Reuters
German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the media after a meeting of party leaders and faction heads at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, June 29, 2015.
Immediately following this announcement on Friday, Tspiras announced that people would only be allowed to withdraw just €60 (£42.30, $66.40) a day from banks.
Since then we've seen pensioners crying on the doorsteps of shuttered banks, supermarkets being emptied, and petrol stations running out of fuel.
And, according to Nobel prize winning economist and professor Joseph Stiglitz, it's all down to Greece's creditors forcing the country into recession. He told Time magazine, in no uncertain terms, that the International Monetary Fund and European Union banking officials should be held "criminally responsible" for the mess Greece is in.
"They have criminal responsibility. It's a kind of criminal responsibility for causing a major recession," Stiglitz told TIME in a phone interview.
While the first milestone in Greece's future lies in the hands of citizens come July 5, the variety of paths that Greece can take is extremely sprawling and complicated. Stiglitz added in the TIME interview that if Greece were to leave the euro, in any scenario, it would be horrific for the EU.
Asked what would happen if Greece's economy recovered after it left the eurozone, Stiglitz said: "It will certainly increase the impetus for anti-euro politics."
He added that if Greece's economy struggled after a Grexit, then "you have on the edge of Europe a failed state." He says: "That's when the geopolitics become very ugly."