Bitcoin Forum

If a nation would buy 1% of total Bitcoin ever available (210k) at current prices (50M USD) and announce that this is their official currency, they would become world's wealthiest nation almost overnight.

Is Greece small and desperate enough?

Other candidates?

Bitcoin is not ready yet. In a few years I can see this as a real possibility.

I see Iceland capable of doing that. They are not big in terms of population, meaning that it will be easier to adopt and they already showed they are able to resist the pressure from the central banks. Therefore I see them capable of doing that.
Another country candidate is Estonia. They have been the first country to go fully for e-voting, so they already have some experience.

No nation would be stupid enough to trust their wealth in bitcoin.
The majority of bitcoins are held by unknown people with unknown intentions. What guarantees does anyone have that Satoshi or someone else won't just cash out their 1mil.+ coins? Absolutely none.
The only thing that bitcoin holders have is hope that some big holder won't start cashing out and won't push this thin little market to it's knees.
You can gamble on hope, but serious finance needs more then that.

Thanks for saving my eyes, i thought only brainless bitcoiners here

Total amount of Bitcoin in danger of cashing out is less than 100% of total.

Fiat money has been inflated by counterfeiting as in money printing by a very big multiple of 100%.

Long term Bitcoin wins.

Place your bets accordingly.

You are right.

But, it is a better idea for a country to invest in it, like they invest in gold etc. because it has got huge potential. Once they do, Bitcoin will be more valuable and more people will start using it.

But accepting it as an official currency will get the country broke.

What about 50x leveage? provided by OKCoin etc.?

Edit: Right, they will have to close the option.  ;D
you are right.

There is no logic in this move when bitcoin price is not stable. It's a economical suicide! It will be painfully difficult to control it's money supply and exchange rate. Import and exports will suffer as prices fluctuate too much. Economy will likely take a nose dive.

If a nation would just buy Bitcoin it would be speculation and not something that nations should do.

If instead the nation bought Bitcoin and announced that it's their new national currency that taxes must be paid in, it would create huge demand for Bitcoin compared to now and it would increase it's investment's worth by a big factor. Just like going from paper that costs four cents to print to being worth a hundred.

This is how Romans did it. They announced that taxes must be paid with this coin that has a picture of the ruler and gave the coins to soldiers to resupply themselves on their way to new battles, which citizens accepted because it was the only way to pay tax to the government.

This is how every nation gives value to it's currency. They create the demand by law. Law is backed up by violence and thus Bitcoin's value would go up violently.

The great thing about this is that it will happen for sure, because of greed. Bitcoin is faster, cheaper, more secure and private than the current system. The  exciting thing about that is that Bitcoin's wide adoption will eventually end nation states and thus free humanity from the violent concept that a nation is. War is a side effect of nations and only a psychopath is against more peaceful future.

What's absolutely exhilarating is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just because the idea is out, it will happen. No force on earth is big enough to prevent this happening.

The question remains, which nation first?

No, the wealthiest nations are those that can print their own money at will and then steal their citizens money via taxes to give to their buddies. I would like to see what would happen to a country that adopted bitcoin as its national currency though I think it could be even more risky that using fiat with the current volatility. Hopefully the increased demand would escalate the value, though.

Volatility will reduce with larger market capitalisation.

The nation who will adopt Bitcoin first will make such a huge profit on their investment that they can take losses with their newfound wealth and still be ahead by quite a lot compared to their investment.

It will destroy nations eventually, but will make few politicians rich in the process.

I'm betting on politicians being greedy.

The market would have to be big enough to support a national economy first. So, not yet.

But if a country were to mandate that their citizens only pay taxes in bitcoin it would be forced to shoot up to whatever price that requires. They would make bitcoiners around the world rich at the expense of their own citizens. Not gonna happen.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The market cap will be big enough after the announcement. It's a chicken and egg problem. The price will be stagnant until there's a need for it and then the price will go up violently.

Not only Bitcoiners around the world would be rich, but the nation and it's citizens would be too. Only envy of other Bitcoiner's wealth could prevent that and greed is stronger than envy.

Place your bets accordingly.

No western country is going to do it anyway. Nobody will just break away from fiat.

The difference between 0.04 (paper) and 100 USD (paper money), a 2500 fold increase in value, is not acceptance but mandate of it's use forced by violence.

One nation wouldn't cause that kind of increase in value, but the cascading effects would. To commerce with this nation, you would have to buy Bitcoin and increase it's demand and thus it's value.

This nation would have such a huge efficiency edge that other nations would be forced to adopt Bitcoin, but in the process it and it's citizens would become world's wealthiest.

i heard they only like the technology behind it, not bitcoin itself, they may adopt a new currency, maybe their own alt coin

“Bitcoin is a currency, bitcoin is a network, bitcoin is a technology and you can’t separate these things. A consensus network that bases its value on the currency does not work without the currency.” - Andreas Antonopoulos

Build a network to transfer value without the need for a new volatile unusable cryptocurrency -> problem solved.

Lol, you have been thoroughly fooled.  There is no person called Mr. Nation. 

Even they are not that desperate :D

I don't think that a country should adopt bitcoin as a currency.
But I'm strongly suggesting that National Banks should reserve some bitcoin to back up their money!
Also If I was a Bank owner, I would definetely buy bitcoin. Let's say My bank bought 1k btc; how much is it? it's just 250k$ but one year from now what'll I loose or gain? That's matters.

The first headline we read about a nation adopting Bitcoin will be in the context of the PEOPLE adopting it, not the government.

First ones in most cases be the one to be burned the most, while others observe and learn from their mistakes, and then they profit.
Buying a ton of bitcoin would increase the price for some time, but that price would soon deflate, leaving u with a loss.
Anyways bitcoin is not ready for such a thing, more precisely put; the surroundings of bitcoin are not ready, mainly for security reasons and volatility of the price.

cheers

No one going to adopt bitcoin because botcoin is not a stable currency and a limited currency as we all know its going to end in cuple of years.

I doubt it. They will be paying a large amount to buy a large reserve of it. And the rest of the world would probably just dump and the economy will drop right then.

This is one reason why nobody outside of the echo chambers takes you guys seriously.

"Shit bitcoiners say"

I doubt it... current minister is Yanis Varoufakis, a known anti-bitcoin economist.

"Bitcoin and the dangerous fantasy of ‘apolitical’ money" (http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/)

I see so many wrong things in your (and previous) posts.

No country would switch to bitcoin because that means they will lose control on money, money supply, their citizen's transactions, and more in general they would lose their power.

On the other side, it's not required that a government switches to bitcoin. People can, they already are free to do it anytime.

If there are big holders, it's because they realize how shitty is the fiat environment. Who would be so fool to sell their bitcoins to obtain shitty fiat? I expect that big holders will use bitcoin directly to buy what they want/need and they won't crash the price.

Last but not least, people who understand bitcoin don't base everything on "hope" as you say, but on the clear and exact rules of the bitcoin protocol and network.

Can only be Greece.

if they buy 210K coins then its price will pumped automatically
and when they annouce it then price will skyrocket but lets see if any country do this

Thank you for that link! I saved it for future reference to remind Yanis when the time is right.

And the us Government would be the first country to ban it, manipulate the price and start a war against that country... Saddam and Gaddafi died because they were going to trade oil with gold instead of the us dollar.

A country that has crippling problems paying back debts despite years of depression is going to sink money into an internet commodity?  I don't know which crowd would be larger in front of Greece's parliament: the lynch mob or the people coming to see a fantastic clown show.

Give it 20 years and there might be a chance above 1%.

I believe Saddam wanted to switch to Euro, actually. But yeah. Don't fuck with the petrodollar.

Then why didn't it start with a company or any other individuals for that matter? Fact is there is still too much risk involved and every one is basically looking at each other and to take a cautious approach.

Agreed, this is probably one of the main obstacles, US Gov have ways and means of stopping ANYTHING they do not agree with.

http://i57.tinypic.com/10365np.png

Eyes on the prize!!

haha i like the idea OP, seems like bitcoin would be perfect for this.  Perhaps a smaller country would be interested to suddenly tripple their wealth.

Why do you think of a nation?
1% could be bought by a person.  :)

I always thought it would be a highly interesting thing for a country to buy BTC as a reserve... It could really turn out to be profitable, especially for countries in a financial crisis or for countries that don't have a big GNP...

Usually countries keep their reserves in assets that are neither risky nor very volatile. The main rationale being to preserve the value of what they have and not to speculate with that. So Bitcoin by definition is not a good candidate at all.

Right now they could still have a very good chance to buy a remarkable size of all coins ever available, which could bring them one day into a position like all the oil exporting countries who profit massively from the natural resources they literally sit on!

In theory yes, in practice they won't be even allowed to consider such option due to high risk and volatility associated to Bitcoin.

Right, but allowed by who? I agree that nobody will actually do it, even if it is an intelligent gamble, but who are these masters you speak of?

Thank you thezerg.  Somebody gets it at least :) 

One nation's adopting BTC would kill it. It may be BTC's greatest strength that it's independent from all countries and governments.

Central banks of each respective country.

And yet you flock to these forums to collect bitcoins?