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Let's go to Cyprus and promote Bitcoin

17 points by technotony ↗ HN
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.

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.

Currency by the people, for the people.

25 comments

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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.

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
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?
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...

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

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.

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?

gasull
Maybe you should say "promote Bitcoin and tools for its use, like electronic wallets". When you say "launch a bitcoin currency" it seems you are talking about a Bitcoin competitor, like Devcoin, Freicoin, Namecoin, etc.
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.

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.
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.

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.

ramanujan
Can you put an email in your profile? We've got some people independently interested in the Bitcoin-for-Cyprus thing.
technotony
Hi, it should be there already... let me know if you can't see it.
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.
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...

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.
alt_f4
Oh sure, but you'd be diluting all existing fractional unit owners. So, being taxed 10% still sounds better to me than being diluted by 50% or more because someone arbitrary decided that there are 200 fractional units now, not 100 as before (figuratively speaking).
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.

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?
ohashi
Perhaps lean doesn't always work especially in situations where people's lives are at stake.
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.
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.
chris_dcosta
The Russians have already got there first. Did you see the jump in Dollar value since the Cyprus Crisis began?