Bitcoin Forum

Read about it here http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/33fb34b4-8df8-11e2-9d6b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Nh4PjXyG.

They took money out of every bank account. Now, that's a first AFAIK.

I would say bitcoin is needed more than ever to save oneself from all those banksters.

It is also kind of weird. Do the politicians and bigwigs over there keep their money under their mattress instead of in a bank?

I am wondering why it wouldn't've been easier to just print moar money, thus taking it out of all deposits, whether in trouser pockets, under mattresses, in banks,in the back of the glove-compartment, wherever.

I seem to have exceeded my teaser-article-access quota (pre-capture "tour") at that site for the day so I cannot actually read it right now.

-MarkM-

wall street journal version

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578362180039767150.html

snap bank holiday and they are using a real public holiday to do it  :D

Bah, no "tour" at WSJ too today and amazingly I hadn't already been captured by them long ago as I at first guessed I likely had been. (Been too canny too long, I guess. :))

Thank gosh for Google -> BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21797888

-MarkM-

Cyprus is a member of the eurozone, hence, they can't print money at will. Only germany can these days  ::), to their own interest of course.

they shoulda had their money in coin

I think the correct term for wide-scale theft like this is plunder.

Not unlike MF Global but seems to have a thicker patina of legitimacy applied, they are calling it a "one-off" tax on bank deposits.

I guess that isn't the wisest choice but Cyprus was unable to print the money themselves and were likely denied a bailout (why else do something like this?). If I were a Cypriot I would no longer use a bank account for anything by my current assets, I would take my chances with burglars before I'd take a chance with the governmental thieves.

Hint for European governments: DO NOT guarantee savings in bank accounts and let banks go bankrupt if they do. Your so called 'cure' is much much worse than what you are trying to cure.

It is incredibly naive to think the banking system could be bailed out by a haircut of the savings.
No one in cyprus will deposit into a bank for quite a few years. They could as well just close them.

Sorry for those savers.
On the positive side, people will for sure look for alternatives like Bitcoin.

Exactly!!!

According to Dutch newspapers they did it because the majority of the savings in Cyprus were from tax evading Russians and that this was the reason the European Union wouldn't bail Cyprus out directly.

I buy that, but that does not change the effect. Depositors will seek to withdraw their remaining money as cash or transfer to Germany.
It is very likely that both actions will be substantially limited in addition as the banks open.

i just came back from 3 months in Cyprus_
Quite something:
So they are paying 5.8 Billion to get an interest bearing loan of 10 Billion...

It is getting more and more obvious :)

This news is crazy. It's going wild in Finland. I think that people will start increasingly worrying that even more wealthy European countries will at some point be affected by this madness. That is good for Bitcoin.

I've been telling everyone "Bitcoin user not affected" like a madman today. :)

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3te8jo/

According to Cypriot guy comment on Reddit, the ATMs are running out of money, and they have blocked all the banking accounts  :o

http://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1aeht8/eurozone_and_imf_agree_10bneuro_cyprus_bailout/c8wouo2

Oh noes, the ATM networks is forked! :D

-MarkM-

This is huge news.  Cracks in the EU facade inevitably reappearing.

Preview of ccoming attractions in Spain, Italy?

Next week should see some interesting volatility in financial markets.

Another catalyst for continued move into BTC and metals.

Now, more than ever: be your own bank.

The Euro just forked. There is Euro on bank account in cyprus and there is Euro cash on hand or in Germany.
Their exchange rate is not 1:1.

This, sir, is awesome  :D

This should be engraved in golden letters somewhere. The Euro is forked. How about zero hedge and ars technica do a story with that headline?

I'm on the better fork.

Unbelievable. The politburo in one go violated 2 articles of their sacred Human Rights, the one about property and the one about racial discrimination. Nicely done! Hitler would be proud.

They are not even trying anymore to steal money from population stealthily via inflation, they just take their annual cut outright in one go in this case.

I am surprised that BTC is not at 80$ on the Cyprus news yet.

How long does it take to transfer 90% that left in a Cyprus's banks to mtgox these days?

If I had any money in Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Italy or actually also in Netherlands, France, UK, Germany, US and while I am at it in any other country I would be converting it promptly into Bitcoin and PM's because this one time Cyprus thing is guaranteed to become two and tree time thing before long. Luckily I have no any notable amount money in any of those countries, so I can relax and buy some more popcorn.

They key is that they have reneged on deposit insurance. I think this is the beginning of the end of most modern fiat currencies. For all we know 2013 could enter the annals of history as the year of bank runs.

Great observation.

Yay!

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3teams/

-MarkM-

THIS is very strange!!

Is this a EZB / IMF ad campaign for bitcoin?

Whats the next step in destroying worldwide confidence in fiat?

(btw, the fed makes also a very good job. $85 billion per month - LOL)

The funny thing is that I got transfered to a Western Union add when accessing this meme pic .
No thanks WU, I have got better options  ;D .

I know the end result is true, but you make it sound as if bitcoin people are plundering cypriots' bank account.

Because they are using euro, so they can't print on their own will?

Quote of the year

When i read it today, i simply couldn't believe it.
They just took people's money. Just stole it. Just like that.

THIS IS UN-FUCKIN-BELIEVABLE. Is the system really already starting to crash ?

Borrowed from somebody earlier in the topic:

http://i.qkme.me/3te8jo.jpg

Would anyone kindly copy the entire article and put it here or on a pastebin ? That silly site asks for free registration and then you can read a whopping 8 articles for free every 30 days after that.

Type in cache: before the URL

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F33fb34b4-8df8-11e2-9d6b-00144feabdc0.html%23axzz2Nh4PjXyG&aq=f&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F33fb34b4-8df8-11e2-9d6b-00144feabdc0.html%23axzz2Nh4PjXyG&aqs=chrome.0.57j58j59l2j60l2.1937&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/cyprus-savings-levy-imposed-eurozone

Here is another article.  This may be the biggest mistake made since the idea of borrowing all of the money in the first place.  It sets a bad precedent and will set off (STARTING MONDAY) runs on banks anywhere in Europe that has a serious government debt problem.  They actually are taking 6.6% of peoples savings with less then 100k Euros and 9.9% of peoples savings with more.

They have broke the trust in banks in Cyprus for at least 20 years, and maybe in other parts of Europe as well.
 It may not get reported but I am sure all over Europe, ATMS are gonna be out of cash for a while.

That appears to be the reasoning, a similar one they used for effectively banning cash from the southern European economies. "Tax evasion" has been the convenient excuse for central bank monetary meddling for over 100 years now.

They are on a sorely misguided path. They are meddling with the basic properties of their money itself, i.e. digital fiat databases, and in the process thoroughly destablising the whole financial and economic systems.

It is is yet more evidence that they have fundamental misunderstandings about what money is and how people think about money. It is a fatal conceit of socialist power centers that inevitably leads to the collapse of their monetary systems. While we worry about the ECB writing reports about bitcoin, the ECB themselves seem not to understand how money works, in fact some of the bitcoin ECB report was revealing in how central bank bureaucrat thought about money, and it was unsettling to observe how ignorant they were in some aspects.

I would mark this as the beginning of widespread bank runs in Europe. The message is now clear, bank deposits do not belong to you but at any time the ECB can "have" them to re-allocate as they see best.

So let me get this clear, politicians in Greece have mismanaged the country for years, and when they need a bailout, they exploit the population again, while they themselves continue to live in nice houses, have lavish lifestyles, mistresses, money in tax heavens and so on.

What should really happen is that every incompetent politician should leave office, or be put in jail for the remainder of their lives, and all their posessions should be confiscated and be used to pay off governmental help. Will never happen - power and money rule everything.

So normal people should just get bitcoins, no govt. can take 10% then. Or perhaps also get some gold and silver. This means that bank deposits are not safe. They took about 1/10th now, what if there's more problems later on, they take more, and then more problems, they will take even more....

I say, let any banks who cannot sustain themselves go bankrupt. People can live off the land if need be, they did that before the banks existed.

Yes, and dutch newspapers always tell the truth. Can't go wrong on that one.

I think this is the most important observation of all and the direct apocalypse that debt based, central bank issued money does not belong to the holder but to the central bank.
So much for freedom,so much for democracy, so much for property, so much for human rights.

Greece and Cyprus are two different countries with similar problems.

People in general is not the smartest, and of course this is something that brings on panic, it would be much smarter to collect the money in batches, and not as withdraws from bank accounts, but rather as bills sent to each bank account holder. This is stupidity beyond belief.

Who is gonna leave any money in those banks now?  With almost no interest paid and the possibility of 10% disappearing at any time, the mattress seams safer now.  

Come next week they will find they have KILLED their banking industry and soon after anything dependent on it.  

My bad - foruming again when tired.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21812043

Just watch few first second of this clip. A bunch of apparatchiks coming from a meeting where they so brilliantly decided "Ohh we will just take 10% of money saved in all banks of Cyprus. Bingo! Problem Solved." Look how they are smiling and happy with themselves. These people grew up so far detached from reality. The only reason I see for them to go this route is because they have fallen for their own lies and simply unable to comprehend anymore how money actually work. They could as well have decided "let's start a snow ball of bank runs all over EU".

Edit: opps the link now shows a different video,  wow, sorry. BBC, it seems, has removed/replaced the video that showed a bunch of EU commissars smiling and happy as they get from their meeting after deciding to help themselves to 10% of money in bank accounts.  Actually 9.9%, some of them perhaps have started in marketing, 9.9% seems to be so much less than 10%.

Found it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSJRHTpKnBM  This is the video that BBC had on their website and then quietly replaced by another. It must be politically incorrect to show the shipple our unelected overlords that are happy with themselves after helping themselves for 10% of money saved in banks of a EU member country.

Politics is just and endless row of birthday parties. They have all they need in life, so they have no incentive caring for 'normal' people. In fact they have no idea what a normal life is like.

QFT +1

Vladimir: So BBC removed the video of the smiling politicians, or edited it ? What a joke.

LOL, you could just imagine a bunch of EU commissars discussing it behind closed doors:

Commisar1: Not big deal with this Cyprus thingie. We will just take 10% from all the Russian depositors and only, say 7% from all the locals.
Commisar2: Yeaha! Simple solutions are always the best. But make it 9.99% and 6.99%. Russian mafiosos are known to go mad and start shooting all the kneecaps in sight when someone takes 10% or more of their money, but anything less than 10% they would just write it off as a laundering fee and everyone will be happy.
Commisar3: Lets also make locals to fork out 6.75% to be a lil less obvious, anyway those suckers have not so much savings in their banks left and quarter of a percent here and there makes no difference anyway.
Commisar4: Perfect, we just pay 10 bils that will go direct back to our German banks the next day anyway. The rest is covered by Russians and locals.
Commisar5: Do not forget to call your buddies on Wall Street and in the City so that they buy for us and themselves a bunch of one year out calls on natural gas. Surely gasprom will make all the sheeple in EU shiver from cold this winter. Awesome, we will make a bunch on those calls and our slaves will think that damn Russians with their gasprom are at fault for doubling our cost of heating next winter.
Commisar1: OK, it is a done deal then, let's go for a dinner and celebrate the largest heist in recent banking history. Our american buddies will be green with envy once they hear about this, ha ha.

Then you have them caught on camera on their way from that meeting to an insanely expensive restaurant. Followed by a shot of propaganda signage saying: "Towards Stronger European Economic Governance".... surreal.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Yep. This link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21812043 contained this video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSJRHTpKnBM  a few hours ago. When I wrote the post I used a browser window with that URL that I opened a while ago. After I posted and refreshed that window I discovered that the video has been changed. Then I had to backpedal a bit and find the original video.

Yupp - I guess smiling politicians didn't fit well with the 'seriousness' of the issue. Important to keep the game face on..

i'm doing my part.  i shorted another 1000 shares of WU on Friday.  also:

"We have taken immediate measures so that electronic transfers cannot take effect before banks reopen on Tuesday," said the minister, who took office just two weeks ago."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578362180039767150.html

that is seriously f*cked up.  when is everybody going to realize that politicians and banksters are stealing from everyone just to keep their bonuses and risk assets propped up?

commisars=apparatchiks=thieves

So.. Cyprus now - what will be the next ? Greece ? Spain ? Portugal ?

Funny about the dude who parked his bulldozer outside one bank. I guess it would be rather tempting to just bulldoze the whole thing down:
http://www.wtop.com/681/2975963/Police-Vermont-man-crushed-cop-cars-with-tractor

you give cypriots ideas....

What about a bulldozing lease company forgetting to close the doors during the night, having all keys available,  then putting adresses of all those involved in the €10bn heist on a big poster on their doors, then discretly posting about it online. Now, isn't it just reasonable that there's an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth and so on ? So bulldozing the properties of the politicians involved would seem like a great place to start.


Kids, don't do this!

reminds me of Ireland 2010:

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/police-stand-beside-cement-truck-rammed-front-gates-photo-20101005.html

I read about a protest once where a farmer ran his tractor with a tank full of shit and sprayed the local municipality HQ. I kind of giggled. The french men aren't strangers to protests either!

http://www.brainlesstales.com/images/2010/Jul/mugging.jpg

The worst part is it will give beauracrats elsewhere some ideas.

coin just became even more valuable

no shit, Sherlock

http://rt.com/business/russia-bailout-loan-information-cyprus-banks-148/

Apparently they are also negotiating selling  information of their customers. Yep suckers keep trusting your friendly bank.

One wonders what they will do when everyone is in gold,silver or bitcoins....

They do this in Argentina all the time too. Nobody there trusts the bank, on payday there is a giant lineup outside of people draining their accounts so the govt can't arbitrarily reach in and steal their money.

Well, they could make it illegal to hold valuable metals. And they could make it illegal to hold bitcoins. But while it's easier to remove physical gold, what would they do about a brain wallet ?

waterboarding?

their will be no they when its bitcoins

It all will get more complicated once all the bankers and politicos are holding loads of bitcoins that they will have bought themselves at 1000000$ a pop.

Piggies bank runs here we come, they pay negative interest against inflation & treat you like sh@t anyway

Portugal, Italy, Greece, Greece doubled up as it's close to Cyprus, Ireland, England, Spain

pot banging:  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-10/argentinas-financial-collapse-past-prologue?page=1

There is a bigger issue your all missing here, Turkey has wanted into the EU for ages and the turkish part of Cyprus has been less friendly with large foreign depositors, Now obviously Turkey and the republic of Cyprus is now totally sucking off the ECB in order to play a bigger part in the EU, remember it was not long ago Turkey got some nice new missile batteries put on its border for protection from Syria it seems that Turkey is a strategic area for all the military crazyness happening in the middle east and asia. This does also set a precedent for other European countries to steal from depositors as surity for ECB loans.

I hate to break it to you, but the system died in 2008. All that's left now is for the corpse to stop twitching.

The world is becoming a very interesting place.

Next, I would expect the PIIGs to take their cut at every deposit and withdrawal - since people won't be leaving a lot of cash in banks.  They'll still need to use banking services for a few things though; mandated by 'law'.  Can you imagine someone with a one-thousand Euro tax bill having to deposit eleven hundred, so the ten percent can be taken off the top, first?

WTF are they thinking?

We should have a bounty for dropping informational bitcoin leaflets in places like Cyprus and Argentina, with R/C aircraft.  Our own non-lethal drone wars.  One could probably send a large, Arduino/Arduplane-controlled  Telemaster to Cyprus from Israel or Turkey for less than 25 BTC.  That would be a scheme with a pretty good ROI, one would think.

dude, Arducopters are the bomb man.

Just another demonstration how Bitcoin is by far better money than Euro (in this case).

Bitcoin is fungible. Euro is not. In Germany Euro worth 100 cents in Cyprus it is only 90-94 cents. Bitcoin worth 100000000 Satoshis everywhere.

cypherdoc: is a bank run a deflationary event?

No. This is Germany's policy. Ms Merkel's narration to Germans is that "We have to give these PIGS + C (for Cyprus) a lesson, they should not spent more than they can, or take bigger risks". Well although this entire narration utterly unfair and stupid - because people has nothing to do with banks, not in Portugal, Ireland or Cyprus - the German government doesn't care (why it should care anyway?).

So elections are closer and closer, we'll see even more incredible actions like these I guess. However, I'm sure that this is a political decision, to send a clear message to the German voter.

As most people here noted already, outside Germany the message it sends is far worse even for Germany. Because it drives the EUR towards collapse much faster and Germany being an economy entirely based on exports, it will suffer much more than avg German Joe can imagine.

We live in interesting times...

Aren't they just?

yup

like anything to do with technology the bitcoin economy will assemble at a frightening pace

that list is going to spread like wildfire in the years ahead

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/000/cache/boise-wildfire_91_600x450.jpg

haha ive seen all those pics in that thread

My first reaction "how can they just steal peoples money!?" then i realise my country(the US) does worse! they print more money, which to be blunt allows them to steal pennies from every dollar in existence where cyprus only took it from bank accounts. the bottom line... my gov't is actually stealing money from the citizens!

my only real question... why wasnt i more angry before? i knew what they were doing. was it because my bank balance still has the same numbers in it? was it because everyone has money stolen and not just a select few?

this is all disturbing to me... and im not the only one that had this reaction.

they are just grabbing the cash to pay for more powerful computers to add more zeros to the end of the numbers they already fictionally create

and to buy more coin at this stage in the game  :D

You are way closer to the truth than you might imagine.

Because these seized deposits are Tier 1 capital, i.e. unencumbered cash, then the banksters can leverage those by 10-20 to 1 with various ponzi loans and derivatives ... what that means is that 5.8 billion that they seized will most likely be used as collateral for up 58 - 100 billion in debt.

Cash is the heroin that system craves right now ... and as we witness it will do anything, legal or illegal, by which to acquire it for the next fix.

Printing money to continue overspending is bad, but taking money directly out of the account of a saver is a very different action.  It actively discourages savings and could actually break the back of the entire system because it will cause a bank run. 

One thing is still unclear to me. How can EU save the banks in Cyprus by initiating panic, chaos and bankrun? It's like trying to cure broken leg by punching it with massive metal pipe.

There is no plan to save anything. The plan is to pillage as much as possible before the cash flow dries up. It's just like the final years of the USSR.

A few billion here, a few billion there, supposedly pretty soon it starts to add up to "real money". What surprises me though is the small size of the paltry sums involved, its like, hey man, a frikkin toy currency started up by a bunch of anarchists and neckbeards uses half a bill just to see "what if" (that is, to run an experiment...).

-MarkM-

Couldn't agree more.

Note to others: I was merely reporting what the paper said, not taking a personal stance. Why do you think I reported the source?

I'm actually long WU. Have you looked at their fundamentals? Fiat currency will not die very suddenly, it will inflate with increasing speed (it already is). WU's profits will rise along with inflation.

Look at it this way.

They just got away with stealing 10% of everybody's money  ;D

Have you looked at the technicals?   

The stock has been decimated with many gap downs and is at multi year lows.

Fundamentally I don't like it either,  an outdated expensive way of sending money.

Technicals mean nothing, hence no. The only thing they meant I was able to buy cheap.

It is widely used for remittance, mainly for poor people, and will continue to do so for many years to come.

This.

Many people profited a lot from the fall of the USSR. How could I emulate their approach here?

Then it's interesting that you're here as remittance is one of bitcoin's strengths.

I agree fully. It will take a long time for the poor and uneducated to realize this benefit however. This is the main customer base of WU.

The Bitcoin strength in remittance and the fact that WU is quite leveraged were the main two arguments against investing in WU.

Nobody knows this exactly.

The fall of EU will be probably very different from the fall of USSR.

The people who profited were those who got into upper management positions in the state industries, so they could move resources overseas to claim for their own use once the government dissolved.

Noose tightening further today in Cyprus wrt. money transfers:


http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/03/euro-minister-doesnt-rule-out-taxes-on.html

Acutally, not many poor and uneducated people could afford to use WU.... people mostly use it when they are out of options.

+1

People can try and keep their fiat savings outside of the banks, but their salaries are still being deposited into bank accounts, and are vulnerable to similar sudden, retroactive changes in rules (stealing, that is). Does any company pay cash salaries any more? When I was a kid, my parents used to come home once a month with an envelope full of currency bills...

What happened in Cyprus is essentially a retroactive taxation.

News: UK government pays the full taxation for British citizens with accounts in Cyprus.

From one of the comments :

For a dessert: CEO of the biggest local bank (Bank of Cyprus), that brought about this nightmare, yesterday won the right to get his bonus of 2 Million Euro (he initially wanted 3.5 Million).

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/03/cyprus-bail-out?zid=307&ah=5e80419d1bc9821ebe173f4f0f060a07

While this increases trust, it also increases the odds of foreign governments steeling foreign money from thier own banks as there are less consequences for the local government.  It is kind of like paying a ransom.  More kidnappings will follow. 

Source?

Also, this should read:

"British taxpayers forced to pay the full taxation for Btitish citizens rich enough to hold a bank account in Cyprus."

Joe

UK isn't doing that. It's compensating civil servants and military only, not all British citizens. The assumption being that the people who work for the UK govt out there didn't choose to be there.

Okay then my source is wrong because the Dutch NOS is claiming exactly that.

If you give Google a paywalled WSJ link, it'll return a link to the full article that you can read.

so, perhaps the Cayman Islands is next?

I sure would be sweating it if I had money in Greece.  Is there a reliable and current source for bank deposit flows in Greece?

only Greece? 

perhaps it's spelled:  PIIGS

or perhaps:  PIIGSUSA

I wonder when the first names of bankers, politicians and super-rich are being leaked, who got exclusive beforehand knowledge of what's going to happen on thursday already so they could get their money out by friday.

That's what happened in Argentinia in 2001.

Joe

once again, US politicians set the bar. 

they are allowed to frontrun their political decisions in the stock market.   so why not Cyprus?

It's a frog-boil, I think.

Those guys are so used to doing things incrementally that I doubt they'll break the habit, even for something like this.

So yeah:  Greece.  Then PIIS.  Then the rest of the EZ (except Germany, of course).  But probably not the US:  here, I think they'll just keep stealing by printing money and giving it away to the banks and Wall Street.

+1 exactly !

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3teq6a/

-MarkM-

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/17/us-cyprus-parliament-idUSBRE92G03I20130317

Looks like they may change it to a more soak the rich deal.  Either way, touching bank deposits directly is poison and even a small (greater then 1%) tax on deposits will change banking forever where it is done.

Ah great. Our European officials don't even understand the word precedent. Seriously, ....

Hey,  Juncker said you gotta lie when you gotta.

Amazing!

More "news". Apparently (according to NOS) the seizure is changed to a forced stock purchase in the banks of 3.5% of amounts under 100k Euro and 12.5% of amounts above 100k euro. Furthermore these stocks will be backed by future gas sales (whatever that means).

<sarcasm>
"European officials said it would not set a precedent." - from http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/17/us-cyprus-parliament-idUSBRE92G03I20130317 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/17/us-cyprus-parliament-idUSBRE92G03I20130317)
</sarcasm>

although, to be fair, the sarcasm tags are mine.

The damage is already done ... in confidence based fiat currency it is enough to merely have the knowledge that authorities are considering seizure of deposits to precipitate the withdrawals.

Even if the eurocrat creatures totally did a u-turn on the theft/tax of bank deposits and opened up the Cyprus banks for regular trading on Tuesday the run has already started because the knowledge is now out there.

The run has begun, get out of anything to do with euro. it is no sin to panic early in these situations. The ECB is totally out of touch and out of control, it is an epic example of why centralised systems can be bought down through simple mistakes, by the powerful at the center. Bitcoin should observe and learn well ....


Edit: People saying Cyprus is small island probably don't realise that it has order of EUR60 billion in deposits. This is quite large, and the people who have money now locked up there, i.e. think Roman Abramovic, etc Russian billionaires and other powerful people are not going to react the same as your average Joe Schmo on the street and just take it up the ...

Agreed.  We will know by the end of next week.

They will get away with this as they have always done. Why? Because next week there will be 10000+ news about other financially bad situations and people will be blown into overdrive and thus keep on working hard to make up for the lost money.

Yeah so this one new in particular made a bit more headlines. Does anyone seriously think we will debate this in 1 months time?

However, doing something about this right now should be buying Bitcoins, I think we can all agree on that. But will everyone in Cyprus do it? Hell no, only few will while the rest will just get by as they have always done. Bitcoin is the least of the their concern right now and understanding this while they are desperate wont happen. Sad, but that is the world we live in.

You are right, but If there is a financial incentive for people to buy bitcoins gold / silver they will especially the people with more to loose, that is if these depositors are aware of Bitcoins existence, we need someone that reads writes the language to publish an article somewhere where they are likely to see it.

This actually is an attack on the Russians as many russians have large deposits in Cypruss, I'm sure some men close to Putin are probably very angry at this pillaging.

from  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294388/Cyprus-bailout-Osborne-vows-protect-Britains-armed-forces-Cyprus-cash-machines-EMPTIED.html


Hey pips stop worrying it has nothing to do with deposit insurance. It is a tax. Fiuiu...  and I thought there will be bank runs all over EU on Monday and Tuesday. But nothing to worry about. Your money is as save in banks as ever, keep calm and do not panic.

Here you go downfall parody on cyprus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5R2JyU_MKg . Hitler is not too happy again...

LOL  ;D  there should be a meme of the former iraqi information minister saying this.

where's the part about Bitcoin? :(

its called "the straw that breaks the camel's back".

Bitcoin was discussed on another meeting... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeT8LeP8s3M

you betcha.

Making theft legal, even if you try to call it a "tax", it going to be yet another nail in the coffin for Big Banks and The Euro for making it happen.

Dangerous steps they are doing and the vast majority of the people hit by this, are innocent of any involvement in the problem that caused it.
I bet even those who could even be blame for their troubles, have most of their ill gotten gains stashed out of reach, that is what makes it worse.

I'm glad, in the UK, they don't hold that power over our banks.
I'm also glad, much of my savings are in Bitcoin now ( I don't have that much ).

I don't think much of the politicians that run my own country (most of them are out of touch fecking idiots), but the ones "running" Euro and thought this was a good idea, are so much worse. It's already expressed why / how bad this, so I won't repeat what already been said. Quiet frankly they need to lose their jobs and never hold any such position again, completely barred.

They could of handled the same as the other bailouts, it not likely they didn't have it in the budget.

Logik, awesome - don't we all feel warm, fuzzy and nice when reading/viewing that ?

If I was MtGox, I'd be seriously considering some advertising on Cyprus national television by now. Explaining to people how "Bitcoin users are not affected" by such taxation, and also saying that this has already been happening stealthily for years due to euro inflation.

I'm not sure how practical that would be.

I mean, if you fall into the camp that believes there's no such thing as bad publicity... then sure.  But it strikes me as the best way I can think of to get the EZ politicians and bankers to unleash their EuroFuzz minions on anything and everything associated with bitcoin.  It would make everything so inconvenient.

I'm not so sure we're ready for that.

OTOH, keeping a bit underground - or at least not massively in the faces of the powers that be - has worked out pretty well, so far.

I don't see a lot of difference in doing this compared to make bailouts from taxpayers money. Actually, this is probably better for the balance: considering that the rich a generally good at hiding from taxes, a bailout from taxpayer money hits the poor more than the rich.
But a bailout from the bank accounts hit's those that have more money (ie, rich) more, which is more fair. I doubt that an average person on cyprus had a lot of money saved in their bank accounts, and thus not suffer much from what has happened.
As indicated before, it seems that a lot of people have even used cypriotic banks to hide the funds from taxes in their own countries, in which case what happened seems only better, since only the rich have suffered. A low-paid person in EU, even if he/she would like to escape taxes simply will not find it economically viable to open an offshore cyprus account.
I don't have nothing against the rich, but if a drastic measure has to be done, it's better for them to pay for it than for an average person, which is moreso the case if a bailout is financed by taxpayers.

Murderers are usually good in hiding from cops. So every time there is a murder let's just execute every 10th person in the locality.

Every complex problem has a simple (but incorrect) solution.

This comparison is just stupid. What do you think happens in your metaphor when they take bailouts from taxpayers money instead of deposits? It's like executing every 10th person in the whole world instead... It's making the poor suffering from mistakes of the rich...
This discussion is not about whether to bailout the banks, it's about the way in which it is done.

i think there's a problem with your line of logic.  you're saying that it's ok for the gov't to break the law and violate citizens rights as long as it doesn't affect you.

today it might be the rich and you'll be ok with it.  tomorrow it'll be you.

I am not ok with the concept of bailouts at all. My argument is about which evil is least.

Holy shit, you know your statist intervention is a bad idea when Paul Krugman thinks it's a bad idea (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/the-cypriot-haircut/).   I try to stay out of politics, but couldn't resist looking up PK's blog to see (what I anticipated to be) his verbose and circular defence of this action, how it was perfectly reasonable when seen in the proper light and possibly something the US should be considering.   I stand corrected!


Frank

something tells me there's going to be hell to pay for f*cking around with those Russian oligarchs.

Really.  And if not, they are going to take out everything they have there.  That will do wonders for the banking in that country. 

when do the warships arrive?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-17/russia-sending-permanent-warship-fleet-mediterranean-russian-naval-base-cyprus-comin

Lowering the German flag at the German embassy at Nikosia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6Sgax5EgKf4#!

"Thieves get out of Cyprus" is what they say..

Soon, one would think.  Cypriot/Russian relations have been pretty good for a long time - this banking clusterfuck will have quite an impact on that.  I'd expect some interesting developments soonish:  backpedaling, blustering, Turk-baiting, etc.

The saving grace is probably the huge islamic population in Russia.

I sure hope Putin didn't have any major personal stash in Cyprus.

i think the Russians can hurt them in so many ways.

here come the hacks.

Yes, would be quite poetic to see the whole EU Commission, Troika, IMF, etc and attendant parasites locked out of their bank accounts for days on end ... how's your net security Barroso? van Rompuy? Lagarde?, are you feeling lucky messing with the hard-asses monies?

Edit: "send a thief to catch a thief", russian mafia and llyod blankfein "doing God's work" springs to mind

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/36390916.jpg (http://memegenerator.net/instance/36390916)

Cyprus is gonna pay for this:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/03/20130319_putin_0.png

tl;dr Cypriots to EU: "Fuck You!"

That's it? The parliament voted 'No'?

What now? They'll let the banks break? Force taxpayers to save them? What?

Good God! Even statist of statists, Mr. ObamaCoin opposes the haircut? Day-umn, Europe is in for some hard times.

Of course, the bitcoin protocol (tx capacity, etc.) as it is right now couldn't possibly support a European rush on Bitcoin. Let's just hope bitcoin doesn't catch on too quick there or else we'll catch the devs with their pants down.

So, don't tell your cypriot friends about Bitcoin! Unless you want 15-hour confirmation times and then the alt-coins will start circling like vultures (although protocol-wise they're probably just as bad for scale.)

There are some positive aspects on this Cypriot story.

The EU has basically sent a message to other members in difficulties: "We will not save you. You'll have to find your own way out of your mess."

I just read a couple of very interesting articles on this debacle:

• About Cypriot assault (auto-translation, can't find the original in English) (http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmises.org.br%2FArticle.aspx%3Fid%3D1552)
• Cyprus and the reality of banking: Deposit haircuts are both inevitable and the right thing to do (http://detlevschlichter.com/2013/03/cyprus-and-the-reality-of-banking-deposit-haircuts-are-both-inevitable-and-the-right-thing-to-do/)

I'm really curious as to what the Cypriot government will do now.

Hopefully they'll follow Iceland's lead.

Except they're less tied-in to being nicey-nicey than those places (like Iceland) with closer cultural ties to the EU, and all that politically correct bullshit.

Maybe some bankers will swing this time.

Clearly the MPs are only stalling for time. Time they will use wisely to move their money into Bitcoin.  ;D

Bank holiday extended to March 26 ... Cypriots vs. EUdiots

people to banksters:

https://i.imgur.com/Ql61yzw.jpg

you gotta be kidding me?  that's criminal keeping ppl from their money like that.  i'm sure these ppl have bills to pay?

But it's apparently worse, keeping the bankers from what they want to be their money.

Sounds like a week's worth of serious - very serious - arm-twisting by the bankers.  I wonder if the Cypriots can withstand the pressure that will be brought to bear.  I lean towards no - unless the Russians decide it's worth a stand.

Although I understand the feeling, this is naive.

These banks are broken. It's inevitable, somebody is going to lose money. Either it will be every euro-user via inflation (the worst solution), either will be taxpayersvictims (also awful), or it will be the bank's clients. This last solution is, after all, the least unfair, as long as the current shareholders of these banks lose everything, and shares are given for those clients who suffered a cut.

Of course, bondholders and other riskier-investors should suffer cuts before checking account holders, but apparently these banks have very few bondholders, so the haircut on the accounts is inevitable - unless you replace it by something even worse.

Actually you do not get it. It is all about sovereignty or lack of thereof.

But that's not the issue here. Okay, want to be sovereign and independent of EU? Great. Declare independence. That might solve some problems, but not this particular problem of these major banks which are bankrupt.

The proposed bail-in would not solve anything either. Even if EU provided the full loan and not a single depositor lost a penny directly it would still not solve the problem. It would just kick the can a year down the road. They simply solving problem of debt by more debt, nothing less, nothing more.

Ultimately, the problem is in the fact that all new money are always being created on the credit side of balance sheets of private owners of central banks and on debit side of balance sheets of everyone else, including the governments.  Whichever way money move after that cannot change the fact that private owners of the central banks are swindling the rest of the population.

The problem is also in the fact that wast majority of the victims are non the wiser and unable to comprehend trivially simple concepts that are hidden behind of all the smoke and mirrors.

It is pretty much an equivalent of everyone forced to bet all their money and all their annual income every year in a casino where the house has 3-10% edge.

That would be a worse solution. The EU-taxvictims have nothing to do with this mess. It's less worse to make the bank clients' lose, than to force random people that have nothing to do with it to pay.

The EU shouldn't lend anything. The bank shareholders should lose all their ownership. Cuts should be made, starting by risky-investment-clients like bondholders, and then eventually account holders. The new ownership should be transferred to those who suffered such cuts in proportion to the amount they lost.
I don't know any better way to deal with a bank failure. Forcing taxvictims to pay is definitely worse. Inflating the money supply to save banks is even worse.


Yes, people have been tricked into believing that their bank deposits are "guaranteed". That's just impossible, nothing in life is guaranteed, starting by life itself. But if after all these turmoil in the euro-zone you still believe your bank deposits are "guaranteed", I can only be sorry for you.


hehe, sort of. You're not really forced to have a bank account, but it's hard to live without one. And all banks practice fractional reserves, protected by the central bank, so your analogy has some good ground. :)

But hey, that's part of what Bitcoin is here to solve, isn't it?

ALL banks are still closed there.  Can you imagine?  Going on four days with no end in sight.  They are now in a catch-22, if they open the banks without taking the money, everyone goes in and takes money out leaving banks insolvent well before everyone gets their money.  Not that it is a good idea, but now the only choice is to take that 10% out of the deposits as 100% of 0 is still 0.

Uh - what about those who don't keep cash around, how do they get money for the stuff they need to have ? I mean, not everybody has even food for 4 days in their house..

Credit cards are still working.

Yes, the average Cypriot is welcome to generate more debt but cannot know their checking balance :)

This is why it is called a crisis.