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By Bloomberg

The euro slid for a second day versus the dollar as finance ministers and leaders from the 19-member region gather to discuss Greece’s fate.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “time is running out” after Greek voters rejected creditors’ demands for more austerity in a referendum on Sunday. The shared currency declined 0.5 percent versus the dollar Monday, after initially tumbling as much as 1.3 percent, and a measure of volatility rose for a third day. Australia’s dollar approached a six-year low after the Reserve Bank repeated “further depreciation seems both likely and necessary” after holding interest rates at a record low at a policy meeting Tuesday.

“There is obviously still a lot of risk out there,” said Stan Shamu, a market strategist at IG Ltd. in Melbourne. “But if you look at the euro, it’s suggesting sentiment is a lot more stable than everyone thinks.”

The euro fell 0.3 percent to $1.1027 at 8:37 a.m. London time. It slipped 0.2 percent to 135.29 yen.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was given hours to come up with a plan to keep his country in the euro as citizens endure a second week of capital controls. The European Central Bank piled on the pressure by making it tougher for Greek banks to access emergency loans.

Tsipras had promised voters that a “no” vote would strengthen his hand in negotiations.

Implied three-month volatility, a measure of anticipated price swings in the euro-dollar exchange rate based on options, climbed to 12 percent, compared with an average of 9.06 percent over the past year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Clock Ticking

“We are running out of time for a deal,” Michael Every, the head of financial-markets research at Rabobank Group in Hong Kong, wrote in a client note. But among euro traders, “no one is sure if they should be long or short right now, on the uncertainty of deal/no deal, and on what either case means.”

In Australia, the Reserve Bank left its benchmark interest rate at 2 percent, as predicted by economists and traders surveyed by Bloomberg.

The Aussie declined 0.3 percent to 74.78 U.S. cents, having dropped as much as 0.5 percent to 74.65 cents. It touched 74.52 cents on Monday, the weakest level since May 2009.

“The fact that the RBA is quite measured, maintaining its wait-and-see stance, it’s not surprising we haven’t seen too much reaction in the Aussie,” said Janu Chan, a senior economist at St. George Bank Ltd., a division of Westpac Banking Corp., in Sydney. “With what’s going on in Greece, the reactions in general across all asset classes appear quite muted, and that’s flowed on to the Australian dollar as well.”