Bitcoin Price Hits New All-Time High Against Turkish Lira

A famous Bitcoin skeptic has called for a gold-backed currency to save Turkey as its national fiat currency collapses.

In a tweet on August 3, John Hopkins professor Steve Hanke argued that hard money was now the only way out for Turkey, which has spent billions of dollars propping up the lira.

At press time, those efforts were still in vain, as another day of intense selling sent the lira to a record low against various currencies including the euro and Bitcoin.

"The central bank's net foreign assets are a staggering negative $32 billion. Turkey has run out of ammunition in its futile defense of the hopeless lira. Only a gold-backed currency board can save the lira."

Turkey's situation is reminiscent of that which engulfed Russia in 2014, as the Ukraine crisis sparked a rout that saw the central bank continually selling foreign exchange reserves to steady the ruble.

Ankara has taken a laissez-faire approach to Bitcoin regulation, with a lack of formal recognition ironically contrasting with moves such as a ban on PayPal in 2016.Gold and Bitcoin bugs unite against interventionism.

Hanke is well known as preferring other safe-haven assets to BTC, which in June he described as "Not a currency."

Interventionist strategies on the part of governments and central banks when it comes to currency forms a major argument in favor of Bitcoin as an alternative.

As Saifedean Ammous notes in his now ubiquitous book, "The Bitcoin Standard," the foreign exchange leverage that Turkey is now using only came about because governments removed the gold backing of their respective currencies.

In a timely post this week, Ammous highlighted a 1957 essay by Ludwig von Mises as an essential weapon against bowing to what he called the "Inflationist nonsense" of fiat.