Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal -- increased bitcoin usage

[the founder]

Just something worth noting we're seeing an increased usage from Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal ....  especially Greece....    it reached the Point where a support ticket was opened yesterday asking if "we have anyone on staff that speaks Greek" 

I do find this part of a larger development in terms of people hedging their bets against the Euro.

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[MemoryDealers]

Can you give us an idea of how many users you have currently?

I haven't noticed much of an increase in Euro trading.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

[ZoladkowaGorzka]

Maybe they think it's a way to by-pass recent regulations and taxes over people's savings.
All in all, it would be good information for us, Bitcoin users.

@the founder, can you give us a little disclosure on what basis you're making the statement.

[kangasbros]

I guess we won't see any hard statistics about this

We are in a very early stage of adoption. And it is actually very hard to predict if adoption is going to grow or not. Bitcoin is a very hard concept to grasp for an average Joe, they are not going to trust it anywhere soon.

[the founder]

Hi Roger,

Several Thousand users....  I believe (though I cannot verify) that we're most likely the largest bitcoin company behind Mt.Gox in terms of number of users...

Hi Zoladkowa,

We're basing it on nearly triple digit increases in bitcoin accounts opened from those regions...  it's not an exact science.. but when large numbers of people open up accounts with legit ISP issued .gr and .it e-mail addresses it sort of gives it away...  again not an exact science.    

Best Regards,
Roger

[proudhon]

Maybe they think it's a way to by-pass recent regulations and taxes over people's savings.
All in all, it would be good information for us, Bitcoin users.

@the founder, can you give us a little disclosure on what basis you're making the statement.

It probably is a way to bypass recent regulations and taxes.

[HorseRider]

wow, your scamming plan even have Greece idiots.

[wareen]

I haven't noticed much of an increase in Euro trading.

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Well, trading in Euro is not necessarily the best option for Mt.Gox users - even if they deposit in Euro. With the Euro depreciating against the Dollar and most of the orders being filled in USD anyway, converting to USD upon deposit is probably a wise choice. I would expect many Europeans do that (including myself)

[acoindr]

@the founder - thanks for the update. It make perfect sense. While the U.S. dollar is in decline, Greece is like a preview and will have a catastrophe first.  

Some may remember I posted a topic called How to Grow Bitcoin. It didn't receive support I'm guessing because people thought it unworkable, but it was based on matching Bitcoin to real world localized economies. I'm still highly confident in the concept although I've shelved trying to put it in practice because it bootstraps an economy from the very bottom.

Most in the world are accustomed to living in advanced economies, with the U.S. at the top level. Telling people to abandon their grocery stores in favor of private party exchange of fruits, home baked bread, or raw fish, while in line with naturally healthy eating, would not be a popular line of thinking.

However, what did occur to me is that Bitcoin is global, and the economy could work anywhere, perhaps being more favorable in less developed areas of the world. But I don't readily speak other languages or otherwise have the means to organize such a project from a distance, at least not without local support.

I had Greece in the back of my mind, though, when I saw the following article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/world/europe/in-greece-barter-networks-surge.html?pagewanted=all

It's basically about how some have put together their own barter networks, Craigslist style, with the help of the Internet. Of course, they use payment systems inferior to Bitcoin that nonetheless at least allow things to work.

So you say several thousand users at FlexCoin from Greece? My question would then be is there any way to identify their proximity to one another? Greece could be ripe to set up localized but full fledged economies where Bitcoin is the de facto currency.

[hazek]

Well I believe we haven't seen anything yet. When the shit really hits the fan and governments impose capital controls in order to prevent people from bugging out with their wealth then we'll really see this thing take off.

I wished Flexcoin were a lot more transparent about their business though and took a hint about transparency from MtGox's recent actions on the matter.

[the founder]

It's several thousand worldwide...  not just Greece..

People tend to forget the reason Mt.Gox put out the "trust us again"  is because they almost single-handedly destroyed the entire bitcoin economy from their hack last year, to the point where all the mainstream media was saying "bitcoin is dead"   the reason they did it wasn't from the bottom of their heart to help,  it was because they were (at that time) 2 inches from complete collapse (and taking large parts of the bitcoin community with them).

We don't have that level of power to change bitcoin pricing

1- we're not that big
2- we don't do anything that relates to USD, Euros or any type of traditional currency

Plus regardless of what we do,  HorseRider will still scream "it's a scam" though he doesn't even have a login to the system, hence isn't educated enough in it to form a opinion, but comically attempts to do so anyway...

Regardless we will work to figure a way to make it more transparent without opening security flaws in the system.... though it's not apparently clear how that can happen...  I wouldn't be comfortable with what mtgox did because it shows way too much information...again in my opinion.

[Rassah]

Considering The Founder posted his personal private info and home address on this forum when FlexCoin was being started, if you feel you are being scammed, you are free to drive over to his house and kick his butt in person. Considering he only lives 1.5 hours from my house, if you REALLY need that, for 50BTC I'll do it for you 

[Gabi]

Interesting.

About Italy, here it's not that ppl are panicking "omg omg default is near, penitentiagite!" anyway