[2015-07-03] Reuters: Fearing return to drachma, some Greeks use bitcoin...

[aso118]

Fearing return to drachma, some Greeks use bitcoin to dodge capital controls

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/03/us-eurozone-greece-bitcoin-idUSKCN0PD1B420150703

There is at least one legal way to get your euros out of Greece these days, to guard against the prospect that they might be devalued into drachmas: convert them into bitcoin.

Although absolute figures are hard to come by, Greek interest has surged in the online "cryptocurrency", which is out of the reach of monetary authorities and can be transferred at the touch of a smartphone screen.

New customers depositing at least 50 euros with BTCGreece, the only Greece-based bitcoin exchange, open only to Greeks, rose by 400 percent between May and June, according to its founder Thanos Marinos, who put the number at "a few thousand". The average deposit quadrupled to around 700 euros.