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Trump Bans Venezuela's New National Cryptocurrency (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump issued an executive order Monday banning any transactions within the United States involving any digital currency issued by, for, or on behalf of the Government of Venezuela. The order applies to U.S. citizens as well as anyone within the United States, and includes cryptocurrency issued on or after January 9. President Trump's order is in response to recent attempts by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's regime to "circumvent U.S. sanctions by issuing a digital currency," the White House said in a statement. Venezuela launched its oil-backed cryptocurrency in February to help pull the country out of a continuing economic crisis. President Maduro said each petro token will be backed by one barrel of the state's national petroleum. Maduro also said roughly 100 million tokens would be issued -- estimated to be worth around $6 billion. Bitcoin prices dropped about $200 to around $8,388, according to Coinbase, following the order.

7 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does Dear Leader by omnichad · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm going to say no. He's not telling the government what to do. He's trying to make something illegal (aka against the law).

    He's trying to cite emergency powers:

    International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)

    And I think it would be awfully hard to call this a national emergency for us. On the other hand, it was Barack Obama that called it an emergency, and this new executive order merely cites it: https://www.federalregister.go...

    So yes, these executive orders are getting out of hand.

  2. Re:Does Dear Leader by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Informative

    The embargo of trade with Cuba was initiated by an executive order, so there's strong precedence for it.

  3. Re:/sarcasm Let's ban Math while we are at it ! by omnichad · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Banning" cryptocurrency is akin to trying to ban Math. Yeah, good luck with that.

    Banning math is not exactly new.

  4. Cryptocurrency market reaction by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bitcoin prices dropped about $200 to around $8,388, according to Coinbase, following the order.

    Bitcoin prices fell way more than that the day before, because someone farted in a trading room I assume. And now they are going back up. This stuff's really volatile, a $200 price change is just noise.

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  5. Can someone explain to me why we have sactions by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    on Venezuela while we help the Saudi's bomb Yemen? I get that they're government is sketchy, but we support something like 80% of the world's dictatorships. If we're trying to take the high ground on Democracy that boat has sailed, circumnavigated the globe and returned laden with exotic spice (joke shamelessly stolen from Yatzee of Zero Punctuation fame)

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  6. Re:Congress made that law by jwhyche · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny how calls of "national security"

    National security is a nice catch all phrase that they use when they want to do a end run around the law and strip you of your rights. Unless its about guns, then its "think of the children."

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    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  7. Re:For Trump, socialism==bad... by losfromla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Norway, Sweden, Finland. Germany, France, and Italy have socialist tendencies as well. Unchecked corporate greed gets you 'murika which is demonstrably bad for most.

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