WI Everyone in Albania purchased $5 of bitcoin in 2010 and sold it for $19,000 in 2017

I don’t want to post this as ASB cos it’s a sensible potential scenario even if it wasn’t ever likely to come true IOTL. Call it a ‘thought experiment’ instead. I simply want to understand the potential political and economic implications if such an ‘event’ had ever come to pass. I’ve used Albania here as an example but I suppose you can use any other country with a relatively small population. The point of this WI is to gauge the potential implications had a whole nation received such a massive windfall ‘out of thin air' so to speak.

So here goes…


A rumour spreads in Albania...

New Year’s Day in Tirana, 2010. Its cold, its grey, its snowing. Amongst the muddle of empty raki bottles an almost believable ‘rumour’ is doing the rounds. “Bitcoin is the way to go… invest now and secure your future tomorrow.” Albanians have seen pyramid schemes like this come and go before and the rumour gets ignored. But 3 months later and suddenly the whole nation is on board, nearly every adult having purchased on average $5 of bitcoin at 0.003 cents.


Roll on December 2017…
December 2017. Albanians are watching the BTC market with eagle eyes. The price of bitcoin seems to be rising… and rising... and rising. But Albanians are savvy. The 'Great Albanian sell-off' starts to happen close to the 17th of December 2017 and soon after...

Suddenly, those who had put a fiver on Bitcoin 7 years earlier now have $30 million in cash. The whole of Albania is suddenly awash with money… "a Monaco on the Adriatic"



Questions:

* In such a scenario, would Albanian or foreign banks block Albanians from transferring BTC to $... ?

* Economically, would such an overnight windfall destroy the Albanian economy (ie inflation) or would the opposite happen?

* If such a windfall were to have no detrimental effects and simply made a whole nation rich overnight, which countries of the world would pose a potential conflict risk in amassing such a sudden fortune?

Please feel free to replace Albania with any other nation of your choice (… if you think the ‘WI’ would be spicier as a result)
 
Last edited:
Wow...if my calculations are correct, they'd be buying just about every bitcoin, or at least a majority of them, right? Even with a pretty small window of time I don't think everyone's getting them for $5, to say the least! The entire trajectory of the market would be thrown out of wack, and it's possible that once the provenance of the sales are known it'll spook investors irrevocably. There are other cryptos they can go to if they still feel really committed to the idea.
 
Trying to sell them would flood the market and crash the price.

Yeah in effect if everyone in Albania is buying bitcoin, you would just have the sudden rush as others watching the price go up also start investing. The more bitcoin that goes the more expensive it gets. You'd never have the 2017 point where it got above $10,000.00.
 
Bitcoin--and cryptocurrency in general since bitcoin's price affects all other crypto more or less--becomes a widely accepted currency since now you have an entire nation of a few million using it. I'd expect that while the majority would be using it as a get rich quick scheme like the classic Albanian ponzi schemes which started a civil war in the 90s, there'd be some serious local--and international--use of bitcoin by Albanians. Businesses would set up bitcoin ATMs (installing those would be another business opportunity) and accept payment in bitcoin across the country. Albanians abroad like in Western Europe or the US will also have some serious adoption of bitcoin, and Albanians neighborhoods will have similar ATMs. Any website catering to Albanians will likely accept payment in bitcoin. This will likely spread to Kosovo as well.

The price will likely crash to some degree like OTL, and a lot of Albanians will be selling off at that point, but the price of bitcoin--and all other cryptos--would still be very high, and likely remain that way.
 
No, not all Albanians can buy 1 BTC for 5$, because even before half of Albanians would complete their transaction, prices would be probably at 20 000$/coin or more.

Law of supply and demand.

This scenario is against laws of logic/economics. xd
 
Albania is too big a country for your thought experiment. You need to think more along the lines of Luxembourg for your thought experiment.
 
Top