Great article from Guardian
Can a Bitcoin-style virtual currency solve the Greek financial crisis?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/22/can-a-parallel-digital-currency-solve-the-greek-financial-crisisThere’s almost no upside to a eurocrisis. You become part of a rolling maul of politicians, journalists and economists ripping and gouging at each other, both in private and on Twitter. The only advantage of being there is that it forces you to think laterally about money. Soon – if the Greek crisis is not resolved – one of the most audacious pieces of lateral thinking ever could get a try-out: a parallel digital currency, issued by the Greek government, modelled on Bitcoin, but with a crucial difference.
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In orthodox economics, money barely figures. It’s just there, acting as a lubricant to supply and demand. The assumption is: markets create money, and the state’s role is to make sure it’s not fake or diluted.
Bitcoin is an audacious attempt to create money beyond the control of any state. It is a digital currency, in the form of a limited number of tokens. It is championed by people who would, if they could, return to a gold standard – where states are obliged to limit the amount of money in the economy. What these money fundamentalists worry about is states creating so much money that booms and busts become inevitable and inflation erodes wealth. In this sense, Bitcoin’s aim is to function as “digital gold”.
If things go badly for Greece, finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has said he would consider creating a parallel digital currency, using Bitcoin’s digital security and transparency, but doing the exact opposite of what the money fundamentalists intend.
Let’s recap the problem. The Greek debt is unpayable; the austerity required to pay it down is socially unbearable. So whether it’s this week or in six months’ time, there will come a point when Athens cannot meet conditions acceptable to the European Central Bank. Then, the normal sequence would be: bank closures, capital controls, an angry standoff and ultimately a Greek default.
If you insert a parallel currency into this sequence, you can delay the moment of default and gain a lot of leeway.
