These characteristics of Bitcoin remarked on by Erik Voorhees are more useful to some people than to other people. They are of particular interest to Argentinians, Venezuelans, Greeks, Ukrainians, and possibly the Chinese, all of whom can only move value at very great expense and at the risk of committing a criminal offence. They are likely to generate increasing interest to Brazilians, South Africans, Russians, who are seeing their life savings drastically diminished in value by accelerating weakening of their currencies. They are are not of such immediate interest to Americans, the Swiss, the Japanese, the British, most Europeans.

I have represented this world’s currency markets in a diagram.

We have the set of Hard currencies: Swiss Franc, Dollar, Yen, Sterling. I have included Gold (XAU) and Bitcoin (XBT) in this set.

Then we have the set of Emerging Market currencies, such as Brazilian Real, South African Rand, Turkish Lira, Russian Ruble, Mexican Peso, Indian Rupee.

Note that the population of the economies using the EM currencies is very much greater than that of the hard currency economies:

“There are more people in the world who need a currency they can trust than there are people who trust their currency.”

Wences Casares, of Xapo

Finally we have the set of currencies used in economies with capital controls placed on the FX market, and with restricted access to hard currency FX by the Government.

I can think of only two currencies at the the intersection of Hard Currencies set and the Capital Controls set: the Iceland Krona (ISK) and the Euro. For there are indeed current exchange controls being enforced in Eurozone Greece. (And exchange controls that were imposed in Eurozone Cyprus in 2013 were only lifted in June 2015.)

Hard Currency FX Controls: Greece (Euro)

I love Greece. I travel there quite frequently. I was last in Athens in November 2015 researching the property market, with the idea of perhaps buying a cut-price flat in a upmarket area like Glyfada or Kifissia. You eat simply and well. Fresh sardines!