Bitcoin Sting Operation Nabs Egyptian Dentist (themerkle.com)

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."

Comments

Irrelevant.

[Pezbian]

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

Re:Irrelevant.

[Plus1Entropy]

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.

[Plus1Entropy]

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 in August 2013? By the way, those protesters were calling for the establishment of an Islamic state.

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.

Re:Irrelevant.

[Plus1Entropy]

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.

Outlawing Cash

[zapadnik]

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...

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.

There is a law about foreign exchange

[aepervius]

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.