Riding a wave of abnormal appreciation, bitcoin has become the world’s most popular virtual currency. And while its acceptance around the globe is increasing, Turkey is unwelcoming. The Turkish government sees virtual currencies as a bubble bound to explode and advises citizens to stay away.

Virtual money transactions have come under close scrutiny by the Central Bank of Turkey, the Capital Markets Board (CMB) and the Finance Ministry. While the Central Bank is trying to figure how far the trend might reach, the CMB warned brokers in early December against conducting spot-trade and similar transactions based on virtual currencies.

Turkey’s unwelcoming attitude has to do with bitter experiences enshrined in the Turkish psyche. In the early 1980s, the country went through a massive financial disaster when hundreds of brokerage firms went bankrupt, having offered extremely high interest rates in the newfound climate of economic deregulation. In the 1990s, thousands of Turks, lured by the promise of quick profit, lost their savings in fraudulent pyramid schemes. More recently, a similar fate befell thousands of greenhorns who hoped to make quick money from leveraged transactions on the foreign exchange (forex) market. Today, social media stories promoting investment in virtual currencies echo the ads at the height of the forex fever. In short, the propensity to keep guard against financial disasters outweighs the courage to invest in the future of virtual currencies.

In contrast, Japan, for instance, has legalized the use of cryptocurrencies, and a Japanese internet company is planning to start paying employees in bitcoin.