Theory: the Greek capital control is not only caused by liquidity crisis but also a wish to get rid of a largely illegal cash economy.

By making access to cash harder, more economy will be moved to electronic money, which is not restricted inside Greece. That makes economic transactions more traceable, thereby making the ever-popular tax evasion harder.

Whenever some professional victim is in the media crying about how they cannot make money for rent even though they have the money in their account, they are either lying or involved in tax evasion – if not it would be possible to transfer the money electronically.

This is also very likely to be true for merchants on markets, though cash has an immediacy that is very convenient at a market. It is of course not the case for small businesses getting ruined because they cannot make payments for goods abroad (there’s also electronic capital control across the Greek borders).