Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday

Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by Alkim on Sunday June 28, 2015 @02:32PM (#9794485)

It is interesting to speculate how the climate in Greece might be different if bitcoin had been more widely adopted there prior to this meltdown. No central control. No banks to close.

It is something that Greek officials joke about: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/05/us-digital-currenc...

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Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by raesene9 on Sunday June 28, 2015 @02:39PM (#9794516)

In some ways it might improve things in the short term as financial transactions could continue absent banking requirements, however in the long term I would suggest it would be a bad thing for the greek economy.

One of the major recurring themes of the greek economic problem, has been tax avoidance/evasion which has reduced the amount of money that the government have to support themselves.

With bitcoin's less traceable nature, it seems likely that it's introduction would make the job of efficient tax collection even harder, which would in turn cause even more problems for the greek economy.

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Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by Alkim on Sunday June 28, 2015 @02:43PM (#9794540)

Recent events in the Silk Road criminal trials suggest that governments have the ability to trace BTC transactions to a useful degree--witness the guilty pleas of two former federal law enforcement personnel for enriching themselves via extorting bitcoin. Yes, it does take a different mind set from conventional banking records, but ultimately everything is recorded in the blockchain.

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Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by raesene9 on Sunday June 28, 2015 @03:12PM (#9794647)

Those were 2 very specific cases, I don't think you can usefully extrapolate to a government level ability to track blockchain transactions to real identities, especially when one of the main selling points of bitcoin transaction is that (if done correctly) they cannot be tied to a real identity!

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Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by marcosdumay on Sunday June 28, 2015 @04:26PM (#9794940)

A blockchain is a tracing device by construction. Bitcoin is as traceable as governments want it to be.

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Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by quonn on Sunday June 28, 2015 @02:37PM (#9794509)

The greek people have made it very clear that they want the euro. They don't even want their own currency and they certainly don't want bitcoin.

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Re:Greek Banks, Stock Exchange to Remain Closed From Monday by pjc50 on Sunday June 28, 2015 @03:30PM (#9794723)

No banks to close.

MtGox was a bank that closed and never reopened.

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