The big news ignored - ECB announced negative interest rate

[DarthCoin]

Everybody is looking to black friday shit campaign but in fact the BTC price will be moved by the latest announcement of ECB that is applying negative interest to retail banking.
Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and others already start charging for your bank deposits even a -0.75% interest rate!
This will have soon a domino effect on all prices.
Corroborate that with the fact that now cash is going to be banned in all countries and you have the puzzle... You are pushed to put your money in a bank and in the same time they charge you for that. And soon you will not be able to withdraw your money.
So, guys look closer to the news and think again the implications...
This is a TAX for your bank savings!
The ECB start apply this negative interest - commercial banks that borrow from ECB will start charging you for your deposits to pay this TAX and then your 100EUR in your bank account will be in fact 99EUR or less, who knows where will gonna stop this craziness.

[LiteCoinGuy]

i agree on a slow domino effect on prices. at the moment not many banks in the EU are charging these negative interest rates on deposites.

at first nothing will happen and people will pay their 0.5% or will go to a bank with zero fees.

in some years when all banks have 1-2% negative interest rates, things might get alot worse

[arnoudk]

Banks eventually will claim that they are 'forced' to charge their depositors for the costs they are paying.

As with any business, the costs of running the business are always paid for by their customers. The customers vote with their wallet to either take the business's products and services, or take their competitor's products and services, or spend their money on something else (or save it). Same with banks.

Does anyone remember the time it was fun to save, and wait for the bank statement in the mail to see the amount of interest? With 5% or more interest, you could actually buy something small with only the interest and leave the principle untouched.

Interest rates used to be higher than inflation. This was the reward for leaving your money in the bank. You take a risk when you deposit cash in a bank, because bank credit is not the same as cash. Bank credit is a claim on the bank, to provide you with cash... but if the bank has no cash (ie, it made too many bad loans that were not repaid), even though you still had your claim on the bank, you had no hopes of regaining your cash. This risk was paid for with interest rates. The riskier the bank (the worse it's books), the higher the interest rates were.

Now, inflation is higher than interest rates. So leaving money in the bank already has the effect of losing purchasing power every single year. But people are scared, I think, and still try to save as much money as they can, because they sense they will need a reserve in the future. In many parts of Europe, saving balances have gone up even though inflation was higher than interest rates.

(Let's forget idiots such as Draghi saying that there is not enough inflation, and making good on his threat to devalue your money even more. Who elected him anyway, and even so, how does he get to steal my purchasing power - where did he get that right from?)

Negative interest rates is just crazy territory. You are being asked to pay money for the privilege of an additional risk of the bank making bad loans and not returning you your cash on demand. This, in a period of economic slowdown where the risk of default on bank loans is increasing. Interest rates should be going up, because of increased risk.

The only reason they do not, is due to manipulation by the central banks.

So some people take their money out of the bank as cash. I think in Belgium, sales for safes was increasing year-over-year and then they stopped publishing that statistic. My guess is, that a group of people that are awake are taking their money out of the bank and keeping it in their own safe. Of course, this is not without risk - now burglars can visit to take your money.

Or course, the authorities are planning to make cash illegal. Cash is an impediment to their negative interest rate fantasies.

Just imagine being forced to interact with a bank for every single transaction you do in your life. You have no choice, the banks are there. You can bet that the price is going to go up, and service going to go down further. Because that is what always happens when you are forced to do business with a company - and certainly if there is a big barrier to entry for a competitor to enter that market.

My guess is that they won't actually outright ban the current currency. But, when the governments are ready, it will go to 0 in value. And it will get replaced by some other currency that gets the new "United Countries of the World" fiat stamp. And it will only be digital.