I agree that if I were in Cyprus, I would have chosen Bitcoin over the banks (being already a bitcoiner of course). As a non-bitcoiner businessman with full knowledge of my company's legal requirements and responsibilities, much less accountability to investors or shareholders if any? Doubtful. As a business owner in any other country that doesn't seem to be in ruin like Cyprus? Most definitely *not*.
I understand that businessmen with no knowledge of bitcoin wouldn't have any way to assess the risks of legacy banks vs. bitcoin.
As for the depositor bail-in risk assessment - The problem is, you are saying this
after the fact. You say "any other country that doesn't seem to be in ruin like Cyprus" as if you would be able to see that coming. There are plenty of countries that are in financial ruin, taking bailouts, monetary debasement in full swing, housing, stock and bond bubbles galore...
It's easy to say "after the fact" that if you were a business owner in a country not "in ruin like Cyprus" you wouldn't take that risk. All I'm saying is that if you were a business owner in a country that WAS "in ruin like Cyprus," you wouldn't know it.
Wow Ashley, I'm so sorry what happened to your money. People have killed for less.
All of europe though? the UK has a depositor bail-in? Well... shit. Maybe it's time to visit home and purchase silver.
To clarify, I was outlining a hypothetical situation. There was in fact an IT business owner here who had approximately that sum in his company's bank account, and lost nearly all of it during the haircut (immediately moved his company to another country) and I was sort of echoing his situation. But I thank you for your sympathy
AFAIK, the ECB and other regulatory bodies have signalled that they are ready to take that approach in any Eurozone country to recapitalize banks. So if you are in the Euro and asking for a bailout, if the situation is bad enough, they will make a depositor bail-in a condition of the bailout.
The FDIC and some european agency collaborated on a formal strategy paper that included use of depositor haircuts to reimburse banks' gambling losses. This indicates that the policy is an option in the U.S. if it gets to that point.
Canada, Spain (already in Euro so doesn't really matter) and New Zealand have considered such legislation although I haven't followed through; I just assume that it passed.
Japan has just hopped on board now, it seems.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether it's legal or illegal in a specific country. If it's not explicitly legal, they can simply make it legal in an emergency session. What's important is that the precedent was set with Cyprus. And now Cyprus is scared to release its deposit stats for May because they need to figure out how to boost them back up after all the scared citizens dutifully withdrew 400EUR/day for the entire month.