Remember that Litecoin is still one tenth of its peak value.  When was the last time you heard main stream media talking about Litecoin?  I never have.  Bitcoin dominates public mind share.

The most surprising thing about this story is that there's any money left to take in Greek banks.

Ruined or helped?   Helped

I used MtGox but withdrew my funds months before the site started to experience problems.  Stayed away from obvious scams like PireateAt40.  Was a lucky BFL customer and got to use some Jalapenos before they became worthless.  Lost a bit in gambling.  Made some money investing at Just-Dice.  Sold out some coins far too early, sold some right at $1000 peak. 

I'm reluctant to trust any business with my bitcoins simply because it appears far too easy for them to say 'oops, hax, LOL!' and disappear with the funds.

Greece needs access to fiat currency right now.  Bitcoin is the exact opposite of what the country needs right now.  Highly volatile in value, can't be created at whim, not controlled by a friendly central bank.

The killer application for bitcoin has been Argentina over the past few years.  Capital controls, high inflation, no trust in the local currency.  Almost four times the population of Greece too.  Yet the impact has been difficult to quantify, if any at all.

Venezuela is also a killer application for bitcoin.  High inflation, a thriving black market, price controls ensuring stores remain mostly empty.

Greece will bring added focus on how bitcoin can help people escape government imposed oppression, but there are already tens of millions of people who should crave bitcoin.  Where are they?

I guess we have the answer.

Q:  What effect does Greece leaving the Euro have on bitcoin's value?

A:  None

The price went up slightly in anticipation of a Grexit, but we've seen many such rises before.  It's obviously driven by people outside of Greece buying bitcoins in anticipation of the Greeks wanting them, but if you're the average Greek who has to buy food, fuel, and shelter which would you want right now: Euros or bitcoins?

I think the answer is obvious.

Bitcoin already hit $1k.  Many people cashed out.  My sympathy is with those who bought at $1k while listening to the frequent posts on this forum that were promising $10k or more by the end of 2014.  Heck, there were numerous posts asking when we'll see a million dollars per bitcoin, with the only question being whether it'll be 2020 or much sooner.

Reports coming in of tentative agreement to unlock more aid money (basically more debt) onto Greece.  The can has been kicked down the road for maybe a month or two.  Will the average Greek citizen now want to head back to their bank and deposit all the money they've withdrawn from ATMs over the past few weeks?

What happens at the end of summer when Greece returns back to the defacto position: too much spending, too little income, too many fat promises made to too many people, funded by the rest of Europe?

I hope people realize the reason why online retailers want to support bitcoin is because there's quite a number of early adopters sitting pretty on large stashes.  Making it easier for these users to part with their bitcoins is what business is all about.  What happens to the bitcoins?  They'll instantly get converted into US$.  Amazon is not going to be left holding the bag with a 75% value drop like we saw in 2014.

What we should be concentrating on is giving CUSTOMERS incentive to get bitcoins, earn them, spend them, and want more of them.  How many customers of Amazon today think 'nope, I won't use my credit card on one of the safest retailing sites on the Internet.  I'll go out and buy bitcoins and then use them.  Yeah, that'll be easier'.

Bitcoins are fungible.  One is valued and behaves exactly the same way as another.  It's impossible to assign a lower value to 'Made in China' bitcoins. 

Another way of looking at it is gold bullion.  If you're buying an ounce of gold would you pay less for metal mined by slave labour in Zimbabwe than a modern mine with well paid workers in Canada or Australia?  Of course not.  There is no market for 'slave labour' gold versus 'ethically mined' gold.  It's one market with one value across the board.

If you want to improve the plight of bitcoin miners in China then start an online campaign showing their problem and addressing their concerns.  Would anyone care?  Probably not.

The common man's image of bitcoin is strongly influenced by main stream media.  What does MSM like  to report on in regards to bitcoin?  Bubbles, scams, and drugs.  A good news leading headline story about bitcoin is rare.

Besides, the fact that bitcoin is just software sitting on my computer is a major factor working against it.  People know computers are rather good at copying data, so immediately people wonder why they can't just copy as many bitcoins for themselves as they like.  Try to explain how it works and 99% of the population's eyes glaze over.  Try it sometime.

Greece vs the EU taxpayers and IMF is a fascinating fight. 

On one hand you have a downtrodden population that's sick of austerity and can see no way out.  The situation is hopeless mathematically. 

On the other you have taxpayers who don't want to keep bailing out Greece but also know if they stop then hundreds of billions of Euros in debt will be paid back by them, and not the Greeks.

Varofakis stated last week that he wished Greece had defaulted four years ago.  Greece has gained nothing over the past four years except far more debt than it originally had. 

I've met plenty of people who believe that they can make money on poker because there's an element of skill involved.  They're also the people losing bucket loads of money on it because they over estimate their own skills, and there's still a large degree of luck in the game.  Ask anyone who has played long enough and they'll bore you to tears with stories about losing thousand dollar pots with a 95% chance to win post flop.

There are two ways to win in gambling:

1)  Don't gamble
2)  Invest against people who do want to gamble

Why is mass adoption of bitcoin not happening?  Well, name some goods or services that are easier and/or cheaper for the end consumer to buy using bitcoin than an RFID enabled credit card or cash.  

Now remove drugs, weapons, gambling and porn from the list.  That list now has zero items.  That's the problem with mass adoption of bitcoin.  We can get excited about Wall Street interest, ETFs, exchanges in China, etc.  But if the common man or woman buying their groceries or ordering a pizza cannot really see the benefit of bitcoin then mass adoption is still quite a long way away.

Bitcoin isn't even taking off as a popular concept in countries experiencing high inflation and regular banking crisis, such as Argentina and Venezuela.  Yes some people use it there, but they're still the tiny minority of the population.

A Chinese relative came home after visiting China last week.  She said many middle-upper class people she spoke with who had previously invested in property were now piling money into shares over there.  She mentioned two comments she heard:

"The share market is easy.  We're collecting red envelopes from the government"  (red envelopes being cash gifts)

"The government won't let the share market fall"

It's little wonder that Chinese investors and speculators would be fleeing bitcoin in favour of opportunities locally. 

Some investors she spoke with were thinking of financing a foreign project that guaranteed 17%pa income.  Very, very high by Western standards.  What did the Chinese investors think?  It's way too low, because they can get 40%pa financing local projects.  Think about that for a moment.  Many investors in China consider doubling your money within two years as a good return, and anything less as "poor".

I've been following bitcoin for over four years, and during that time I've met a few people who knew about bitcoin and two who mined.  The vast majority of citizens in any country you care to mention have never used a bitcoin.  If bitcoin disappeared tomorrow there would be maybe tens of thousands of upset people, and a few thousand really upset people who lost a lot of money on it.  I'm guessing the other 99% wouldn't notice it's gone.

Maybe a point in time will come where bitcoin is seen as a key financial instrument that should be protected.  Maybe in five years?  Ten years?  I can't see it happening any time soon however.

The gamblers in China piled into their local share markets over the past year.  They pulled money out from somewhere, and bitcoin has probably lost some money too.  Why keep your money in bitcoins when some Chinese stocks are rising 10% per day?

As soon as those gamblers get burned we may see some return to bitcoin, assuming they weren't burned the first time around when bitcoin fell ~80% from $1k+.

Of course we know all such gambling systems and looking for patterns are a logical fallacy and simply don't work, but I do hope people keep trying their tactics and strategies to defeat the laws of mathematics.

Old miners are museum pieces now.  Asking when an old miner will become useful again (in terms of profitability) is like asking when a Commodore 64 will be useful again for modern computing.  Time has moved on.

Keep old miners in pristine condition and who knows, maybe if bitcoin takes off the miner could be a valuable relic in the future? 

Mining 'for fun' is nonsense.  Plug in miner, run software, fun! Yay... seriously?

I invoke Betteridge's law of headlines.   "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

This applies to forum postings too.