Whether you made a profit or not doesn't have to be a consideration as far as tax goes. You pay a percentage of the capital amount when you choose to liquidate your asset. It's effectively a wealth tax. There are lots of taxes around the world that work this way. It sucks if you've made a loss, but that's not really the government's problem.
It's not exactly a wealth tax, but it's also hard to consider a capital gains tax because you can't deduct losses. Treating other investment products this way would probably have horrific results, because it heavily disincentivizes taking on any risk.
If, on the other hand, you put down your money in bitcoin or at the online blackjack tables then you're gambling, not investing. Win or lose, your gamble creates zero domestic growth. Why should any government incentivize that?
Well maybe they shouldn't, but it's shitty to apply this kind of policy retroactively. (I don't know when they actually announced the fact that you can't deduct losses.)
"Generally, the Finnish legal system does not permit ex post facto laws"
> In civil matters, such as taxation, ex post facto laws may be made in some circumstances.
Instead, investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies benefit the economy in very similar ways. In both cases, companies hold on to these assets, and can sell them to raise money for doing projects, buying companies, hiring employees, etc.
But government's probably shouldn't be incentivizing or de-incentivizing any investing. Saving money is sometimes the best thing to do with it.
Perhaps the government shouldn't incentivize their residents to make suboptimal investments.
"It's not really the government's problem if they impoverish their citizens and hurt their economy."
No, it's a 30-34% wealth tax! (Or better, transaction tax.)
Yes, you have to pay taxes on the gains when you liquidate but you can offset that with any losses too