According to this article in the Financial Post Europeans have increasingly embraced the digital currency, Bitcoin. The fear of the end of the Euro as a currency is driving this craze and it would appear as if Bitcoin has experienced the benefit of this inflow of funds, appreciating in value since the start of June.
Considering the extreme volatility of this “new” alternative currency (it traded at US$30 for 1 Bitcoin June 2011; currently US$5.7), it’s probably not a safe haven for your hard earned savings.
But then again, desperate times call for desperate measures. The man in the street in places like Greece and Spain probably don’t have access to safe haven bonds and want to get the hell out of traditional currencies.
IMHO, this is a big gamble. Bitcoin is a tiny market and huge money flows can distort prices easily, allowing speculators to profit handsomely, but leading to more pain for Joe Public who put his last couple of thousand Euros in a system he thought safe and free from manipulation.
Would you convert your savings to Bitcoin when financial turmoil knocks?
I have a savings account in Australia (which can be opened from overseas, btw) which would be far safer than bitcoin.
If Australia starts looking dodgy, you look for the next country with some semblance of security. Most places offer savings accounts for overseas non-residents now.
I’ve been following bitcoin for a couple of years. Its volatility is what makes it interesting - although it does, in theory, have an exchange rate, in practice it’s orthogonal to traditional fiat currencies. It doesn’t map properly onto “the real world”. What might be considered a disadvantage is actually an advantage: it enables two different economies to evolve in parallel without impinging on each other.
It’s a bit depressing that bitcoin has become the currency of choice for the underworld, but I’m pretty sure it could become something really useful in countries where the “normal” economy doesn’t work properly, especially those that are already keen on electronic currencies (Kenya, for example). What’s missing there is the digital infrastructure to allow it to work properly.
Anyway, to answer the question: no, I wouldn’t consider converting my fiat-currency savings into bitcoins, but I might try to engage with the economy in which bitcoin reigns supreme, and try to build some savings there for a rainy day.
It is with trepidation that I write to you…The Euro has collapsed unofficially. The money is OUT of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France, Belgium and the German Elites have begun to shore up their wealth in hard assets and precious metals. RBS has given orders to close two of their major equities sectors, thousands of jobs are going to be lost the next few days/weeks. Credit Sussie has called on top investors to head to Swiss safe harbor and hard asset diversified portfolios.
The Capital Controls are in place to keep the charade of control going for the next four to six months before the official collapse. Steve…this is it. The Euro has collapsed and no one has noticed it. Greek bank runs are close to $3.5 Billion Euros per day not the $1 Billion that is being reported. The rest of the PIIGS are in the same boat. Bank Holiday imminent in all of continental Europe in the coming days and weeks. This is again theatrics to keep the plebeians believing in some semblance of control.
Please warn your listeners to pull out of their bank accounts everything that they need. Keep only to pay the day to day expenses. If they have land to go to, please do so now. Steve I do not know how much longer I can keep writing to you. You were knocked off line during your show with the Haggmans right before your were going to divulge what I have told you with the Spanish bailout. It is getting dangerous for all of now.
Again the Euro has collapsed…I repeat the Euro has collapsed. Unofficially.
May God Help Us All…
V
COPYRIGHT STEVE QUAYLE- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED—NO CROSS POSTING UNLESS ACTIVE HOT LINK TO MY SITE STEVEQUAYLE.COM IS PROVIDED
It is with trepidation that I write to you…The Euro has collapsed unofficially. The money is OUT of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France, Belgium and the German Elites have begun to shore up their wealth in hard assets and precious metals. RBS has given orders to close two of their major equities sectors, thousands of jobs are going to be lost the next few days/weeks. Credit Sussie has called on top investors to head to Swiss safe harbor and hard asset diversified portfolios.
The Capital Controls are in place to keep the charade of control going for the next four to six months before the official collapse. Steve…this is it. The Euro has collapsed and no one has noticed it. Greek bank runs are close to $3.5 Billion Euros per day not the $1 Billion that is being reported. The rest of the PIIGS are in the same boat. Bank Holiday imminent in all of continental Europe in the coming days and weeks. This is again theatrics to keep the plebeians believing in some semblance of control.
Please warn your listeners to pull out of their bank accounts everything that they need. Keep only to pay the day to day expenses. If they have land to go to, please do so now. Steve I do not know how much longer I can keep writing to you. You were knocked off line during your show with the Haggmans right before your were going to divulge what I have told you with the Spanish bailout. It is getting dangerous for all of now.
Again the Euro has collapsed…I repeat the Euro has collapsed. Unofficially.
May God Help Us All…
V
COPYRIGHT STEVE QUAYLE- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED—NO CROSS POSTING UNLESS ACTIVE HOT LINK TO MY SITE STEVEQUAYLE.COM IS PROVIDED[/quote]
Stavropoulos and her friends have a new strategy to deal with their daily expenses. “We charge everything to our credit cards,” she says. If the Greek banks fail, they won’t be able to collect the outstanding debts, she argues. “If they want to mess me around, I will do the same to them.”[/quote]
George Soros, billionaire investor, has also publicly stated that the euro had 3 months left…and that was back in early June. Guess time is running out for him too.
Source: cnbc.com/id/47642499/Three_M … orge_Soros
Something is going to happen in August. Draghi, the ECB head, just last week stated that the ECB would do "“whatever it takes to preserve the euro.” That’s a big promise. August will probably be the month the FED and ECB take action. The USD has lost almost all of its momentum (check out the thread: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 8&t=112093) and a large stimulus package by the FED and ECB will send the USD into freefall.
remember those hello kitty magnets from 7-11? i wonder if something like that could gain credibility for exchanging goods and services after the joke of the century aka the world economy finally comes tumbling down after the movers and shakers squeezed the very last taro dry
[quote=“SillyWilly”]George Soros, billionaire investor, has also publicly stated that the euro had 3 months left…and that was back in early June. Guess time is running out for him too.
Source: cnbc.com/id/47642499/Three_M … orge_Soros
Something is going to happen in August. Draghi, the ECB head, just last week stated that the ECB would do "“whatever it takes to preserve the euro.” That’s a big promise. August will probably be the month the FED and ECB take action. The USD has lost almost all of its momentum (check out the thread: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 8&t=112093) and a large stimulus package by the FED and ECB will send the USD into freefall.[/quote]
Sure, he’s taking big bets on peoples stupidity … he’s steering the market
Hi, I just arrived to Taipei from Spain. There, most people never heard of bitcoins.
What most people do, though, is to keep their money hidden at home, instead of carrying it to a bank (confidence in banks is less than zero, actually). Most of Spain’s debt is private debt, mainly from the banks (and the guys in the government, who also have interests in those banks, pay the banks debt with public money). More than 100 billion euros in private debt, paid by the people who is also being kicked out of their homes by the banks who receive the money.
Yeah, I bought a couple of BTC around 2012/13 (2.2 BTC for 125 EUR, something like that), but the exchange (Bitcoin-24) collapsed and the thieving git owner ran off with the money and what I’ve read was something like 18,000 BTC (which he appears to still be spending in Thailand). Rather annoying.
Muggins here watched stuff like that happening, and looked at the enormous consumption of energy and computing resources, and thought “hahaha this crypto stuff is never going anywhere, I’m not going to throw my money away”.
This last decade or so, though, has been a “truth is stranger than fiction” experience.
Hey I’m the guy who researched the numbers of luxury car sales in US and Europe and wrote a whole treatise on how Tesla was primed to be the next Apple but then didn’t invest because it was ‘mafan’ at the time. Whoops.
I barely paid any attention to crypto until the end of 2017 when I proceeded to dump way too much money into it in a speculative frenzy and promptly lost on paper 80 per cent of its value. But you know when things are down is when you need to invest , just like that guys post when he said bitcoin had dumped from 30 USD to 5.7 USD.
That is a lot of money! There was some Euros (People) in Kao trying use bitcoin many years ago, I wished I got some of that (at the time I thought it was useless in TW, so I asked people pay via paypal). As far the EURO currency, mostly stable though down now.
