{"id":14562,"date":"2012-12-05T16:07:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-05T23:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14562"},"modified":"2012-12-05T16:07:18","modified_gmt":"2012-12-05T23:07:18","slug":"dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14562","title":{"rendered":"Dollar-Less Iranians Discover Virtual Currency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dollar-Less Iranians Discover Virtual Currency<\/strong>
\nBy Max Raskin – 29 November, 2012 – Bloomberg<\/p>\n

Under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, dollars are hard to come by in Iran. The rial fell from 20,160 against the greenback on the street market in August to 36,500 rials to the dollar in October. It\u2019s settled, for now, around 27,000. The central bank\u2019s fixed official rate is 12,260. Yet there\u2019s one currency in Iran that has kept its value and can be used to purchase goods from abroad: bitcoins, the online-only currency.<\/p>\n

Created in 2009 by a mysterious programmer named Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoins behave a lot like any currency. Their value is determined by demand, and they can be used to buy stuff. Bitcoin transactions are encrypted and handled by a decentralized global network of tens of thousands of personal computers. Merchants around the world accept the currency, from a bakery in San Francisco to a dentist in Finland. Individuals who own bitcoins and wish to exchange them for physical currencies like euros or dollars can use exchange sites such as localbitcoins.com, a Finland-based site founded by Jeremias Kangas. \u201cI believe that bitcoin is, or will be in the future, a very effective tool for individuals who want to avoid sanctions, currency restrictions, and high inflation in countries such as Iran,\u201d Kangas wrote in an e-mail.<\/p>\n

The advantage for Iranians is that bitcoins can be swapped for dollars that can then be kept outside the country. Another plus: Regulators can\u2019t easily track the transactions, since bitcoins aren\u2019t issued from a central server. Bitcoin users can conduct business on virtual private networks, which hide customers\u2019 identities.<\/p>\n

At online store coinDL.com, shoppers can use bitcoins to buy Beyond Matter, the latest album from Iranian artist Mohammad Rafigh. Anyone in the U.S. downloading songs, which fetch .039 bitcoins or 45\u00a2 each, risks violating U.S. sanctions. That doesn\u2019t bother Rafigh, who\u2019s studying computer engineering as well as playing music. \u201cBitcoin is so interesting for me,\u201d Rafigh wrote in an e-mail. \u201cI wish the culture of using digital money spreads all over the world, because it does not have any dependency on anything like politics.\u201d Rafigh has translated some bitcoin software into Farsi for his friends. \u201cI love Iran, and if bitcoin is good for me, it can be good for more Iranians like me.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dollar-Less Iranians Discover Virtual Currency By Max Raskin – 29 November, 2012 – Bloomberg Under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, dollars are hard to come by in Iran. The rial fell from 20,160 against the greenback on the street market in August to 36,500 rials to the dollar in October. It\u2019s settled, more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3775],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14563,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14562\/revisions\/14563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}