Soona Amhaz, Cofounder at Token Daily Capital tweeted a video last night of a “mainstream” Arabic news outlet talking about using Bitcoin as a way to get around capital control after protests in Lebanon. This week, thousands were protesting against the new Prime Minister who is backed by a militant group and its allies.
My mom has mainstream Arabic news on (@AlMayadeenNews) in our living room to track the protests in Lebanon and I just caught a clip of them talking about bitcoin to get around capital controls this is insane pic.twitter.com/CVCg9V7li7
— Soona (@soonaorlater) December 24, 2019
I am unable to translate the video, but Ahmaz did Twitter that favor.
“She’s says ‘okay to start, using digital money is illegal right - the bank of Lebanon will not allow it correct?” Amhaz continued, “He responds it’s not illegal btw and talks about bitcoin and dapps being the future. admittedly i did not expect them to know about dapps.”
Ahmaz posted a tweet shortly after of another clip where the newscaster said that people were buying Bitcoin with cash, not debit cards.
Coindesk Journalist, Leigh Cuen responded with a video on Instagram where an Arabic speaking influencer was promoting crypto, citing a person being unable to get their money from a bank. Again, we are not able to translate exactly what was happening at this Lebanese bank, but the original poster commented this.
“bank refused to give a poor man his money, so he came back with his friends to try and get it”
Leigh, an expert on Bitcoin’s use cases as a currency then elaborated on what she thought about the situation.
They are actually using bitcoin for what it was designed to do but the adoption process is painful to watch. (& honestly idk how long the btc honeymoon period will last…)”