The news just broke, but I doubt you'll fall off your chair when you read this. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are banning the use of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Enemies of political, individual, and economic freedoms, want to impose a totalitarian monetary order. And only one means of payment, the afghani.
After banning private trading in traditional currencies, an activity deemed not to be in line with Islam and trying to discourage the use of the American dollar, they are now targeting Bitcoin.
The Taliban have closed 16 exchange platforms in Herat province and made arrests, according to Aryan News. Faced with a cash shortage, the Bank of Afghanistan said Bitcoin trading was "causing many problems and leading to fraud at the expense of the people."
In April 2019, the previous government had to deny plans to issue a bond denominated in Bitcoin, at a time when it was worth $5,400 compared to $21,500 on this Sunday, September 11, 2022.
In Afghanistan, only one in five people now have Internet access, or 9 million people, while more than two-thirds of the population has a cell phone. Despite the country's poor development and infrastructure, it was ranked 20th out of 154 on its level of crypto adoption in 2021, before the Taliban came to power, according to Chainalysis.
So Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were something vital to Afghans in their daily lives.
To exchange their BTC units, Afghans use platforms that connect individuals, like LocalBitcoins. Hyperinflation, the fall of the Afghani, and the inability to withdraw more than $350 per week from their bank may lead those with the means and ability to do so to seek refuge on Bitcoin and Stablecoins.
Stablecoins with a 1:1 peg to the U.S. dollar are a good way to access U.S. dollars digitally while protecting against the weakness of the local currency.
Afghans use Bitcoin because the Taliban leave them no other choice
It was after the Bitcoin surge in 2017 that cryptos began to gain popularity in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban came to power a year ago, Google searches done on cryptos from Afghanistan are 2-3 times higher on Bitcoin than Ethereum:
Helmand province - the main poppy-producing region used to make heroin - has the highest number of Google queries on the crypto leader. Bitcoin can be used to invest and diversify money from the drug trade. Afghan opiate revenues have been estimated at between $1.8 billion and $2.7 billion by 2021, according to the United Nations.
Bitcoin opponents will jump on this last statistic to say that Bitcoin facilitates criminal activity. In reality, it's simply proof that Bitcoin is being used as P2P hard money that no one can censor and that is accessible to everyone.
If the local currency, the Afghani, was not made so weak by the Taliban, and if access to the US dollar was facilitated, Afghans probably would not have had to look for other means of daily survival. The increasing use of Bitcoin should be seen as a reflection of the flaws in the political and monetary systems in place in countries like Afghanistan.
It will be interesting to see how the Afghan population will organize to continue using Bitcoin despite the Taliban ban. Because make no mistake, Afghans will not stop using Bitcoin despite this ban. A revolution like Bitcoin cannot be stopped once its time has come. And Bitcoin's time has come!
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