Yep, the time to adopt crypto was ...yesterday for Greece. If people don't want to get cut off from international payments, they should be "prepped" and loaded with some crypto. Spain, Portugal, Italy etc can actually buy crypto right now, unlike Greece.

The article is wrong, with the "create" title. It's more about chemical / bio-chemical extraction from already existing gold compounds. That's gold that exists already.

Creation would involve nuclear reactions, just like it happens inside a supernova or something.

Right now I can't even spend 2$ with my credit card on ebay. Transactions are being rejected.

With banks closed etc, wires are not being processed. So outgoing money (Greece=>abroad) to buy btcs is out of the question for Greeks. The pump will not come from there.

This rise should not be about whether Greeks buy BTCs, but that Greece is a further example, after Cyprus, that people need to have control of their money and not be based on a centralized, government controlled system, that can confiscate their money (probable bail-in might be on the cards after the referendum, given the ECB threats), or render their money useless (digital euros right now are useless in Greece, compared to cash), or disallow them from transacting globally.

Even casual merchants are going to get brown pants (lol) with the capital controls in place. People can't simply spend like they used to, when there is a short supply* of physical cash and credit card "blockage".

Still the probability for crypto adoption right now remains low, primarily because you have to use your euros to buy cryptos. And those who have euros, need them for buying more essential stuff.

* There are around 40-45bn euros stockpiled in homes, by those who were gradually withdrawing the last years/months, but that's only for something like 10-15% of the population.

The bitcoin market is pretty small right now, so I'm not sure how one could capitalize on it even if they wanted to.

Let's just say that electronic money (euros) right now buys you nothing, either internally or from abroad - say buying stuff from the internet.

BTC bypasses the international barrier and you can buy pretty much everything on the Internet that is sold from a BTC retailer.

Even if I want cash, I can use BTC=>BTC gold merchant=>gold import=>local pawn shop=>cash (or something similar).

Well, "bankrupt" is a heavy term, let's say that they are "uncertain" about whether they can withdraw their money or pay their suppliers.

Quoting myself from another thread:

-I was trying to buy something online (costing just 2-3$) with my greek visa, and the charge was getting rejected.
-Gas stations take only cash.
-Suppliers of stuff, take only cash as they are afraid of the consequences of accepting digital payments, and with that I include bank payments (they are afraid they will not be able to withdraw it, or their money could be bailed-in / converted to drachma etc etc).

There is in a sense a fungibility issue with the euro in Greece right now. Digital euros / bank euros "suck" as they are useless to transact. Cash euro is what counts for most people, even companies.

Times like these, you *realize*, not theoretically, but by living it, that you wouldn't trade your crypto for fiat and that crypto is immensely more useful (ie you can actually transact, when with digital cash / banks / cards etc you can't).

The sense of value increases in a way that is unexpected: I wouldn't trade a single BTC even if I was offered >1000 euro in the bank in these conditions. The euros in the bank are useless.

In general, it's mostly correct, except how far Greeks would be willing to go in order to get to a new currency. The article misses a key element, in that all major political parties in Greece are pro-euro. Even if 99% of the people were pro-drachma, the parties that are supposedly representing the people, are pro-euro. Thus it's difficult to break out when there is no planning to do so.

As far as Putin goes, the good Russian-Greek relations "sell" to the internal greek audience and the greek government always pretends to have excellent relations with Russia.

Greeks love Russians and perhaps Russians have a similar sympathy for Greeks, based on common religious heritage (orthodox), both being empires in the past etc etc... So it's a popular meme here that if the west abandon us, we'll turn to russia... but that can't happen because Greece is literally OWNED by the west, and so are the parties that are the puppets of these owners. That's why just a few days ago, the syriza government co-voted along with the other europeans the extensions of sanctions against Russia, despite its pro-Russian rhetorics. And Russia did what it had to do in response, to exclude the Greek markets from importing fruits etc. That's the reality when it counts... Greece remains a puppet state through a puppet government. What the world is seeing is no actual resistance. It's all theatrics.

There are two scenarios for greece... either we go the total surrender route and thus prevent "rebellion" from other countries that might want to go that route, or greece's role is to get theatrically kicked out of the eurozone in order to further the consolidation of the other eurozone members in a political union, through the "sacrifice" of Greece that will be used to frighten other member-states to give their power to a broader political/economic union: The U.S.of.Europe. This is something that up to now the member-states do not desire. But they might "want it" if there was an imminent fear of eurozone breakdown, the markets starting to attack Italy, Spain, Portugal etc etc, their bond prices going through the roof and making their debt servicing very expensive... and then the solution would be presented that if there was a unification of debts/economies/power structures, then these attacks would no longer be possible...thus puppet-prime ministers of the eurozone countries would sell the unification to their people as a "necessity" and proceed with the treaties that make a more unified europe (more like a fascist europe) a reality.

It would work if there was more BTC-familiarization and a more tech-savy population. At the state where Greece is right now, it would only cause the undermining of the government in terms of reliability/seriousness/ability. Bitcoins instead of "real money" would quickly be dismissed by the opposition and the press (controlled by the opposition) as ridiculous / not serious.

There are various things the government could do to raise money (like BTC buying, using their gold reserves in a similar manner, playing the market by using inside info etc), but they have no balls to do these.

People around the world think the government is some kind of leftists radicals, but in all seriousness they are only "left" in things like gay marriages, prisoners rights, immigrants and stuff like that. Total NWO-alignment. Yet, in all things economic, they are almost indistinguishable from all the prior governments.

They got elected to provide a relief-plan that would cost ~12bn euro and instead they offered the troika a plan of 8bn ADDITIONAL AUSTERITY MEASURES. They are willing to sacrifice the local population in favor of the euro.

The troika said no, we want even more than those 8bn, we actually want >11bn, so that's our offer, take it or leave it. One guy even said to Tsipras, that's it, game over if you don't take our offer. So they were forcing Tsipras to either say no, or get totally humiliated by saying yes - which would not even pass the local parliament vote from his party.

Tsipras went the referendum way, which is problematic for the following reason: He says you have to vote yes (to what the troika wants) or no to those measures, and always within the framework of EU & the euro. So if I vote "no", and if that's still within the framework of EU & the euro, Tsipras will say "yes, but now that you rejected the troika deal, we have to make another deal, somewhat lighter - like our 8bn measures proposal". Yet Tsipras wasn't elected to pass 8bn austerity measures. Nor should my "no" to the 11bn+ measures be counted as a ...yes for Tsipras 8bn package of measures. Fuck them both, not because I don't like austerity, but because macro-economically they are both destroying the economy and burying it in the negative recession-debt spiral, where debt is always growing due to the drop of the GDP. Totally unsustainable.

As the situation is right now, there is a pretty vocal no movement, and a quite silent yes crowd. The yes crowd is those who value their comfort more than the austerity measures, naively thinking that it's more of the same that we've had the last 5 years - but it's far worse than that. Food prices would instantly rise by at least 15%, as would electricity, water etc - while income would drop further still and further recession would make the debt go to sky-high levels (>200% of GDP). I'm not sure which way it'll go, but I fear for the "yes", as the ECB flow stop and the ATM situation is a pretty effective blackmail against certain demographics, like pensioners.

Always

They are discussing here, daily ATM withdrawal limits of 50 euros

Greeks MIGHT be interested in bitcoin if capital controls force them to use BTC to circumvent these. So far, no capital controls.

If we want back in time, to 2012 and we said to bitcoiners:

Would you be happy with

2013: 40-60$
2014: 140-180$
2015: 220-300$

...etc, everybody would be "HEEELLLL YEAAAHHH"

The only reason why there is even a slight perception of failure, is because people have seen higher prices in the past, even if these were created artificially. If price was going up gradually and organically, this wouldn't have happened and all bitcoiners would be happy / there would be no room for "bears".

Greece needs drachmas

The only thing that makes your perception of fiat currency to be worth more than gold, is its artificial stability - which is considered a "given" in western-type countries.

For example, if you lived in a country with serious inflation or currency devaluations, you would not value your national currency. You would take gold (or any hard asset) every time, instead of the national fiat currency, because it actually IS better money than the devaluing fiat.

Billions of people live in countries like these, and for them gold provides a kind of stability that fiat money can't. Same goes for bitcoin (being more volatile). Still, if you are in a country with a weak national currency, bitcoin is almost as good as any hard foreign currency, so it's preferable to local currency.

In a sense, the billions of people living in countries with weak national currencies have far more to gain by adopting gold and bitcoin, compared to "stable" economies that run USD, EUR, GBP etc.

I read the article and he's not wrong in his altcoin criticism. Most altcoins are crap, p&d's, scams where the dev disappears after a week with the premine or the ICO, etc etc.

In early '14 there was the impression that alts are going to take a sizable chunk off bitcoin, but precisely due to the crappy nature of most altcoins, Bitcoin has solidified its place and the thought of a new altcoin making bitcoin obsolete, sounds like a joke right now. The moto "this is the next bitcoin" has been used for so many p&d's that it's not even funny...

Those coins that have not been delivering something of importance, are doomed to get annihilated from the scene.

DASH is going the right way with privacy and instant transactions, but it needs robust IP obfuscation in an easy to use manner for less tech-savy people, to improve its "core business" of privacy.

I'm surprised at myself today as I bought a few free DASH

Apparently there is an altcoin called CLAMS which has distributed coins based on who held BTC, LTC and DOGE on their respective blockchains, back in May '14.

So if one had BTCs, LTCs or DOGEs in their wallets 13 months ago, they can use the same keys to get CLAM. It gives 4.6 CLAM per address that had eligible amounts of bitcoins/litecoins/dogecoins... so it can add up to quite a lot (it's around 1.5$ per CLAM).

To be 100% sure, move your BTCs/LTCs/DOGEs to other wallets, before importing the old wallets to CLAM, just in case it is some kind of scam or something.

Considering that the premium for ASEs, maples etc is pretty much a fixed number (say 1-2$), the lower the price of 1oz, the higher the "premium" you have to pay due to the fixed mint/reseller profit margins.

At 20$/1oz if you pay an extra 2$ to buy a 1oz maple or ASE, it's just +10%.
At 10$/1oz, if you pay an extra 2$ (-if not more due to physical shortages at these price levels-) to buy the same 1oz round, premium goes to 20%.

At that point junk silver might be the better option. Provided there is supply (which will probably be absorbed very fast).