Baku, Azerbaijan, April 20
By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:
Although High Council of Cyberspace of Iran (HCC) earlier expressed its positive view concerning the Bitcoin, Central Bank of Iran seems to have other ideas on the subject.
Mohammad Beigi, the Director of the Payment System department of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), has said that trading the Bitcoin at the exchange bureaus of the country is against the law.
“Those exchange bureaus that are engaged in selling Bitcoin are unauthorized,” Ibena (Iranian banks and economy news agency) quoted him as saying.
Last year rumors swept the media that the country’s ICT ministry was preparing to embrace the Bitcoin as a solution to bypass economic sanctions that previously disconnected Iran’s banking system from global commerce and finance.
The comments came amid the recent chaos in the Iranian currency market and only a few days after the central bank’s decision on imposing a ban on the sale of foreign currencies at exchange bureaus.
The new directive has said that the exchange bureaus no longer have the right to buy, sell, or transfer foreign currencies, and the central bank will no longer provide cash to the bureaus.
The Iranian national currency, rial, gave up some 20 percent against the US dollar in two weeks. Many in Iran over the past weeks rushed to hedge against depreciation of their assets amid fears over an imminent collapse of the nuclear deal and the return of economic sanctions.
First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri had previously announced the government's decision to unify the country’s official and open market exchange rates.
Jahangiri, after an emergency cabinet meeting, appeared on TV to announce that the price of the US dollar would be 42,000 rials in both markets, and for all business activities.
The decision was made following recent fluctuations in the country after the rial declined to an all-time low and fell to 6,460 in early April the unregulated currency market.
Psychological behavior, growth in demand, getting assets out of the country, political and diplomatic tensions, as well as security concerns and risk of military confrontation, are believed to be among the main reasons behind the sharp plunge of the value of Iran’s national currency.