So here's some more context about the campaign, because this article is very biased as well. The information campaign is owned by both the central bank and the financial supervision committee (not sure if there's an official translation of that name). It's not a local idea, but rather a local implementation of the European effort. You can find more details here: http://www.eba.europa.eu/-/esas-warn-consumers-of-risks-in-b...
The committee's involvement is not surprising in this case. One of the agency's goals is to provide information about financial risks. It even keeps a public registry of companies reported for not paying their debts (think credit score for businesses). It's very much what they should be involved in. In case anyone thinks they're on the banks' side - they're involved in prosecuting banks and pension funds regularly.
As for the contents of the campaign's site https://uwazajnakryptowaluty.pl/ - it's very reasonable. I couldn't find anything outright wrong on it. It doesn't even tell you that you shouldn't buy Bitcoin. The repeated information and claims are not very different from what you sign when you open a share dealing account - you can lose money, gains are not guaranteed, these investments are not insured, lack of liquidity is possible, etc.
The social advertisement campaigns are also nothing uncommon in Poland. Sober driving, don't dive in shallow water, read to your kids, and similar topics are the common target of the social ads / PSAs that are created when some issue gets too common in the country.
The fact that the are no gov logos in the video clip is weird. (Also the clip is extremely cheesy - think high school video project about misinformation surrounding cryptocurrencies) But the campaign itself seems fine. The post is very sensational.
Polish people tend to have very low knowledge about any form of investing. First of all it is economically unavailable to at least ~50% of our citizens, earning dominant income of ~6400 USD per year. People with serious investing skills and knowledge are a bunch within top few percent of highest-earning citizens. I work as a programmer in software company. Many of my high-earning colleagues "invest" in Bitcoin because it's hot, while they know next to nothing about investing, markets etc. So I would agree that informational campaign is generally a good idea, learning a lesson from our history with CHF mortgages and scams like AmberGold.
As to "lack of access to information in English language" and issues with internet access, this is just funny. We have literally the cheapest internet in the world, good LTE coverage, FTTH in cities and fiber-to-every-school programme. Silicon Valley has far worse internet than most of our country, for what I've heard :)
Can confirm, this is mostly campaign to remind about risks so people make more informed decisions.
There was some other campaign couple moths ago that warned about "kryptowaluty i ich podróbki" that tried to target project advertising as cryptocurrencies that are just normal scams like OneCoin and clones (Dascoin etc). I've seen many people here in Poland falling for that.
Sure people make their own decisions, but for it to work there needs to be certain level of information available.
A central banks role is to provide the monetary system for the exchange of goods and services in a country.
If a countries citizens go and spend their personal money on risky or stupid investments, it is also the countries problem. If those investments fail, you will now probably have to use government funds to bail them out in some way. Bankruptcy is a government bailout of sorts.
Therefore it does not seem unreasonable for a central bank, whose role is ensuring a strong monetary system, to try to educate it's indirect users on good and bad risks to take to try to make the country as a whole more competitive.
If the video should have had attribution is a policy issue for YouTube and the country. Given that attribution would probably have reduced it's effectiveness, I can see why the country would want it without attribution.
This isn't education. An analogy would be a sex "education" campaign that teaches everyone they will get pregnant or AIDS the first time they have sex and that the only way to avoid such things is abstinence.
Making up lies with the hope that it will influence behavior in the "right" way is not education and is not the way a government institution should behave.
Do you speak enough Polish to evaluate the video, whether it "lies" or not, whether it is clearly presented as a hypothetical worst case scenario that actually happens to some people like government media advertising usually does (and for that matter whether it is likely to have had any editorial oversight from the Polish govt)? It would actually be interesting to hear the views of some of the Polish speakers here.
Because unless there's an awful lot lost in machine translation, the government information website it links to might be anti-crypto slanted but is pretty bland and factual about the risks involved in crypto and its status under Polish law.
(Of course, what's easier to evaluate is the judgement of English language crypto websites like Trustnodes which attack the SEC for "effectively calling investors stupid" for having the temerity to suggest they might not be in possession of all the facts and for the "draconian" halting ICOs that were "legitimate" in every way except perhaps being precisely the sort of unlawful securities offering the SEC is tasked with shutting down. So there's a distinct possibility they just might be exaggerating a tad here)
I can speak some basic polish, but it's pretty clear from the video that this is all hypothetical.
The basic moral of the video is kind of a combination of don't just assume you're going to get rich off of crypto investing and on a broader stroke, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. (e.g. - don't invest your daily spending money)
Why is it better for an institution to be agnostic about everything? If they just act rationally from their perspective then its easier to predict and make sense of things
That's a false equivalence. Fiat currencies are used FOR Ponzi schemes of course. But they are not THE ponzi scheme.
The question is, do you believe in the inherent usefulness of a specific crypto? If the only way to make money from a crypto is predicated on other people putting more money in it later on, that's the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
You don't hold onto euros and dollars because you think you can sell them later on for more money. That's why central banks have inflation targets: so that you're incentivized to use currencies as an exchange instrument, not as a store of value.
> That's why central banks have inflation targets: so that you're incentivized to use currencies as an exchange instrument, not as a store of value.
A bit off-topic, but why is that a good thing? Why is it better for currency to lose its value over time? I'd imagine this leads to people mindlessly buying more and more stuff, to use up that money before it loses its value.
On the other hand, if value of currency would increase over time, then people would have to spend it only on whatever they actually really need or desire. Is that bad?
> I'd imagine this leads to people mindlessly buying more and more stuff, to use up that money before it loses its value.
They don't spend it mindlessly, they still allocate it relative to other opportunities. Low but positive inflation makes a lot of investments relatively more attractive, therefore incentivizing people to invest in economic activities, instead of sitting on their cash. Deflation creates a dearth of resource available to invest.
Plus it's a redistribution mechanism. If all you have to do is to sit on your cash for it to grow, then it's a rich becomes richer system. If you have to invest that money, there's an uncertainty, a risk, and opportunity for people to multiply their starting capital.
Some early bitcoins buyers are saying exactly that: "I got in early, I'm set up for life, if you didn't get early enough too bad you're gonna stay poor". It's not really how we'd like an economy to function.
> [...] people would have to spend it only on whatever they actually really need or desire. Is that bad?
It's bad if you want a growing economy. And usually technical innovation comes from relatively niche investments that no one really needs right now.
If someone did call Euros a joke because of a Euro ponzi scheme, would anyone who has Euros in their bank give the slightest shit, never mind write an article about how the Euro is being "slandered"?
I recognize how my previous comment read, so I will try to explain myself better.
I have never owned any amount of a crypto, neither did I waste more than a few watt-minutes running a mining algo.
I would actually be on the other end of the stereotype, "the bitter bitcon hater that has known about it since the early days (mainly from HN) but never invested a cent in it" but alas I do not fit there either.
I am a neutral observer, interested in debate about novel forms of currency rather than any single implementation. The initial point I was trying to make is that I find the argument about ICOs (the vast majority of witch are obvious scams) detracts from the actual technology. The way the trading markets are acting does not help either.
Ah, sorry if that came across as directed at you specifically. It was more just about the 'cultishness' around Bitcoin that I think marks it out as somewhat different to regular currencies.
> If those investments fail, you will now probably have to use government funds to bail them out in some way
Why? Should I then expect the government to bail me out after I lose all of my money in blackjack, provided that sufficient amount of people do the same.
Sadly, the current party seems to be on the side of stepping in and bailing people out. Once in the instance of mortgages in Swiss Franc, which were taken in '00s (CHF went up significantly several years after, raising people's morgage almost 200%), and secondly in the case of a big precious metals investment scam (Google "Poland Amber Gold").
Those government interventions will not come without costs. A direct one resulting in forcing the taxpayers, which were responsible with their money, to reimburse those who were willing to risk taking a 30-year loan in a foreign currency, or those hoping for high profits from a precious metals investment by a company that existed for less than 2 years on the market. Another cost, which I would argue is a more dangerous one, is destroying fiscal responsibility in the mentality of people. In case of something like bitcoin it can only lead to three outcomes for the ruling party: a) the government regulates/defames or bans bitcoin, b) government accepts that it will need to bail people out at some point once a sufficient amount of "victims" complain, c) it loses the next elections to a party which will promise a bitcoin bail-out
> (...) to try to educate it's indirect users on good and bad risks to take to try to make the country as a whole more competitive. (...) Given that attribution would probably have reduced it's effectiveness, I can see why the country would want it without attribution.
I agree with the educational part, but not so much with the argument for concealing the attribution. The moment someone spills the beans, the smell of "propaganda" can have an opposite effect, i.e., "they did that in secret, because they want to keep taxing you through inflation, that's how powerful bitcoin is".
> Why? Should I then expect the government to bail me out after I lose all of my money in blackjack, provided that sufficient amount of people do the same.
Well, if the issue grows to such a great scale then bailing people out saves the society, and the economy, from collapsing.
We can argue about the methods, but, well, I guess it's noble that the gov/bank tries to warn people about the dangers of cryptocurrencies. If you look at any crisis around the world the central banks usually turned a blind eye. Then it ended with bailouts and defaults. So, better to act before, than after.
It wouldn't collapse for those that did not gamble, why should they pick up the tab? What later stops the gamblers from gambling again once the non-gambles pay off their debt, other than outright ban of gambling. Then replace 'gambling' with any voluntary risk vs gain activity.
The central bank (allegedly) works for the people. The central bank using public resources to tamper with the desires of the people is a loss of purpose. The ultimate goal of the central bank is not to have the power to control currency, but provide value for the citizens.
It is absolutely grotesque that public institutions engage in any kind of propaganda. It is also , might I add, incompetent, as a central bank revealed to do this shows that the radical crypto libertarians hating on central banks were right.
there's always a limit to "morally right" "education".
the other side is using their own 'shady' media channels ('youtube influencers') to advertise their shady product.
So your logic is that because scammers use dishonest tactics to market their scams, it should be OK for the Polish central bank to use the same shady, dishonest tactics? The whole reason scammers are willing to use those tactics is because they're swindling people. It's one of the signs they're up to no good. If they're going to act like scammers, maybe we should treat them like scammers.
By far, the most damaging malicious media influence has been done by the state. People over-investing on crypto is a petty squabble to the misdemeanors of the institution that controls the entire money supply of the country
This article is itself propaganda, of course, being from a pro-cryptocurrency "news" site. It's a little tricky to establish corroboration of the claims as all other sources are in Polish.
> "usually, within a democracy, it is illegal for state actors or contractors to engage in propaganda directed at their own citizens."
This isn't true, or at least I'm not aware of places where it is; this would make it very hard to do "public information" advertising.
I wish it were more true. Commuting between Hayward and San Francisco, I got to see lots and lots of advertising, mostly government propaganda. It fell into two categories:
1. "Instead of killing yourself, why not call a suicide hotline?" I guess BART tracks see elevated levels of suicide. I don't really have much of a problem with this one.
2. "If you let your infant sleep in the bed with you, you are a bad parent." I have a problem with this. What a disgusting thing for the government to be doing.
>What a disgusting thing for the government to be doing.
There is a significant association between bed-sharing and infant death. An adult bed presents far more hazards of entrapment, suffocation and strangulation than a properly-designed crib or bassinet. I haven't seen the advert in question and can't comment on how accurately it conveys the evidence, but I think that it's absolutely right to strongly warn parents about the risks of bed-sharing.
If you think that it's disgusting for a government agency to try and save the lives of babies, that's your prerogative.
The second message was, IIRC, motivated by a statistic showing several cases of parents inadvertently smothering their infant children when rolling onto them while asleep.
Now I have no idea if the number of cases was statistically meaningful enough to warrant action, compared to other public health risks. But I can sort of see why someone would be motivated to "do something", considering how devastating something like that must be, even compared to other accidental deaths of infants.
I'm Polish and I feel offended by this article, especially the last paragraph. Whatever our national bank did, it's not OK to write about it in such a tone.
Indeed. The author of the article seems to be implying certain things without any evidence. Most people in Poland dabbling in crypto are very well aware of information in English and use exchanges and websites that are in English anyway, so not sure where that article conclusion came from...
People dabbling in crypto are not target audience for such advert. This advert is for general public.
As for the grandparent, I think he might be in some english speaking bubble in Poland. My friends that are not IT related and are not living/working abroad are for instance not aware of the same information sources about crypto.
Internet speed ranking is some BS put there to show how Poland is behind. That could be taken out from article. But if author implies that people in Poland are so behind in technology, then they should not dabble in cryptocurrencies, and government is doing right thing.
Just this week I was explaining bitcoin to a friend. He is not frequenting english language internet, only for buying stuff from China. He knew there is bitcoin and that you can earn a lot on it. So I had to make sure that he knows buying bitcoin is buying magic beans from unknown people on internet. So this kind of campaign is good for general public. If someone is really into it, knows risks let him play. For other people, make sure they know the risks and that they can loose real money.
According to Wikipedia Poland's got 37% people who can speak English. That's across all population/ages. So yeah, claiming lack of access to primarily-English information is just silly.
Well, Poland may not be the most technologically advanced country in the world but at least most of Polish web devs can make dropdown menu to be displayed in front of the banners which is apparently beyond the abilities of this site's authors.
"...one of the least technologically advanced country in Eastern Europe, with a paltry internet speed ranking of 41..."
It's not about the "tone" or feeling "offended". It's simply uninformed.
For starters, internet speed ranking is only loosely correlated with overall technological advancement - speaking in the context of developed countries, among which these differences tend to be fairly subtle already.
The World Economic Forum's Networked Readiness Index (which "measures the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities offered by ICT") places Poland at 7th out of 20 Eastern European countries. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GITR2016/WEF_GITR_Chapter1.1_20...
Interesting note: Polish government wanted to implement a Polish cryptocurrency backed by the Polish currency PLN (similar to Tether) named dPLN, but then backed off the project [1] (link in Polish). Has anyone got any insider info on this?
No, it wasn't the government - just a private company running within a state-sponsored accelerator. The government withdrew their funds after finding out about it.
Of course they did, because cryptos are a dire threat to their hegemony. Visa introduced changes to charge more for purchasing cryptos with their cards. Some banks block cards that are used for purchasing cryptos. Sometimes even your credit scored is lowered just for purchasing them.
The banking cartels have a vested interest in discouraging the public from taking any interest in cryptocurrencies at all, and they're only getting started. They will bring out the big guns soon, an you'll seeplain as day that the only thing they're interested in is they're bottom line, which is dependent on them controlling all your finances and taking a cut of every transaction you make.
Cryptos are a way to circumvent their control, and it's like cutting off their oxygen supply, if they become too popular the big banks and credit card companies will wither and die.
> Sometimes even your credit scored is lowered just for purchasing them.
Got any links about it? That's at least unexpected. One of the parties in the transaction would have to explicitly report that. I'd like to see what that credit line would look like.
The rest I'd expect, since those issues are directly related to Visa / banks protecting themselves from specific transactions. It doesn't even matter that it's specifically cryptocurrency on the other end. Just like they charge more for using credit cards for preorders at standard currency exchanges.
What they /probably/ mean is that VISA set a higher charge level for cryptocurrency exchanges than for other vendors.
Since the charges imposed by VISA are intimately related to the level of fraud they expect to see from a given vendor & the cryptocurrency space is stuffed to the brim with fraudsters and con artists this ought to be entirely unsurprising.
(2)_update.PNG){kind=link}
The committee's involvement is not surprising in this case. One of the agency's goals is to provide information about financial risks. It even keeps a public registry of companies reported for not paying their debts (think credit score for businesses). It's very much what they should be involved in. In case anyone thinks they're on the banks' side - they're involved in prosecuting banks and pension funds regularly.
As for the contents of the campaign's site https://uwazajnakryptowaluty.pl/ - it's very reasonable. I couldn't find anything outright wrong on it. It doesn't even tell you that you shouldn't buy Bitcoin. The repeated information and claims are not very different from what you sign when you open a share dealing account - you can lose money, gains are not guaranteed, these investments are not insured, lack of liquidity is possible, etc.
The social advertisement campaigns are also nothing uncommon in Poland. Sober driving, don't dive in shallow water, read to your kids, and similar topics are the common target of the social ads / PSAs that are created when some issue gets too common in the country.
The fact that the are no gov logos in the video clip is weird. (Also the clip is extremely cheesy - think high school video project about misinformation surrounding cryptocurrencies) But the campaign itself seems fine. The post is very sensational.