Bitcoin Forum

The idea: distribute bitcoin to every greek citizen. N bitcoin per citizen.

Not an altcoin. Why? Bitcoin has security and a record.

1. TPTB have effectively isolated Greece from the international financial system.

2. Greek citizens still need to transact and have an economy. There are already reports of issuance of store scrip and other "currencies"


The relevance of point #1: Because the Greek economy is isolated from the international banking system, bitcoins that are distributed to Greece will be more difficult to turn back into fiat. I.e., if you give a Greek a bitcoin, where are they going to sell it? Online, and then transfer their newly obtained fiat to their Greek bank account - the account that's controlled by their government?

Relevance of points #1 and #2 combined - the current fiat value of bitcoin has little relevance to this application. Due to the financial isolation of Greece, a unique value for bitcoin will exist in greece, because people need to transact, get paid, and pay people.

An easy way to do this would be to distribute to employers, so they could pay their employees in bitcoin. But this has inherent problems.

Granted, their are difficulties associated with such an "airdrop", but if this catches, the headline is "bitcoin bails out the greek people".

Its not bailing out the banks. I think the banks would actually freak out about this, because if everyone had bitcoin, they wouldn't need to go back to their fiat accounts.

There's only 11 million people in greece.

the Price of bitcoin is too high it,s better that they make there own cryptocurrency to pay for wages and expenses bitdrachma or drachmae free coin to give for averyone but if anyone want to donate some bitcoins they can give them to me

Not a good idea. Here are the reasons.

1. Who will fund this? Imagine some one is ready to donate BTC11,000 for this purpose. That still works out to just BTC0.001 per Greek citizen, which is less than $1 in value.

2. Most of the Greeks have never heard about Bitcoins.

3. 99% of the Greeks don't know how to use them, or how to store them.

Read the post. The price doesn't matter.

So then I fly to Greece and buy 100 hotels for $5 bucks.  Yeah, that makes sense.

I don't understand why everyone is trying to save Greece? This isn't the first and last time that this has happened.
According to the Russian Agency Sputnjik (I can't find the correct source at the moment), between 1975. and 2006. 71 countries went bankrupt. Some went bankrupt even years later such as Iceland and Pakistan.

If you think that you can win the fight against the global oligarchy of bankers, think again and read this (http://beta.counterpunch.org/2015/07/03/greece-and-global-class-war/). I don't see the benefits of this project.

If you send 1BTC to every greek thats 11000000 coins. Probably more than there is totally...

Lets says we did it anyway and the greeks adobted it. Every BTC would soon be worth 50 times todays value. The problem now was just that only greeks had BTC and noone on this forum had any...


Se the problem when a lagre mass adobt a currency at once. BTC must grow slowly to become a real currency. Not go from a nerd fantasy to full scale economy overnight.

Someone is going to create GreekCoin soon enough.

Stop talking nonsense and do proper research. Exactly where do you think that you can acquire 11 Million Bitcoin?
The current supply is ~14.35M. If you factor in the coins that Satoshi has, all thefts, losses and people who aren't willing to sell there is no way to find that amount of Bitcoin. Even if you buy up everything from every exchange you can't do that. Besides, why would anyone from the forum give his money away to Greeks? Are you trying to tell me that there are no people that have it worse?

Even if you just bought up 1M the price would skyrocket and you would not be able to buy more. I just don't understand how people can think like this. There is no problem with Bitcoin and mass adoption. We will trade in mBTC or other denominations and problem is solved. Your post is of no value.

There is already a coin for them. Whoever creates such coins is most likely doing so for their own interest.

I agree. Airdropping coins is stupid and does not help anyone (except the ego of the benefactors). Throwing more money at people that have shown they can't manage their funds will not lead to improvements in behavior. People have to get out of their dependency and help themselves. That's hard, but the only possible solution that will be sustainable.

Airdropping coins is also stupid in regard to the coin dropped, because if you get something for free, you are less likely to perceive it as valuable. In worst case, you might presume that the airdrop is done out of malicious motives - because nowadays, who is gonna give something away for free without expecting something in return?

ya.ya.yo!

No need to go for a whole country. Start smaller. Choose a small Greek island or town, preferably with a lot of tourism. If it works there and people actually start using it for their daily transactions... then the rest of the country will follow.

Some time ago Coinapult tried to do this with a small Caribbean island, the idea was abandoned.


Szabo had a post about this in which he suggests just trying it with a small supply chain with a closed cycle.


http://unenumerated.blogspot.com.es/2015/07/the-greek-financial-mess-and-some-ways.html

Read the second sentence slowly a few times before you say i talk nonsense....

1st bold: You are equating people with governments. The citizens of greece did not do this. This is like saying that every US citizen is responsible for the Iraq / Afghanistan war.

2nd bold - if everyone in greece was given the same amount of bitcoin, and things at the store were listed in bitcoin prices, and people were paid in bitcoin - they would see the value.

other posts: GreeceCoin already exist. One could try with an altcoin, but altcoins 1) are associated with scams 2) are easily manipulated in their early days. The people of greece (I assume) want some sort of reliable monetary system. Bitcoin is strong.

re: so then I fly to greece and buy 5 hotels. - that might make sense. Then greece becomes the new money capital of the world, because everyone flies their to do something with their bitcoins because its the one place in the world where bitcoin can do everything.

re: 1 bitcoin for every citizen. I wrote "N bitcoin", meaning, any number of bitcoin. it could be 0.2. it could be 0.5. Each bitcoin is worth 1 million transactions.

Hmm that wouldn't even solve much of Greece's problem in financial terms. Also, giving 11.03 million bitcoins to Greece (say 1BTC per individual) wouldn't be feasible for the network because no one will be willing to be a hero and give away millions of dollars to an economically-drowning nation. There is a way for Greece to bounce back, and we, as bitcoiners, are not heroes of the day to solve it all.

I am pretty sure there has been a greece coin already last year I think when coins named after countries were the altcoin trend.  It's too late for Bitcoin to save Greece as it takes time and money to adopt.

  I thnk if any virtual currency is going to save Greece it needs to be a new one formed and looked after from within Greece.  If it is done well with no scam it could be an interesting ride.

Imagine making a fork and spawn 11 mil now bitcoins and give them to the Greeks. Think about how it would affect the value of you and mine bitcoin, basically will you half your savings... bad idea, community will riot and abandon bitcoin for a alternative coins (its not like there is no alternative there is like 11 milion different altcoins by now).

Next problem: How the hell will you distribute em? It would be so easy for someone to steal a huge chunck in the distribution process. One of the proberties with bitcoin that no other type of money have is that once you have stolen some coins, if proberly secuired then will the bitcoin be UNRETRIVABLE for the rightful owner, even if police get you, they neet to touture you to get the password... (tourture is still illigal unless it is done on none-western people).

No, very bad idea. There is one major flaw in this plan and other pointed out this too. Who is gonna donate millions of coins to greece? Maybe you would do this?
You see bitcoin has no central economy, major financial institution or Bank of Federal Reserves. Bitcoin is peoples currency or you need to find some ultra wealthy person who will donate his coins.
It would be possible if that action would bring some investment back. But this is just a one side loan. Not gonna happen.

Airdropping is a pretty miserable idea. Coins either get dumped, squandered, lost or just sit there as no one knows what to do with them. Cards are rare enough in a lot of places in Greece. A crypto would be a curiosity and not much more.

Something would be better introduced via commerce. Businesses could offer change in the new coin, offer discounts and aim towards a closed loop. People need to know it has a sense of value instead of it magically teleporting into your computer.

This makes everything that you said obsolete.

1) Exactly who is working in this government? The citizens of Mars? During elections Greece had an usual high number of people employed (I've read about that somewhere, over 700k people), no wonder that they're going broke. They can't manage available funds at all. // Who voted for this government?
2) Star living within the realm of reality, not dream. We are unable to do that in thriving countries, then how do you expect that to happen in a country on the verge of bankruptcy?
3) I don't even know what to say..

Exactly, this can never work. Not for Greece, or any other country.

Did anybody read the link that I've previously posted? Read this before posting further nonsense (http://beta.counterpunch.org/2015/07/03/greece-and-global-class-war/).

The current state of the bitcoin economy is not enough to compare to a country's economic bitcoin is pretty small to what a country like Greece uses has a annual nations Budget deficit which is €6.356 billion just imagine that type of market cap on bitcoin a 6000x from what its now.

People in Greece are getting just 60 euros per day per person in ATM withdrawal and all the banks are closed, but sharing Bitcoins is not a good idea because not everyone out here will help, especially when it is all about anonymity, no one will ask for identity nor will anyone prove their identity, everyone will start begging for Bitcoins saying "We are Greek, we are Greek, please give some Bitcoins."

people should try it in the west indies where there is a lot of tourism cruiseship tourism all the comercial real estate and the cruiseship could try to use bitcoin

if this would be the case, i mean if you really think that if they were to adopt it in this way would rise the price x50, then they only need 0.2btc(1/5) to have x10 of btc, each

it sounds more reasonable, than giving away a whole bitcoin, remember that bitcoin was made divisible for a reason...

Assuming the value would skyrocket if a nation with a poor economy would adopt bitcoin is far-fetched. A whole nation that has no buying/spending capabilities or whatsoever in the current moment will not help bitcoin gain value in any way, though the idea of having a whole nation using it would spark some interests of using the situation by greedy capitalists to gain more money.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. BTC is international, just like the Internet and BTC's value is the same everywhere. It cannot be higher in some particular place. Greece isn't isolated. Anyone can get there by car, boat or plane.

Anyway, if you think it's a good idea, you're totally free to give away all your BTC to Greeks. Do it, some other guys may follow your leading example.

Let's observe the massive human tragedy caused by giving people free money, and propose a solution that involves giving them more free money.

lmao, yea pretty much is not the right way to actually get people to adopt a currency free money for them is gonna be like lets just use it one time and trow it away is free, most likely if they earn bitcoin like a normal economy scale then it would bring more social value and less tragedy from the current situation. 

Yes to the second paragraph, yes to the whole thing actually. BTC could be a boon to the Greeks but just handing them out won't work. Also, they're going to have an exceptionally hard time buying any due to bank situations.

What Greece needs is a BTC ecosystem (merchants accepting, workers earning, employers paying, users using BTC) which doesn't really exist there. Maybe a few hundred users? Probably mostly holders only too

How to implement such a thing? It's not like it wouldn't be welcomed, it's just a tough thing to instal from zero.

We need a BTC Flying Squad.

By greedy capitalists i asume you include those who are hoarding BTC and wait for the price to skyrocket.... :P

Uptill now, I haven't seen Bitcoin as a metal except in Internet, if bitcoin would be distributed to each Greek as a coin, how that coin will look alike, besides that the coin must have different engrave on it's metal depends on it's various denomination values.

Why not to held some education first to Greek citizen about bitcoin, how it work and all the things. So they will not panic if something happen to their wallet, or some technically problems.

who is going to fund this idea of yours? you said "There's only 11 million people in greece" how much do think is a good number to give to each citizen? 1BTC per person is ~3 billion USD. who is going to fund this. and do you think that giving $270 to each citizen is going to fix their problems?

Greeks should adopt bitcoin on their own and this process has many difficulties because first of all they don't have access to enough cash per day to buy bitcoin. besides if they buy bitcoin there is nowhere they can spend it like fiat.

ROFL
GreekCoin to the rescue !!!

it will skyrocket or at least increase significantly, because if 11M people would buy some bitcoin each, they would basically inject billion of euro into the bitcoin market, which at present is very tiny in comparison, even "1B injection" could affect it in a great way, let alone more than that

so they can cash it out for fiat and use to buy food? i dont think so

Well a bunch of us, did just that on the r/Greece sub-reddit to introduce some of the people there to Bitcoin.

We received a lot of interest until the paid shills got in there and they de-railed the whole sub-reddit with negative comments.

I think the best thing people can do to help them, would be to assist with genuine information on how to keep Bitcoin investments safe. If there are people who are interested, you just provide them with resources to get to trusted services.

The 3rd party wallet providers and exchanges are already reaching out to the Greek people on the ground.

I Skype with some of my friends there, and they all started to transfer small quantities of fiat to Bitcoin, but things are difficult, if your withdrawal limit is 60 Euro per day.  >:(

I agree with you.
As idea, it sounds good but it just not realistic.
First, who will be such ''good soul'' who will give bitcoin in the value of 3 billion usd for free?
Bill Gates?
Warren Buffett?
Be serious!
Also, who will educate people in Greece about BTC, open ATM in bitcoin, introduce bitcoin to merchants etc.
Also, anybody seriously think that several hundreds free BTC per person or family will really financially help people in Greece?
Only way how this can works is if government in Greece decide to replace Euro with BTC but I don't think this will happen in the near future.
Even with BTC Greece will still have a lot financial debts and political crisis to solve.

If we want to popularize Bitcoin, then we should strengthen our presence in social media outlets, such as Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. Nowadays, only the middle-aged and the elderly are using the News Papers and the News Channels to get their information. The younger generation is mostly getting their news from the social media.

Why would anyone waste their money on Greeks anymore?
They placed themselves in this mess, so let them dig themselves out of it aswell. I don't think there's anyone who can save them at this point anymore.

If they want to use bitcoin thats fine, but the idea of donating them coins is like dumping money into infinite void. It's never going to be enough.
It would be better option to organize crowdfunding to air some comercials describing bitcoin to the people, so that they atleast know that it exists.

cheers

Bitcoin needs Greece, more than Greece needs Bitcoin.

Do you think that Greece will be an exception, and no other country is going to default on its debt? I don't think so. Several countries are going to follow the precedent set by Greece. And that is why Greece is important for us. If we can prove that Bitcoin can be used to help the Greeks, then imagine the acceptability we will get by the time of the second crisis.

i dont think this idea can be implemented in current situation so that there will be huge amount of bitcoin will be required for this, i also think bitcoin can help the Greece's people if they move their saving into bitcoin and they can keep it safe and secure for future investment.

more important is to convince greek hotels, bars, restaurants and other vacation related services to start accepting bitcoin on their islands and tourist destinations. giving some dust btc to greeks can't solve anything..

yes it's much better a new currency (P2P)… how you found the btc for all greeks?
and how to explain to helder people this new way for send receive payment, if they don't use a smartphone or a pc?

Better? No. It might be an alternative. There are enough coins for everyone in the world.
We first have to start trying with 0.001 Bitcoin i.e. mBTC - millibitcoin. There are obviously other denominations which enables us to divide Bitcoin so that more people can use it.

Why wouldn't you use a smartphone in 2015 if you can?

The only thing that we are going to prove, by donating a huge amount of Bitcoin, is that we are a foolish community.

Greece: First ever Greek Bitcoin ATM installed in Athens suburb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmPU3ii_uE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TmPU3ii_uE)

exactly. and even if this idea can be funded through some kind of crowdfunding with generous bitcoin users, it is not going to solve the greece people's financial problems.

besides, right now if you hand them free bitcoin, they most probably will exchange it for fiat to be able to spend the money for their day to day needs.

Do not give the coins. They will have to work to earn and use those coins gradually.

are you convinced by this? if they start a p2p currency with their own blockchain, they would not be in a better position instead of going with their old dracma, both coin will be worthless, and the first will be seen as a scam, also i don't think any Government can seriously think about making a p2p currency, they look at them as a joke i believe, and don't forget that they will not have the control over it, this is a major let down for every government

I don't think any Government will create a p2p decentralized currency.
A centralized currency definitely, but it is not now and it's not Greece.
It's too early for something like this to happen I think.

No in the current state. The network is struggling with an ongoing attack, bring the Greek population in and we'll have some serious problems.
We need to fix the scalability problem before thinking about any of this, then we'll be ready.
Remember that BTC can only cope with 7 tx per second which is ridiculous to deal with a real economy.

I read today that greece people are limited to use the ATM only for 60€ which is pretty low for a person living there.
That's why people are moving to bitcoin.

People don't have to move to Bitcoin. They just have to get their cash out of the banks.
It is the government control and the banks which are the problem. If they withdraw euros and stuff it under their pillow, they should be okay.

One of the biggest reason Greek economy is totaly fucked up is because people did not pay tax. If they where to adopt a crypto as currency they would have serious problems with tax collection and would go bankrupt faster than with any other currency.

Beside some of the problems already mentioned here, i think one of the main problems would be the fact that most people are clueless and they would dump their BTC for euro as long as they figure out how the software works to do so. Remember Auroracoin? i think that is a good lesson in what happens wen you give people free coins.

That sort of depends on whether your goal is to save the Greek state, or help the Greek people...

The Greek state is not as bad off as some of the US states.  If the ECB is serious about keeping them from seceding, they will do something to keep them in the Eurozone.

Teach them first how to use the software before giving them coins, But the idea of giving free bitcoins to Greeks isn't feasible; bitcoin isn't meant to save a state from its dying economy. If we were to give every Greek 1 bitcoin, that would cost us 11 million+ bitcoins, which is more than half of the entire supply of bitcoins in existence. Also, even if we were to divide bitcoins, say give them 0.1 per individual, that wouldn't do much if the exchange rate is still swinging between $270-$280. We cannot help them, sadly, but there are other ways. Maybe a loan from the world bank or something? But even that would take them to an even bigger debt.

The state is the fundation of our civilization. They controll economy and make stuff happen. Without the state there will be no education, health care, military, road building and scientific reserarch. I dont think the greeks are ready to throw all of that out just yet.

Cool story.

Who do you think pay for police, roads and other stuff? Tooth fairy?

There are people in the world who perform elaborate dances every week because they are absolutely convinced that without that ritual the sun won't come up in the morning, or winter will never turn into spring, etc.

If people want police, roads, and other stuff, then somebody will provide that service.

The idea that only the state can provide those things is a fairy tale. It's kind of embarrassing to live in a world where so many adults still believe in those kind of myths.

It's possible in smaller communities where such things have direct impacts on the quality of life of the people you're associating with.

When you scale up it's human nature to not want to inconvenience oneself for the sake of unseen others despite making similar use of pooled facilities.

One anarcho capitalist commune is going to struggle somewhat to build a new railway. If you recruit a few others to join in, whaddya know you're mired in political manoeuvres again.

Greek city-states have shown some competence historically.
Smaller more local governance could be a big improvement in the ability to get things done without government barriers.

I am never sick and see no reason to pay anything to help with healthcare. I got all the education i need and wont pay anything to help out others getting their education. As an old anarchist i really dont care if we have police or regulations so i wont pay for that either. I drive a Jeep Cherokee and give a dam about road quality and wont pay for that either.

I do like internet so i might donate a little if nobody else is doing it.

It is not my problem if goverments fall and as a result countries dissolve and everyone is left to fend for themself. If i can save some money the rest of the world can do whatever they will. I kind of like the idea of anarchy.

Not sure the greeks are ready for it....

Fair enough. Now multiply that attitude by the population of an entire continent and see how much fun it would be to live there.

Anarchistic lifestyles are a luxury paid for by the 'sheeple'.

How would such distribution be made? I know few people that would do everything to abuse it for some free BTC.

And I think most of the Greek people would just dump them on sight, or buy something with the BTC, as they are fearing product shortage very soon

distribution like pos coin are a bad way to give money, it's very easy to make an account and retrieve much more than you are actually eligible for, unless this is done with personal id, which would require violating privacy, thus it cannot be seen as a good solution

if they want bitcoin they should simply put some money on exchange and buy it, ok greece people have their money locked, they can still buy stuff and sell them abraod for bitcoin, problem solved...

i agree. these are two valid concerns because if the such distribution were to happen a lot of people will take this opportunity to abuse it. and bitcoin anonymity will allow this to happen too.
besides if you were about to give people who don't even know about bitcoin and also there is no place to spend it while they need money for their need, they would simply dump it for cash.

So who is going to fund the project? If most Greeks don't even understand what bitcoin is in the first place the coins would just stay in the account for nothing. Plus giving a person probably a euro worth of btc doesn't give them the incentive to go through all the trouble to convert it to fiat. What they need is fast cash. Period.

Possible. I mostly wonder if it could be done, would it be for Greece or bitcoins sake?

EU would never let geek citizens starve, btw, that would be too bad PR.

What Greece should do is understand the basics of the current financial system, e.g. you pay back your creditors, and if you can not do that, the expenses must be lowered and/or income increased.

The greeks has already shown the same attitude as me when they did not pay their taxes. Economy based on donation to a common good is so different from human nature that i think we have to wait a couple of millenia.

Give bitcoin to a tribe in some south american jungle who is used to share everything and you might have a winner.

Why not moving to bitcoin, when government holds their money. It's a better move if they choose bitcoin.