

Let's go to Cyprus and promote Bitcoin - technotony

Cyprus is in chaos, and may be forced to exit the Euro on Monday.  It's time that governments stopped messing around with currencies and peoples savings and investments.  The banks have shut down and businesses are not accepting credit cards for worries of not getting paid.<p>Why don't a group of us hackers go there and launch a Bitcoin currency to let people start trading again, and rebuilding their livelihoods.<p>Currency by the people, for the people.
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canterburry
I suggest you apply some lean principles here and first figure out if the
problem you perceive in fact exists and whether or not people are actually
desperately looking for alternative solutions.

Your current thinking seems to go a bit long the lines of: There must be a
huge demand for shoes in Africa since so many people over there walk around
barefoot.

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technotony
That's a good suggestion. Hypothesis on problem is that people have a problem
transacting with each other, due to shortage of cash, and thus businesses are
losing out on revenue - thus a trusted means of exchange would see adoption.
Tricky thing is that it's a volatile situation, this might be true this week
but all will depend on what resolution the politicians come to on Monday. I'm
not sure how to operate lean in a highly volatile situation like this... any
thoughts?

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ohashi
Perhaps lean doesn't always work especially in situations where people's lives
are at stake.

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johnmurch
Need to help migrate to a [http://blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/tag/point-
of-sale-pos...](http://blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/tag/point-of-sale-pos/)
that easily allows for QR code reading/btc sending of addresses

Also - how does one deal with the "pending" status when buying small things
like coffee/sandwiches/lunch - Should a shell company exists to have faster
verification?

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sroerick
This is a very interesting potential experiment, and I would love to see this.

Is there any way to track adoption of Bitcoin? I would wager that it's more
popular inside a financial crisis (like gold hoarding). Does the anonymous
nature of Bitcoin prevent data like this? Maybe you could index it via: how
many businesses accept bitcoin.

Edit: If the economy was bad enough you could set up a bunch of machines to
mine bitcoin and wield quite a bit of coinage.

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technotony
There would be several ways to index it: 1\. People buying (or selling)
bitcoins (through money in-out flows on exchanges, perhaps creating a local
exchange) 2\. Businesses which accept them 3\. Downloads of apps or other
tools which let people transact with each other

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sroerick
I thought that there was no way to track how many people buy bitcoins. Would
this exclusively be through a public market, then, or is bitcoin less
anonymous than I thought?

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chollida1
Well a couple of stumbling blocks come to mind here.

What is a "Bitcoin currency" is the largest:) I have no idea what this even
means and it's not explained.

Cyprus GDP is about 24 Billion. Say you'd need even 1% of that as actual
currency, that's 214 Million in bitcoins that you'd need, and I think i'm
really understating the amount you'd need.

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technotony
By 'bitcoin currency' I meant launch bitcoin infrastructure locally, carry out
publicity and educate people about bitcoin to make it easier for local people
to use. Would also need to do things like translate into local language, and
probably build specific tools to make the currency work locally. It would be a
unique opportunity to really engage with people, and understand their currency
needs as users. I think there would be quite a lot of infrastructure to build
to get a working ecosystem going.

The point about volume of currency is significant... though any break from the
Euro will likely collapse that value significantly... any ideas for how to
hack that?

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gamblor956
_It would be a unique opportunity to really engage with people, and understand
their currency needs as users._

A digital currency isn't going to meet their needs. Have you ever been to
Cyprus? Except for transactions between multinational branches/subsidiaries
located on the island, most of the economy runs on cold, hard cash. A lot of
stores and restaurants don't have the capital to invest in the technology
they'd need to use bitcoin for POS.

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technotony
Haven't been to Cyprus, but all they need to use Bitcoin is a smartphone which
costs a few hundred dollars. I presume 3G coverage is decent? If small
businesses aren't taking credit cards anymore then the loss of revenue would
pay for an Android device in a few days.

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gamblor956
Cyprus _is not America_ and it definitely is not like Silicon Valley. The use
of credit cards is a uniquely American phenomenom; European businesses and
especially Eastern European businesses prefer debit cards--to the extent they
even accept cards at all.

Moreover, a few hundred dollars is a very, very big number in Cyprus (and
indeed, most of the world), and was definitely beyond the reach of almost all
of the small businesses--let alone consumers-- _even before the recession._
There simply isn't any financial justification for wasting a few hundred
dollars on equipment you'll only use once or twice a year--if that.

Bitcoin--and most digital payment services--simply aren't relevant to Cyprus'
economy and will not be the vehicles that get it out of the recession.

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chris_dcosta
"a few hundred dollars is a very, very big number in Cyprus"

Cyprus is not a) eastern anything (including european) b) outside the european
union c) a third world country

A few hundred dollars is not far off a few hundred Euros, the currency of
Cyprus.

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sc68cal
The main problem I see, is the uncertainty around when the banks will open
again so that people could actually exchange their money for Bitcoins.

You will also have to contend with limits that they placed on the amount of
cash you can withdraw.

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-21/bad-news-atm-
limits...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-21/bad-news-atm-limits-
imposed-good-news-they-still-have-cash)

I think a better idea is to go to countries that have not yet gotten to the
point of Cyprus, such as Spain, Ireland, and Portugal

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mk3
Bitcoin as a currency is way to unstable to be used in real transactions at
the moment. The price rose from 14 bucks to 60 recently, this means, that if
you bought something when bitcoin was 14 bucks and want to sell it now with
bitcoins you will lose 1/4 of transaction. The bitcoin is nice idea to toy
around with, but not the currency for real things.

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alt_f4
The bitcoin currency has a hard limit of 21 million units ever being produced.

Right now, a bitcoin is worth ~73$. At the current market rate, the entire
possible bitcoin market is worth $1.533bn. On the other hand, Cyprus GDP is
$24 billion. So... you see where things start to fall apart...

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toufka
you do realize those 21 million units can be divided indefinitely. There is
currently a soft limit imposed on the size of fractional units - but unlike
the total, it can be changed quite easily.

So just because there are 21 million units ahead of the decimal, doesn't mean
there can't be an additional 100 million units within each of those 21
million. Computers don't particularly care what exponent the floating point is
multiplied by.

~~~
eric_bullington
The reference bitcoin client is actually implemented with 64-bit integers,
with a bitcoin defined as starting 8 decimal places to the left. But your
point stands, which is that bitcoins are highly divisible. In fact, a
"satoshi" is the unit name for one hundredth-millionth of a bitcoin.

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technotony
Lets think about how this could work. Houses at this time of year will be
cheap, so we can get a few apartments. We would want to engage with local
media to get the word out, and work to make sure locals have the tools and
infrastructure they need (eg language translation) to make this work.

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lazzarello
I'm confused by the OP's use of the word "Bitcoin currency". Did you mean to
say "Bitcoin exchange between EUR and BTC"? I suspect the peeps in Cyprus are
def dumping some cash into BTC already. So they probs already know about that
currency.

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chris_dcosta
The Russians have already got there first. Did you see the jump in Dollar
value since the Cyprus Crisis began?

