[relix]

That doesn't make sense. If the only reason is to get away from the Euro, why buy bitcoins, a very volatile, cutting-edge currency, when you can just as easily (or more easily actually) buy any other currency such as dollars, or swiss francs, and your savings will actually be safe, as opposed to bitcoin that could lose 20% of its value overnight.

[meric]

Most of the people who are getting away from euro are going to other currencies; It only takes a small proportion going to bitcoin to affect its price.

[Hermel]

Moving from EUR to USD or to CHF does not make much of a difference. Western national banks don't allow for much fluctuation and if one of them starts printing, the others follow. Bitcoin is a currency that does not correlate with them, so from a diversification point of view, Bitcoin is the better choice for you than buying USD.

[Ryan_Shmotkin]

You can put money into realestate, gold, gov-bonds and hundred other places that don't have 3x monthly fluctuation.

And people in cyprus are not trying to protect their spare change, its their whole savings. Would you put your life savings in bitcoin ?

[jaggederest]

There are capital controls in place in Cyprus, it's illegal to move more than a certain amount of money out of the country. Thus you can't just move your money to CHF or USD.

Clearly, if you need to move illicit funds around, Bitcoin is a reasonable way to do that.

[relix]

Why wouldn't you be able to just go to an exchange office and buy CHF or USD? If you have access to your money, which I'm assuming you do, else you can't buy bitcoins anyway, there's really no reason why you wouldn't be able to exchange it in another currency.

[jaggederest]

Follow me here:

a) it's illegal to 'just go to an exchange office and buy CHF or USD'. Literally can't do that at the moment

b) You can still buy bitcoins from people inside Cyprus

c) then you can convert them back at some later date, to whichever currency you prefer, outside the currency control area.