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Bitcoin Government

Bitcoin Sting Operation Nabs Egyptian Dentist (themerkle.com) 121

Posted by EditorDavid from the pyramid-schemes? dept.
An anonymous reader writes:A 30-year-old dentist has been apprehended by Egyptian authorities for conducting bitcoin-to-dollar transactions on LocalBitcoins.com, a popular digital currency trading portal... According to today's post on the Facebook page of The Ministry of the Interior, Mr. Ahmed was captured with $13,900 in cash, as well as a cellular phone and a smart tablet that were used in the trading operation. Authorities setup Ahmed by contacting him about a potential deal on LocalBitcoins, where Ahmed was selling the digital currency for $570 per coin.
The strangest part of the article is "it is unclear what specific law Mr. Ahmed was breaking, as there are no regulations on digital currencies in Egypt."
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Bitcoin Sting Operation Nabs Egyptian Dentist More

Bitcoin Sting Operation Nabs Egyptian Dentist

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  • Irrelevant. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Pezbian ( 1641885 )

    I'm sure he'll still get stoned to death over "something".

    • Re:Irrelevant. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Plus1Entropy ( 4481723 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @12:07AM (#52251403)

      Egypt is a secular military dictatorship, not a theocratic one; don't get it confused with Saudi Arabia. Sisi is a former General, just like Mubarak was before him, and before that Sadat and Nasser were both Colonels. Remember that Sisi took power away from Morsi, who was part of the Muslim Brotherhood. He then proceeded to round up a lot of other Brotherhood members and throw them in jail (just like Nasser when he led the Free Officers coup in 1952).

      If they're gonna kill him it'll probably be by hanging. Egypt is Socialist (in the real land-seizing, army-sells-you-orange-juice-and-bread kind of way, not the Bernie Sanders, public-health-care kind of way) so they don't like you taking large sums of money out of the country. That's my guess as to why they arrested this guy. As for the fact that there's "no law regulating digital currency", in a country where the President can round up Parliament and throw them in prison... it really doesn't fucking matter.

      • Re: Irrelevant. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Egypt is not a secular country. The constitution of Egipt recognizes Islam as the state religion, and Sharia as the source of authority. Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt recognized Sharia as the highest law of the land. Also, it supports oppressive laws against non-muslims, while the police is notorious for not protecting them.

        Don't lie, buddy. World is a small place.

        • Re: Irrelevant. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Plus1Entropy ( 4481723 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @06:15AM (#52252459)

          If you think the Egyptian Constitution or the Supreme Constitutional Court means anything, you're a fool. By the way, which Constitution is that? The 1971 Constitution that remained in place until the 2011 revolution? Or the interim one adopted afterwards? What about the highly controversial one that, due to the inclusion of a Blasphemy Law (something existing in other Islamic nations but not Egypt), passed with 64% support only 33% of the population, due to the other 67% boycotting the vote? Perhaps you're talking about the latest Constitution "amended" by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which miraculously passed in 2014 with 98.1% (of 36%) of the voters supporting it? Or maybe it doesn't fucking matter because it's a military dictatorship.

          If an Imam speaks out against the army, they will throw his ass in fucking jail, or even kill him, without a second thought. Remember when the army massacred the protesters at the Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque [wikipedia.org] in August 2013? By the way, those protesters were calling for the establishment of an Islamic state [webcitation.org].

          There are laws based on Islam, but there are also civil laws from the era of Napoleon, and even laws left over from British rule. Again, it doesn't fucking matter because it's a military dictatorship. There's a theme here, are you picking up on it yet?

          Speaking of the British, did you know their Head of State is also the leader of the Anglican Church? Shit, I guess that makes the UK a theocracy. Oh wait, no it doesn't because sometimes things are more complicated than they seem.

          • Actually, the UK is a theocratic feudal dictatorship that allows a secular Parliament to run the government. The Queen has the right to veto laws and dissolve Parliament. It's really strange but, seems to work for them.

            • Actually, the UK is a theocratic feudal dictatorship that allows a secular Parliament to run the government. The Queen has the right to veto laws and dissolve Parliament. It's really strange but, seems to work for them.

              But if she did, the British would finish the job Cromwell started faster than she could bolt up the tower's stairs. The queen is the source of authority but she doesn't get to exercise it.

              I call it 'A system of threats and balances".

              • The law says that the Queen is the head of the national religion, can veto laws, and can dissolve Parliament. In practice, the Archbishop of Canterbury is in charge of the Church of England (as much as anyone is; I don't have actual Anglican friends), and she has the power to veto one law and dissolve Parliament one time, after which the laws would be changed.

              • It's been said -- in apparent seriousness -- that the Constitution holds the same position in the U.S. that the monarch holds in the UK: officially the basis of the government, but in reality doesn't really much matter.

                Given the mismatch between the government and the Constitution, I'd have to say that wag got it right.

      • Not socialism, the word you're looking for is totalitarianism.

        • Re:Irrelevant. (Score:5, Informative)

          by Plus1Entropy ( 4481723 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @07:04AM (#52252623)

          Alright, I simplified a bit. Nasserism, named after Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the man who orchestrated the 1952 Revolution, from which the current Government is still derived, is based on Arab Nationalism and Socialism. Egypt under Nasser was very Socialist, taking and redistributing land, and establishing a largely public-sector based economy. Since Nasser's death, a lot of that has been relaxed, and even dismantled, to the point where Egypt could be fairly described as a Mixed economy today.

          However, the military still comprises a significant portion (I believe around 1/3) of the economy. I do not mean that Egypt spends 1/3 of it's GDP on the military: remember the whole "you have two cows, the government takes them and sells you the milk"? Well, that's Egypt in a nutshell: like I said in the GP, you can buy orange juice and bread from the army.

          This gets very complicated due to the high level of corruption and the so-called "deep state". The army is separate yet deeply entwined with the Government; they can often act as independent entities or the same entity. The police sometimes act as an arm of the military, and sometimes they go on strike and the army guns them down in the street. It's stupidly complex.

          The point is, there are still a lot of things that remain from the days of Nasser, such as not being able to take large sums of money out of the country. This is because the Government might one day decide that they want your money. That's what was relevant to TFA. What was I going to do, give an entire history of a country that's over 5000 years old?

          Pyramids yadda yadda yadda Cleopatra yadda yadda yadda Napoleon yadda yadda Bitcoin.

        • No, if the government controls distribution of basic necessities, that's socialist.
    • Obviously he didn't pay the right government official.

  • Caught red handed! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @11:51PM (#52251337)
    Caught red handed with a "smart tablet." As opposed to ... a stone tablet? I think those caused more trouble in Egypt back in the day than anything made by Samsung or ASUS. And ... caught with $13k in cash? Like ... enough to buy a modest used car? Criminal Super Villains just ain't what they used to be.

    • Having large sums of cash is, for all intensive purposes, illegal. Unless you can prove, without the slightest doubt that the money is legit and not used in crime.

      United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency
      The district court's opinion includes no finding as to the credibility of Gonzolez and the other two claimants. The court did observe that the explanations of the claimants were “plausible and consistent,” but this is different from a finding that the court actually believed the testimony.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "all intensive purposes". Bob: "For all intensive purposes, I should be able to buy that for pennies" Jim: "I don't understand your purpose Bob unless it's truly intensive"

        I think people use this phrase far too often. It's "for all *intents* and purposes". It's one of those phrases that don't mean anything and take up space.

        • Re:Caught red handed! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @07:37PM (#52256057)

          It's one of those phrases that don't mean anything and take up space.

          No, the problem is that it DOES mean something, and that people still go ahead and use a bastardization of it, and in the wrong context anyway - thus making what they are saying that moment meaningless and taking up space.

          "For all intents and purposes" refers to the (described, referred-to) thing's purpose, and the intentions of the person using/deploying/offering/whatever it. The phrase is correctly trotted out when the use to which something has been put is (or is perhaps anticipated to be) wrong ... NOT the intended purpose.

          Alas, it's now right up there "I could care less," when it comes to people uttering syllables that sound vaguely like what someone else said, and to which they haven't applied a moment's thought - to realize they're just making noises instead of communicating what they really mean.

      • Re:Caught red handed! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lgw ( 121541 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @12:47PM (#52254107) Journal

        for all intensive purposes

        Surely you meant "for all in tents, and porpoises"

      • If a corporation has rights because it is an extension of people (that have rights), then money should also have rights because it is an extension of people. That means money gets the right to presumption of innocence, and the police must prove a crime to confiscate it.

        • The corporation analogy is a bit of a stretch. Corporations are treated as legal persons not only because they are owned by people but because, at the direction of their owners, they hold property, enter into contracts, and interact with others as distinct entities under their own names. Money doesn't do any of that, so it doesn't make sense to treat it as a legal person.

          However, the money was seized from someone, and that person ought to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. When funds are seized witho

  • Laws? Regulations? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @11:54PM (#52251355) Journal

    The strangest part of the article is "it is unclear what specific law Mr. Ahmed was breaking, as there are no regulations on digital currencies in Egypt."

    Is this meant to be a joke? Have you not noticed that there is a dictatorship in power in Egypt and there isn't a functioning rule of law.

    The only crime in that type of society is "upsetting the people in power".

    • In other words, it's not a rule of law, but a rule of men. The law is not the supreme authority on what is legal. Rather, it is the expression of the wishes of the men who rule. The fact that they have not codified all their wishes in laws, does not mean that they don't have other wishes.
      • The Ruler makes the Law. The King says what must be done and the people do it. That is the MENA definition of democracy and rule of law. The interesting thing is that in general, it works rather well, until some do gooder - usually the USA - noses in and messes everything up.
        • It is the accepted understanding that the law is only the law if its makers are not above the law. That was the inadvertent consequence of The Code of Hammurabi. But The Code of Hammurabi created a new form of social order -- the one in which a set of written rules is what determines what is acceptable behavior rather than the whims of rulers. This is what you get when you have a rule of law. When you have a rule of men, you get a dictatorship (and hope that it's benevolent towards the group of people t

  • If the article writer was unclear what specific law was broken, the writer is not qualified to write any money related stories.

    Moving money around the world is subjected to Anti-Money Laundry laws, and very possible that Egypt has some sort of foreign currency restrictions (may be as simple as all FX must go through regulated institutes, likely to fit with the same AML laws). Note, you can thanks the US for the AML laws world wide, because the US Govt would ban and sanction any financial institute which wo

    • Suppose you buy large amounts of bitcoins below market value from people who are anonymous. Suppose, you don't provide any service to those people except anonymity. At the same time you take a margin which is a lot higher than a regular bitcoin trader. You can then reasonably suspect that the bitcoins you received came from criminal activity. If you cannot provide a reasonable alternative explanation and the bitcoins can be proven to be from criminals, then an accusation of money laundering would be justi

  • Outlawing Cash (Score:5, Informative)

    by zapadnik ( 2965889 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @01:33AM (#52251653)

    We laugh at the Egyptians, but the European Union is pushing to outlaw EU 500 notes and all cash transactions over EU 5000. With fiat currencies debased so much these kinds of controls usually happen in regimes that fear hyperinflation and massive withdrawals from banks once debts are seen as unserviceable.

    Citation: from the usually pro-EU/pro-Collectivist Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]

    When cash disappears so does your privacy. The Orwellian State is made possible in a cashless society where Big Brother knows your every move.

    Of course, this being sold as "combating terrorism" - yet the European Union is letting potential jihadi terrorists flood in unvetted by the hundreds of thousands. Banning cash looks more like a move by technocrats to control the existing tax slaves.

    • Your 'informative' citation says zero about the EU banning anything. It talks about a PROPOSAL, to ban them IN GERMANY, which has (again from your citation) met with large reactions, none of them positive. Germany != EU. Proposal != ban. Clearly you have an EU axe to grind.

      They (the people that run the Euro, who again are not the EU) are thinking of phasing out EU 500 notes as they are rarely used for legitimate purposes (like a worse version of £100 notes in Scotland or £50 notes in England,

  • There is a law about foreign exchange (Score:5, Informative)

    by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Sunday June 05, 2016 @05:55AM (#52252413)
    If he had exchanged his bitcoins for egyptian pounds he would have been fine. But he exchanged against a foreign currency for which there a re law regulating and only allowing banks, exchanged among other. You cannot setup a street corner egyptian pound to dollar or euro exchange. That is the law he broke. This is not about bitcoins being legal or not this is about exchanging for foreign currency , laws which many of the country of the world I went to had.
  • Sounds like a villain in a bad James Bond copycat. Definitely, that's evidence enough to arrest him and make him pay for his crimes.

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