In A World Of Capital Controls, Bitcoin Reigns Supreme
Countries around the world are tightening restrictions on their citizens’ bank accounts. Bitcoin is the best way for people to protect their money.This is an opinion editorial by Craig Deutsch, organizer of Asheville Bitcoiners, designer of The Bitcoin Game and junior editor at Bitcoin Magazine.You may have seen or heard about people in Lebanon robbing banks for their own money. They’re no Butch Cassidy, but are just trying to get their own money out of the bank.Lebanon is facing an economic crisis and banks responded by locking depositors out of their own accounts. As a result,....
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The deadly combination of tight capital controls and inflation slowly starve the people’s life savings. Luckily, Bitcoin can help escape from capital destruction. Capital controls are a structure used by governments to restrict, or prevent, the flow of capital out of the country. China, for example, recently tightened regulations on moving money out of the country when faced with a devaluing yuan. Unfortunately, when paired with a penchant for inflating the national currency, capital controls can have a devastating effect on the long-term wealth of the people. The people are forced to use....
Assuming there is any truth to these rather optimistic claims, the next step will come in the form of the ECB giving Greek banks access to cheap funding. In an incredibly surprising turn of events, it looks as if Greece is getting ready to lift capital controls but the end of the year.After facing an economic disaster not too long ago, the country has tried to recover. For some unknown reason, things seem to be going a lot better than most people expected. Many people have been following the news about Greece and feared the situation in the country would only become worse over time.....
The price of bitcoin continues to rise, led primarily by the exchanges in China, which have, oftentimes, been trading at a premium of $10/BTC higher than the other major exchanges around the world. With China driving such an increase in the bitcoin price, many have been speculating that it could be driven by capital controls. In China, the law stipulates that individuals cannot send more than the equivalent of $50,000 out of the country in a year. To get around this, individuals have hired smugglers to get cash out of the country, bought extremely expensive real estate in cities like New....
Bitcoin had an incredible run in 2016, finally breaking $1,000 USD on New Year’s Day 2017. Many people are curious to find out why significant amounts of money found its way into the bitcoin economy over the past year. Two of the biggest reasons that are spurring bitcoin demand worldwide are bitcoin’s censorship resistance and it’s store of value....
The overnight implementation of capital controls in Greece, as the government looks set to default on its IMF loan repayment, has led citizens to explore other methods for moving their savings out of the country. The Greek government announced on June 28 that banks in the Mediterranean country would remain closed for the next week. The government also imposed capital controls to prevent the flight of money internationally. Let’s look at some of the ways Greeks may be able to exchange their funds for bitcoin, before the expected default on the repayment of the IMF loan on June 30. The BBC....