The Cyprus/Bitcoin connection is totally fake

[bootlace]

There's been 265 Bitcoin client downloads on Sourceforge from Cyrpus since March 16 when the crises erupted.  That whole ATM opening in Cyprus thing? It's just a press release of some guy saying he 'might do it'. I could make a press release today saying I 'might' open a Bitcoin ATM in every country in the world, so it holds no validity and is probably just a publicity stunt.

Cypriots are not going crazy over Bitcoin at all, the google trends didn't even experience a parabolic rise after March 16.

I'm beginning to grow suspicious of all the other stories of Bitcoin 'taking over the world' as well...Keep your eyes open folks.

[Luno]

The Cypern Bitcoin story started as speculation here, got picked up on various news pages and ended up in news papers and on TV.

I won't call it fake as the speculation started on this forum with correlations between Euro/USD exchange rate and buying waves of Bitcoin from Europe on week days.

So yes, the title should rather be: "Cypern crisis makes Europeans rush to Bitcoin".

Are there Cypriots amongst the buyers? only very few I would imagine, but the ripple effect makes all Europeans check out Bitcoin and buying.

[btbrae]

I agree to some extent, afaik nobody could even get into their bank via person, phone or internet so bank transfer was ruled out for that period.

You do however, have the fact that every depositor in Europe suddenly realised that that place under the mattress doesn't look too bad anymore.

When you scare people from one asset they often move into several.

[malevolent]

A lot of people use alternative clients and many Bitcoin users don't use a client at all.

[bootlace]

Here are the download figures from other countries since March 16:

6100 in Spain
2735 in Italy
1234 in Greece
937 in Portugal

This all includes mutliple downloads by same person and perhaps previous users who're just downloading on another device. So maximum of 10,000 across impacted European countries over half a month is nothing to write home about. Sure there are other clients and other ways to 'use' Bitcoin, ignore this very important data at your own peril.

Just for comparison's sake - there's been 15,556 downloads in China over same time frame who're known to love to speculate and gamble in their investments. It's clear that speculators far outweigh people concerned over any type of financial confiscation.

[Rampion]

It's clear that speculators far outweigh people concerned over any type of financial confiscation.

This.

[cho]

Could anyone running a bitcoin service compare those data to his own analytics ? That would be interesting.

[malevolent]

It's clear that speculators far outweigh people concerned over any type of financial confiscation.

It's nothing new Nonetheless I think the difference between the amount of speculators and 'real' users is (slowly) decreasing.

[Timo Y]

Human beings always want an explanation for everything.  But maybe there simply isn't an explanation for the recent rise in price. Maybe it was caused by an interplay of factors so complex that it can't be reduced to a nice, simple, human-readable story.

[malevolent]

Human beings always want an explanation for everything.  But maybe there simply isn't an explanation for the recent rise in price. Maybe it was caused by an interplay of factors so complex that it can't be reduced to a nice, simple, human-readable story.

Butterfly effect?

[Lethn]

You forget that the Bitcoin client isn't exclusive to sourceforge.com, because it's open source people could easily save the install file and put it all over the net without any problems, that said though, I do see where you're coming from, this is a common problem when it comes to financial news, everyones trying to find an explanation for price rises and falls and they've picked the most obvious one they can find.

[SomeWhere]

Downloads of the Bitcoin client is a very poor metric.

I would guess that most people will only create an account on mt.gox, because they have no idea how the system works. They will just keep there money there.

Even if they don't, they are likely to use a web client like blockchain.info, rather than the full-blown bitcoin client.

[screamingservers]

From what I have read, it looks like a good portion of the Cyprus bank deposits are from account holders abroad, specifically Russia, so maybe include Russia and other eastern block countries in your stats.

The other thing is here in the US we have a bunch of conspiracy anti government nuts who buy gold bouillon to have currency to trade after government takes over. Cyprus reinforced their beliefs that they must have an alternate currency and the Cyprus-Bitcoin connection on the mainstream news gave them Ideas as to what that currency should be if not gold (BTC). I have been selling on Craigslist and bitcoinlocal to these types more than speculators. My problem is that I cannot get the money to gox before the price goes up and I don't have a ton of money to fill up my gox account ahead of time, so I can only sell a few BTC at a time.

Here are the download figures from other countries since March 16:

6100 in Spain
2735 in Italy
1234 in Greece
937 in Portugal

This all includes mutliple downloads by same person and perhaps previous users who're just downloading on another device. So maximum of 10,000 across impacted European countries over half a month is nothing to write home about. Sure there are other clients and other ways to 'use' Bitcoin, ignore this very important data at your own peril.

Just for comparison's sake - there's been 15,556 downloads in China over same time frame who're known to love to speculate and gamble in their investments. It's clear that speculators far outweigh people concerned over any type of financial confiscation.

[CoinDiver]

What we're seeing is adoption and speculation by people who already knew about bitcoin. All this media attention will affect the price primarily the next time we see a major financial disruption.

[Bitcoinpro]

bitcoin is the next logical step in monetary advancement

[Matthew N. Wright]

It could be fake, but even fake rumors can start wars.

[Shevek]

Look for downloads from Russia, instead from Cyprus.

[inge]

“Cyprus” shows the Achilles heel of centralized currency. When the monetary network providing money to Cyprus stopped working, citizens were left with few of no cash to spend.
But how can someone defend his/her saving if banks cannot be trusted?
The traditional way to keep capital from depreciation is buying silver of gold, for the happiness of thieves.
However seems that the market found out a third possibility: Bitcoins, a “currency” that can use the whole internet to move from place to place. And the internet is nearly impossible to be put down.


Regards, Inge

[mobile4ever]

If there are any lurkers reading this from Cyprus, or just Greece, please give us an update.

[solomon]

It's not the cypriots. It's people from the other european union countries being aware of the impending doom, increasing diversification and taking money out of savings in case shit goes down. Don't look at bitcoin in cyprus, look at it's growth in Spain and Italy, they are next under the knife.