I thought my fantasy was unlikely bc it was based on the idea of a "Graccident" due to unusually inept Syriza party leadership. And I thought that was unlikely. Well, that may be exactly what we have. I can't imagine a better way to drive a population into the arms of cryptocurrency than to do
exactly what Tsipras is doing. Presumably this is not on purpose, although I'm starting to have my doubts.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph has just dropped a bomb on the situation in Greece.
Writing in The Telegraph on Tuesday, Evans-Pritchard reports that the Greek referendum unexpectedly called Friday and carried out Sunday was held in anticipation that Greece's controlling Syriza government would lose.
That's right: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a referendum on the latest bailout terms offered to Greece, campaigned that the Greek voters should vote "no" and reject these measures, and expected the vote would still be a "yes."
Instead the vote was an overwhelming "no," with 61% of the votes going that way and Syriza seeming to have won a huge victory.
But as Evans-Pritchard outlines in his bombshell report Tuesday, everything is falling apart for Syriza, Tsipras, and the entire country of Greece.
"What should have been a celebration on Sunday night turned into a wake," Evans-Pritchard writes.
"Mr Tsipras was depressed, dissecting all the errors that Syriza has made since taking power in January, talking into the early hours. The prime minister was reportedly told that the time had come to choose, either he should seize on the momentum of the 61pc landslide vote, and take the fight to the Eurogroup, or yield to the creditor demands — and give up the volatile [Greek Finance Minister Yanis] Varoufakis in the process as a token of good faith."
Varoufakis resigned in the middle of the night Sunday, and news broke that Tsipras and Varoufakis' replacement — Euclid Tsakalotos — would head to Brussels for an emergency meeting on Tuesday.
When they showed up at the meeting Tuesday, they didn't have a plan.
A report from Reuters on Tuesday indicated that Greece's banks had only two days of cash left. And this after ATM withdrawals had been limited to 60 euros per day for over a week.
On Monday, the European Central Bank declined to increase its emergency lending assistance to Greece, meaning that Greek banks will not have access to any more cash from the ECB. Greece last week, and again Monday, had requested an increase in the ELA.
As Evans-Pritchard reports, "Syriza has been in utter disarray for 36 hours ... Events are now spinning out of control. The banks remain shut. The ECB has maintained its liquidity freeze, and through its inaction is asphyxiating the banking system."
Reports on Monday also indicated that Greek banks would be closed at least through Wednesday, but now it looks as if the bigger question is how the banks will reopen at all.
...
According to Evans-Pritchard's report, Tsipras rejected a "triple plan" devised ahead of the referendum that aimed to avoid a Grexit by firing the Bank of Greece governor, seizing all cash stowed away in various central bank branches, and issuing a parallel currency with IOUs denominated in euros.
Something like this plan, however, is what Tsipras may have to do anyway, according to Evans-Pritchard, as Greece has quickly run out of options.
For reference:
I've been having a similar fantasy myself just now as I listen to NPR talk about a
miscalculation by Greek leaders leading to an accidental Grexit - a "Graccident" 
In my dream version, the Greek leaders don't know what to do on Monday after they default. In a panic, and for lack of any better ideas, they start to talk about a Cyprus-style haircut. Greek citizens rush into various safe havens and find bitcoin is the easiest and quickest. As money drains from Greek banks, leaders realize the haircut will have to be shorter, and shorter, and shorter, encouraging even faster flight into bitcoin. Within a few days of Graccident we see the value of bitcoin triple. Now Greek leaders are in total panic when they realize the haircut will be like 50% or more of bank funds (not just 10% like in Cyprus). Meanwhile, the people start using bitcoin (and tether and other blockchain based currencies) because all of their fiat has been confiscated and whatever is left they know will be stolen by the gov't. Greek leaders disagree over what to do about bitcoin and as a result, they do nothing. Within 6 months, Greek unemployment has stabilized at 25%; within 12 months, it has decreased to 10%. The world says: holy fuck, how did that happen -- we thought unemployment would rise!!?!?
And that's when the whole world wakes up to bitcoin. (And price shoots to a new ATH of $50,000, before crashing to $3000 .... voila, bitcoin's next bubble cycle.)
20 years later, historians talk about how Graccident triggered the First Bitcoin Big Bang.
Of course, that's all just a dream. But wouldn't it be nice
... [my dream won't really happen because it] would take unusually inept political leadership ...
My dream is based on the idea that the Greek leadership is left in an unusual state of disarray...
