Remember the first time you heard about Bitcoin? Other than the foremost experts of cryptography and forward thinking monetarist, most people discovered Bitcoin earlier this year when it was making 100% gains in a matter of weeks. What was driving Bitcoin to such gains however, was not that people had suddenly realized that cryptocurrency was the next step in the evolution of money, it was that governments were doing what they do best, proving that they can’ t be trusted with money.
Much can be learned about future confiscations of wealth that will occur as governments like Cyprus continue to not be able to pay their debts and fall victim to the IMF. The biggest winner from this crises however was Bitcoin as it was the only available currency to assist Cyprus depositors in escaping the government sanctioned wealth confiscation of the March 2013 Eurozone/IMF bailout deal.
Slovenia could be the next Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus…as they too are holding a good deal of bad loans. Der Speigel is reporting that next week Slovenia’s finance minister Uros Cufer will meet with members of the Eurozone to discuss the countries financial state which has been deteriorating for months.
While the citizens of Slovenia will likely be asked to pay for the crisis through austerity measures the problem is of course with the country’s banking sector. Namely the three biggest banks in Slovenia (all government controlled) with over 7 billion dollars in nonperforming loans or about 20% of the small counties annual economic output.
Already in an attempt to stave off the impeding crisis, Slovenia has privatized 15 public service companies with more likely to follow after the extent of the crisis is revealed this Friday.
The standard of Eurozone/IMF austerity is always to punish the people for the sins of the banker which means that Slovenians can also expect a reduction in welfare, public sector pay cuts, higher taxes and a reduction in their standard of living that the citizens of Greece et al. have had to endure.
The bottom line is that the Eurozone crisis is far from over though pundits have recently tried to laud it as such. Expect to see Bitcoin and other crytographic currencies as well as historical safe standards like gold and silver thrive throughout this mess. What’s interesting about this development is that the Slovenian government is claiming that it is doing the austerity now to prevent the banking controls and subsequent run on banks that occurred in Cyprus.
What would be better for the people of Slovenia to do would be to examine the extent of theft that governments are willing to sanction from the people in order to assure the bankers never have to incur a loss. Slovenians should buy Bitcoin now before this crisis causes the same run up that it did during the Cyprus crisis when depositors are forced to scramble for anything safe to put their money in.
Whatever will happen though it is clear, the warmth and leisure of the 2013 summer has done much to distance people’s memory and understanding of just how miserable the financial state of the Eurozone is. It’s almost fall however and winter is just around the corner.