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Thailand bans meme coin and NFT: “no clear objective or substance or underlying”

88 points| giuliomagnifico | 4 years ago |engadget.com | reply

96 comments

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[+] impostervt|4 years ago|reply
This is one of those ideas that may sound good in theory, but will be impossible to apply fairly. There are many "meme" coins that are now dedicating a portion of each transaction towards charity - saving apes, funding animal shelters, etc. Is that enough utility? And there are plenty of ERC20 tokens that are not meme coins that, debatable, serve no real purpose except to enrich their creators and early investors.

And while I'm no fan of NFTs, they seem as to have as much inherit value as any piece of art (whatever someone is willing to pay).

[+] SQueeeeeL|4 years ago|reply
I tend to look at charity (especially in small coins which suck up a bunch of electricity for basically no gain for anyone) as an excuse to validate their existence. Just because TOMS give a pair of shoes to a poor person every time you buy a pair doesn't automatically make TOMS a good company, it just means it has dope ass marketing.
[+] munk-a|4 years ago|reply
In the US it's illegal to print your own currency and use it for commercial purposes. This doesn't preclude the ability to legally exchange goods in a foreign currency because, while there may be a whole lot of potential currencies, it's not that difficult to create an allowlist of approved currencies.

I personally think this is a pretty stupid decision, but iit should be pretty easy to fairly apply so long as the Thai SEC lays out clear guidelines on which currencies are approved.

And, I am avoiding making any sort of comment on whether currencies are worthy of being on that approved list. It's Thailand and the sovereign government has the right to make currency regulation decisions as arbitrarily as it wants.

[+] mdoms|4 years ago|reply
Here in New Zealand the notorious gang Mongrel Mob donates significant portions of their ill gotten gains to charity. Most of us still want them gone.
[+] nkellenicki|4 years ago|reply
I find this funny - Dogecoin has as much value as Bitcoin. It still takes energy (and therefore money) to mine, and the resulting "coin" has value - that being how much someone is willing to sell it for, and how much someone is willing to buy for it, driven by factors such as mining cost as well as speculation. The only real difference being the name of the coin.

If they're worried about price influence by social media influencers, this is also a problem for other coins. Elon tweets, and the price of BTC varies. It's not just "meme coins" that's susceptible to this.

The logic that's been applied here is highly suspect to me.

[+] mym1990|4 years ago|reply
Based on my light understanding of crypto related things, I think Bitcoin very obviously has a purpose and a mission while Dogecoin was literally created as a joke and happened to take off...that would be understanding of their “objectives” as referenced in the article.
[+] wyager|4 years ago|reply
Cost is not driven by mining cost. Labor theory of value is tempting but wrong here and anywhere else. You have your causality backwards. Mining cost is driven by value.
[+] ziml77|4 years ago|reply
Does it have as much value? It is designed to constantly inflate while bitcoin is designed to have a hard limit on the number of coins mined.
[+] haskellandchill|4 years ago|reply
> Dogecoin has as much value as Bitcoin

Correct, and that is zero (or really negative) value. I see crypto as a plague on productive society. People think they can just get rich by investing in currency. It's insane. Value is being destroyed with all the attention wasted in the space. Governments need to step in and protect their citizens from this nonsense.

[+] young_unixer|4 years ago|reply
By that logic, they should also shut down Tik Tok and most social media.
[+] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
People won't deposit their life savings in Tik Tok.
[+] randomopining|4 years ago|reply
How exactly can you ban it without shutting down the interwebz?
[+] brazzy|4 years ago|reply
Read TFA and the press release linked therein. If you're a "digital asset exchange" operating in Thailand, offering your customers to trade the banned items will lose you your license, and if you continue operating I imagine at some point the police will show up at whatever physical presence you have and arrest people, and your assets (including bank accounts) will be seized.

No, that is not 100% effective in stopping people from trading these coins, but it doesn't have to be, and it' not even necessarily the intention - note that it's not even a law but an SEC decision.

[+] snarf21|4 years ago|reply
Can't they just enforce the blocking at the ISP level? They could do the same for VPNs in the country. If someone tries a VPN in another jurisdiction, that can be blocked from a more legal perspective. Local LE can try to access these NFT sites or w/e via different VPNs and then shut them down legally. It seems like it is mostly a question of legislative desires.
[+] Afforess|4 years ago|reply
Preventing legitimate institutions from allowing transactions involved with the purchase of the coin effectively bans it. It doesn't matter if consumers can still use it, if businesses can not.
[+] rasz|4 years ago|reply
Easily, you start seizing assets.
[+] kderbyma|4 years ago|reply
NFTs by definition shouldn't be banned....I get the bullshit being peddled is little more than garbage, but obviously the underlying purpose is better akin to things like deeds and ownership of physical properties via certificate.
[+] jobigoud|4 years ago|reply
NFT are conflated with their dubious use in art but they can be used for other stuff. In particular membership proof between unrelated entities.
[+] cwkoss|4 years ago|reply
Whoever makes the first 'secure enough' (for IP industry lobby) DRM solution that uses NFTs for access management of digital content is going to make a ton of money.

The hard part isn't the tech (DRM can't be perfect, but it doesn't stop other solutions from being sold), its getting buy-in from the IP industry lobby. They probably cringe at the idea of digital access rights being resold or traded as it erodes their monopoly pricing power.

Being able to trade movies and songs at release sounds fun, and I'm sure wallstreetbets style traders would pile in if the ecosystem develops enough confidence. Would also allow content creators to recoup investment much faster at the expense of long tail royalty type earnings - which some may find very attractive.

[+] ffggvv|4 years ago|reply
kinda sad that the US has a useless SEC while china and thailand actually protect their citizens.