whole thing more according to their own needs and have passed or will continue to pass laws to do so.
One thing my somewhat longer life has taught me is that ordinary people should do exactly what the system intends them to do and think. Civilisations have no interest in the formation of decentralised interest groups because they could get the idea of wanting to regulate and organise themselves and, through too great a degree of freedom, act against the interests of those who rule over them.
Do you predominantly see a blessing in the digital currency, i.e. the abolition of cash? I am extremely sceptical, but before I give my reasons, I would like to hear what negative consequences you think the abolition of cash could have for people like you and me? By that I mean for people who count themselves as ordinary mortals.
First, let me apoliogize for taking so long to write a simple reply. I was busy throughout today as i had some errands that needed taken care of!
No you are not a killjoy 😅 and you are probably right! I too dont think they will continue to be against. But my problem with their policies are that while they slack and waste time, even tho we have the much needed resources to participate in developing blockchain based infrastructure, the world moves forward and we get left behind!
And no, i dont see a blessing in abolition of cash, but its happening anyway! Let me give you an example. The country i live in, people for the most part of their financial errands use mobile banking system. We use cash only when we need a substantial amount to transact witg or if we are using services that require smaller increaments or is strictly paper cash based commodity, things like groceries! So then we are allready paper cashless in a way. Well, one might say if that is your example of abolishon of cash then credit card is doing the same too! How is that different! Well, a credit card doesnt have a screen!:3 but you can access your smartphone, use your wallets anyway you choose! With no credit cap on it!
Another thing you are right about is us humans having no interest in being decentralized! I would say partially because some actually do have interest whilst they clearly know its only theocratically possible! I too am guilty of such utopian thoughts. But but, It doesnt have to be decentralized and it never will be. As long as wallets with more money then the others exist, we will always be centralized. But cashless society is a society with less clogs! Less clogs mean less anomie and less strain on socio-economic infrastructures. Makes us more efficient! And god knows we need to be more efficient, among a lot of other things!
Thank you for letting me know that you find it took you long to answer me. But no apologies needed, I appreciate you answered me. I can be a pain to get involved with :) So I will not censor myself too much and jump right into it:
You think that your country has to win the competition, or at least that it should exist, that it is this competition that makes energetic? What do you mean by "efficient"?
If competition were a good thing, then we wouldn't have to be afraid of it, would we? Isn't it rather your fear that you and your country are going to the dogs, that "losing in global competition" is something to be avoided at all costs? But who actually loses in the process? Is it you and I or any of the normal people?
My answer is: The less we pander to the machine that talks about such "dangerous competition" (propaganda, as I see it) the less we will lose. The cold economy always looks for the chance of the greatest possible exploitation of the worse off, i.e. poor or helpless people, who are forced under the heel of mass production and mass processing.
The fear of the rich and powerful is probably as great as their power and wealth. They fear losing this, the wonderful world, they fear for their servants who, when they realise that they neither need this competition nor need to be saved from anything, may no longer want to serve the economy.
Now, while in the "West" or countries who were "better of" in the last decades (or even in the last century) people came to the conclusion that "consumption in masses is over-consumption" and they jumped on the guilt train for being so selfish and reckless in the past (like blaming themselves for "what was I thinking, traveling by airplane three times a year?") a new green extremist-movement has developed itself, thinking that they must become the do-gooders of the nation (and the world), fearfully watching "China becoming the biggest capitalist actor in the world", partying, consuming, building, mining, shipping, like there is no tomorrow, right? While the Greens turn themselves into health- and environmental-dictators, the government itself pretends in following that trend but at the same time speaks of global competition in the tech- and health-market. Now, part of the tech-market is what you are talking about: Cashless "solutions".
Maybe there is the same trend in your country? The better off people want to be part of that great economical game, to have their share of the cake, so many others have already eaten and enjoyed.
But the cakes have to be baken artificially, for there is no real economy left to be exploited other than the human himself, the individual, which ist only just a figure in the great book of economics. Everything material has been already exploited, everything. There is not a single action, not a single move possible without having to pay someone for something.
What has happened, is that the governments started to sold out their people = human capital. In the health and care-industry (which is even called that name) you can see that very clearly, that the human himself is made a book-keeping asset. Hospitals privatized and elderly homes where you keep them like life-stock, resource-material for the "care-things" like pills in masses every day, diapers, medical treatment, sub-contractors who provide for food and other "medical necessities", delivering things at the doors and otherwise minding their own business. People who willingly either put themselves into this caring machine or didn't know where to stay after their children (if they had any) were not willing or able to take care of them.
Elderly homes, if you ask me, are some perverted form - human coldness - towards old people and their "use" for society. So as they became useless, they were identified as a great source for the medical sector and oh boy, can you make big bugs out of them!
Now, obviously - markets unable to further "grow", financial bubbles bursted within even shorter time-spans - the elderly are not enough to become wealthy from. The faceless, emotionless market needs new territory to stretch out. The share-holders which are too frightened to say good bye to being super rich in order to live a decent life ever after, they need more shares. What those frightened ones actually might need is less money and a non frightened population, people from below who don't want to see them hanged or otherwise punished for t"heir ever lasting greed", but being integrated back into a fearless community.
Now as it seems to me, those in politics and corporational affairs involved, have stuck themselves so deeply into the matters that they don't see a way out, because everyone feels threatened from everyone else. Like above, so below. If we continue into believing this great theatre, we will be sucked in, in fact, we are in the middle of it. Maybe for more than a couple of centuries. With little breaks in between.
I assume, you won't like that picture, I painted here. I would like to ask you: Are your family lives over there in the same state like in my country? Live reduced to single or micro households to the most? Having your elderlies put into those spaces of "care" and then forget about them? Pretending now that they have to be protected from the dangerous virus? Some people rage about the shitty government for not being able to provide enough vaccines to those elderlies. And not fast enough. ... I wonder, if those voices have already lost their parents or actually do not care about them for themselves, satisfied with what others do good for them...? Maybe even their parents tell them not to visit them and stay out of touch, as "long as the danger is still present".
Now, my own way of dealing with what I think of life is to not use modern medicine, avoiding doctors and hospitals, not using products from the giants of the industry as much as I can afford or is possible. As hopeless that it might sound, I still maintain in doing so. I made some life choices but I never would force others to follow me or to do the same when they do not come to terms on their own. Though, as you see, I am talkative person and present arguments :) Deep down I am positive about people in general. I do not think about them as evil and cruel creatures but more of complex entities who once in a while become very very confused and need to calm down:) - those "while" though can last more than a lifetime. Only, we do not see it in these long spans.
That's why I appreciated your fresh stroll to the bushes and putting your feet into dirt and talk to real people.
Sorry for this long expedition, you are maybe not interested in this and I nevertheless put it forward to you. Bye bye and sincere greetings!
Sorry, i wrote a big big reply but like an idiot somehow managed to refresh the page and its all gone now:(
I reffred to the broader use case of blockchain when i mentioned efficiency! You see, my country is a corruption infested land. And that is increasing in such an exponential rate, its unbelievable. Thats because poorly kept records paves the way for loopholes, later to be manipulated by the motivated individuals! But this would get reduced. In finance, or in every similar cintext, if blockchain is used in that fashion, it leads to more efficiency.
In a nutshell, i agree with you in a general sense. I agree with the picture you painted.. The issue with farmacutical conglomerates. And clearly, you are so much wiser than me:) so i have to agree:))
How frustrating to have lost all what you have written. Sorry for that!
I may have not answered in the same way back in time. But what I see is that we people, that we live under centralized regimes, are all facing "leaders" who are corrupt in one way or the other. How deep and how powerful it had gotten, is revealing itself in these days.
You may go further and try to get along with what crypto-currency might offer you. I am not against it, I just do not see it as something which will have the power to unite the small people in the way they may wish. The best currency I can think of is confidence and trust in each other, to come together in small communities and exchange work for work and not work for money. Money, as I see it is nice to have for things which cannot be made in my own country, so they must be shipped to us. In the old days that were rare goods and if people were able to purchase something rare once in a while, they highly appreciated it, for they could not have it every day.
To exchange work for work, builds up relationships - it is directly experienced when someone does a bad job and he is held accountable for it within the community. Virtual currency, in fact, no currency, be it fiat or crypto can do that, for it separates people in a way which is to their disadvantage. Trading becomes powerful if I can see, observe, exchange with a human being directly, not indirectly.
But of course, so long as we have a money based society, it's all about indirect economy, not people. I have heard a saying which goes like this: "economy is there to serve the people, but not the people to serve the economy".
If you become a criminal because cryptocurrency is forbidden in your country, then I guess, you have to take that risk. Many things which a law forbids, makes us ordinaries criminals. But of course, we don't have to accept that a law makes us a criminal - within double standards.
But I admit that becoming a criminal is not easy. I myself would fear consequences and it needs a character of high integrity to say "no" to a law which one finds not right.
LOL, I am not used to someone telling me he has to agree with me because I am wiser. :)) I can take this as a learning experience from you, to remind myself that I can say that to other people too. So, Thank you.