Bitcoin Forum

In the past week, the country of Greece has announced a bank holiday, signalling that the country is on the brink of a financial crisis. Greece will become the first developed nation to default on an IMF loan. Greece had an outstanding loan of $1.7 billion.

“I confirm that the SDR 1.2 billion repayment (about EUR 1.5 billion) due by Greece to the IMF today has not been received. We have informed our Executive Board that Greece is now in arrears and can only receive IMF financing once the arrears are cleared."

– Gerry Rice, Director of Communications at the International Monetary Fund

If Greece decides to exit the Euro and return to its historical previous currency, the Drachma, it is possible the country will experience severe inflation and possibly even hyperinflation. During their time with the Drachma, Greece experienced a 6.32X higher price inflation than with the Euro. You might think that returning to the Drachma would give the country access to money printing, yet Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, recently disclosed that the country no longer has the capacity to print money because they rid themselves of their presses before joining the union. Furthermore, the majority of government debt is owed by foreigners and denominated in the Euro, and so it would be unable to pay off its debt through monetary inflation.

The problem would be issuing Bitcoin to the population. How could it be done, specifically? You have to give a new kind of money that doens't work under the traditional ATM machines and that doesn't exist in the physical world. How do you do it?

Greeks have problem with their economy not with their currency. Euro is fine as a FIAT can be. They don't need to exchange their currency to Bitcoins like other countries with failed economy and own currency would want. Euro won't collapse over night to have zero value. In this scenario Bitcoin could help individuals to keep their savings in case of emergency. That is all.

I don't think Greece is going to power bitcoin,because noy many people there know it, this pump of bitcoin has come because of Greece but not by Greeks

Well the Euro might be stable for know, but it's well possible that the Drachma is introduced again. Then Bitcoin would come in handy for storing value without inflation exposure. Of course this would not help their economy at all.

I seriously doubt that Bitcoin is ready for true mass adoption in Greece - most older people will have serious problems understanding the concept. Usability would have to improve first (having a very simple Bitcoin hardware device would be of great help). That said, there will be adoption by younger people for sure.

If people actually know about it and somehow decide to move their life savings into a historically volatile currency I still don't see how it would be completely possible at this point.

If they can't even get access to their "money" stuck in the banks, then there is no way to buy bitcoin.

This would have been a great idea for those who had the foresight to see this coming, but at this point it may be too late for Greece.

However, there are lessons to be learned for the rest of us so hopefully we can avoid this happening again in the future.

A huge reason why Greece went into debt was because they couldn't afford euro currency at the first place. Why would they even think of adopting a currency which will multiply even more than 55 times right after their own adoption. No sane coutnry would do that and screw themselves up like that. That is really an amazing way to destroy themselves :P

Hahah, exactly. Adopting bitcoin would screw them up very badly It will turn out really bad as its price will increase just after when they themselves adopt it :P It will be like cutting your own hands and jumping into a volcano. The country and its economy will be a huge mess for a period of 10 years now, bitcoin can help them but not as of now...