Turkey (Unintentionally) Builds Case for Bitcoin as It Plans to Convert Citizens' Gold to Lira
The Turkish government is working on plans to get its citizens to hand in ‘under the mattress’ gold in its latest scheme to prop up the value of its national currency, the lira. But according to some, the country would have been much better off had it just embraced bitcoin (BTC).
According to a Financial Times report from this week, the Turkish government has already made deals with five gold refineries to help convert gold jewelry handed in by citizens into gold bullion that is to be added to the central bank’s reserves.
The deals with the refineries come in addition to a collaboration with more than 30,000 gold shops, which Turkey’s finance minister, Nureddin Nebati, said would play a central role in the scheme. That is according to unnamed sources cited in the Financial Times report who were present during a meeting with foreign investors in London this week.
According to the same sources, the finance minister said the government hopes that 10% of the USD 250bn worth of private gold it estimates is held by Turks will be handed over as part of the scheme.
The scheme was also briefly described in a press release from the Turkish central bank in December, saying it is intended to “support financial stability.”
Commenting on the Turkish plan to convert citizens’ gold into lira, George Kikvadze, co-founder of blockchain infrastructure provider Bitfury, said on Twitter that it would have been “much smarter” for the Turkish government to instead embrace bitcoin.
If Turkey had embraced BTC, “[i]ts citizens and Central Bank would have been sitting on tens of billions in assets now,” Kikvadze added.
But although the government may be reluctant to the idea, Turkish people have already embraced bitcoin in record numbers, according to
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