Topic: Can the government acquire all bitcoins either by seizure or purchase? - page 2. (Read 455 times)

It seems you may have forgotten that though Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency where government, nor central banks can't have control over it, don't forget that with the use of centralized exchanges, it neutralize such effort, hereby granting access to these people to have access to your funds, simply because they own the private key and not you. So what could have happened at times may not be far from what I just said, which is why it's always advisable for people to hodl their funds on a non-custodial wallet, and not exchanges, as exchange could crash anytime just like in the case of FTX.

It is not possible until the user provides the government with the wallet's information before they may access it and do whatever they want with the bitcoins stored inside.


The citizen is subject to the government, thus the government can violently or lawfully order them to give their seed phrase and confiscate their assets if they are found wanting of any crime with it or interrogations leading to the linking of their wallets. That is why it is essential not to store your bitcoins in centralised exchanges, which will allow the government to track you down. They can't do that with decentralised wallets, and you're safer using them than the normal exchange wallet. HD wallet is also an excellent option for always changing your address when initiating  a new transaction.

Theoretically it's possible but in reality it would be difficult to practicalize. The only way government will be able to seize bitcoins belonging to citizens is by tracing the person and force the person to surrender their seedphrase which I don't think the owner will easily give out to government to be able to access the asset. The way government is trying everything possible to get rid of bitcoin in our community is alarming and it's enough reason for us to stop storing our asset in exchanges that government can confiscated any time they wish to. The decentralized nature of bitcoin without central authority has made it possible for us to be in full control of our assets without government interference.

If government claim they're doing this to control the illegal use of bitcoin, I think there should be a diplomatic means to go about it than to seize the assets.

If they retrieve all the private keys of the wallet they seize then provably that they can acquire the balances there. But if they don't have the keys and only have the hardware or aby device used then provably with that they might struggle to own that bitcoins since for sure they cannot do anything to open that and retrieve what's inside on those wallet. That's why sometimes they hate it since they don't have full control on how people use it and the only thing they can do is to regulate the platform residing on their country but for international transaction using bitcoin they can't do anything on transactions made. But I think people don't need to worry about that news since maybe the government is just monitoring those suspicious people and as stated for normal people investing on bitcoin they are away on anything that can possibly harm them since government would not provably touch them for no reason.

The article states that it is used as a channel to fund these kinds of acts, so if you are not doing anything related to that, you are safe, and of course, since you own your private key ^{assuming it's yours}, they cannot get it unless forced, which is not something, I think, that the government do.

I hope they buy though, so that we have more buyers and HODLers. 

They can just seize but accumulate the number of bitcoin through purchasing?, I don't think so because they don't focus in this matter of budget there a lot of things they need to focus in than this crypto currency they will just a made a move if there's something really happens makes a big deal to the government or country itself, if they will collect number of bitcoin user and probits they must need to create a rule with this to prevent user to use bitcoin or else they will support the bitcoin at all using a centralized platform at this thing they can easily manupulate, fees, transaction and services from the users.

Why all this effort? They can besiege all the mining farms, cut off their electricity, and restrict access to this technology and everything will end. Governments do not tend towards expensive solutions, but rather security solutions, and they can do that, but as long as they can get profits for free from imposing taxes and from tracking all currencies and their sources that It represents a danger, as it is a good opportunity to increase revenues without making any effort, and the currencies that are confiscated can be sold again and used. Bitcoin is not proof of stake, so purchasing all or part of Bitcoin will not make you able to change network protocols

The percentage chance of it happening is now on the low side,  IMO,  they would have no option left at some point than to even adopt it.
If you check, Despite several efforts made by various governments of the world to get rid of Bitcoin, it has been a thing of difficult for them to accomplish. Bitcoin is truly decentralized and that has become a threat to the government as it opposes their old financial (centralized) system of control. Initially, the Government underrated the capability of Bitcoin and thought it was not gonna scale through, only to discover lately that is their biggest threat. They came with CBDC yet people are not buying the idea because of people's awareness of Bitcoin as a solution to today's problem of inflation and the only freedom form of money in the whole world.

It's possible if everyone use centralized exchange and willing to sell their coins, but it's high unlikely when we talk about "every holders" since each person has it's own decision.

Even the government you refer is a rich and developed country, they can't just dump their fiat to buy Bitcoin since the more they buy, the more their fiat become worthless and Bitcoin price will rise. They can print new money, but it will destroy their country.

My reply to the OP is that no , governments will not be able to seize all bitcoins as the supply is distributed globally so each government will try to protect the wealth of it's own citizens . Of course that will not apply for acquired coins through illegal activities .
Now to the part that everyone says "it's decentralised" so no one can control it .
But what decentralised mean ? Let's consider that the network consists by three entities . Developers , block producers and users .
Developers can be "easily" controlled either by force or money . Anonymity on the internet is a no go if three letter agencies decide to go after you .
Block producers are big known entities connected to the internet , so another no go if governments want to force their will . Block reward is based on time and each msec counts , so by trying to hide your identity using "anonymous" routes affect your profitability . In other words known entities have a higher factor of solving the new blocks .
Users are spread all over the world , so there's a very low probability governments will be able to control them . In a totalitarian state things will be worse , but as most countries are based on "democracy" i think this will be fine .
Now , what happens if devs and block producers face a government order to follow specific rules ? Users might decide that it's on their best interest to not continue support the network and leave it for a fork . For that new network to continue exist , a group of developers , will have to be in charge . Probably they will try to hide their identities in a better way and 1% chance they might make it . The problem is , would users trust that team ? 99% of users have no deep knowledge of reading/understanding code so that would cause problems of trust and the slow death of that network ( consider that even monero which supports anonymity was created by a known entity and not some anonymous handle ) . Let's add to this that a large ( vast majority ) portion of hashpower will be forced to apply to the government's rules . Most hashpower is currently located in big mining farms and these farms are entities that are interested to profit . They are not ideological warriors that want to destroy governments will .
In other words , if governments wanted to destroy bitcoin they would do it in a year . Let's not take too light that their absence of actions means that the network is invulnerable . Bitcoin sooner or later will have to comply with the laws of society , or it will face it's extinction .    
    

In accordance with the keyword "not your keys, not your assets". The government does not have control over every wallet where Bitcoin is stored, without a private key the government will never be able to touch the assets stored in that wallet. It is difficult for the government to trace the whereabouts of the wallet owner as long as there is no personal identity listed on each wallet in which transactions are carried out. As long as you know how to use the wallet safely, there is no loophole for the government to trace who owns the wallet.

I read the article you shared, and I'm a bit confused about whether the Bitcoin has already been seized and is in the possession of the Israeli government. According to the dictionary definition, 'seize' means 'to take hold of suddenly and forcibly,' which implies that the government has taken control of it, either by identifying the user of the wallet and compelling them to provide the key to access the wallet or by identifying it as an exchange wallet. The article wasn't very clear on this matter, leaving us to guess.

The thing is, they can't seize these assets if they don't know who the owner of the wallet is. Regarding financing terrorist activities, I'm certain that the sender and the receiver are well aware that transactions passing through a third-party wallet, regulated by a government, can be traced because they have the power to investigate such transactions. So, honestly, I'm still a bit confused because, if they had seized it, they would have reported a specific amount of Bitcoin seized.

This statement from the article is quite confusing.


To whom they issued the seize order?

It's not gold bonds where they forcefully take it from you as they can't keep track records for all of them while many have been lost.They can put ban or restrictions on it but if you say about seizures then they can't do anything in that case.

I was just wondering something like that. As others mentioned, it is clear that it is technically impossible to access all the (remaining) Bitcoins. But another question has to do with the affordability (even if the price didn't go nuts like you mentioned with the 1M example).

I thought that the market cap was closer to gold's, but I've just checked it and it is 26 times smaller. It is much closer to silver's (only 2.5 times smaller: wait for the bull run). With a capitalisation of 500B, more or less Israel's GDP, it would be expensive, but still affordable, for the main economic powers (it would be, for example, 1.5 times the amount allocated to the EU's Next Generation program). But I don't think that it would be politically justifiable, in any case.

Many people, like the OP, do not understand the effect of a huge demand that would like to buy everything. I will leave aside the question of confiscation, which I understand has already been correctly answered.

If some government wanted to buy all the bitcoins in the world, the price would go into the stratosphere. Surely the first ones it bought would be bought at the levels it is now but demand would so outstrip supply that the price rise is even hard to calculate, but I think the dream $1,000,000 per bitcoin would come pretty quickly, and there would always be people who would not sell their bitcoins, who have them in their HW for HODLing in the very long term.

It is similar to when a billionaire has a billion dollars worth of shares in a company. If he wanted to sell them all at once, he would cause the stock to fall so much that he would end up getting much less, if anything, because he could even bankrupt it with that move.

One way to recover a wallet is only by using a phrase, the government will never be able to access the targeted wallet as long as it doesn't have a phrase, unless they take the individual hostage and then ask for the password by force. Assets stored in a Wallet are not the same as Fiat money stored in a Bank, the government can easily take over a bank account but cannot enter a Bitcoin wallet as long as it doesn't have a phrase. Asset security will always be maintained as long as you can control the key, it is also not easy for the government to identify who owns the wallet as long as it is not connected to KYC.

The million-dollar question is that, how realistic this scenario can happen? Do you think that this can happen? Do you think that everyone will really sell their Bitcoin to the government?

Technically speaking, yes they can sell it to the government, but realistically speaking, no it is almost impossible knowing that not all Bitcoin holders are willing to sell their Bitcoin especially with the government. This kind of scenario are kind of impossible to happen - unless people around the world will really sell, but what are the chances of it to happen? 0%.

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The government can't acquire something that they didn't create at first place, and that is Bitcoins, so it's impossible. I can't imagine these authorities interviewing every single person around the world asking if they are holding Bitcoins, and if they are, they will sell it to them. Kind of funny TBH.

They wasted golden time to stop it when Bitcoin network has very low hash rate and weak but now after 14 years, with its very decentralized and powerful network, how will governments succeed to break it down?

It's impossible.

They can not seize your coins if they won't arrest you and get your private keys. Those seized coins are from criminals who made crimes and were arrested by governments in their nations. If you don't make crimes, don't get arrested, your coins will be always yours, no seizure.

Governments can not buy all coins in circulating supply if not all bitcoiners sell their coins to governments. Do you think it is realistic for governments to buy all of coins in circulation?

CBDCs aren't even a competitor to bitcoin.


Think about it yourself — how theoretically viable is it for the authorities to literally go from house to house and search every single person's home for a hardware wallet or a bitcoin wallet installed on every single person's computer?

I am sure that they know and they have the idea that these are the only ways that they can take someone's Bitcoin. They have the power to do that if they're in the government to just confiscate and take away people's phrases and seeds in a forced manner. And they're also aware that many won't obey that rule because someone can remain lowkey and low profile that it seems that he's an idiot and doesn't understand a thing or two about Bitcoin. That's why it's unlikely that they can seize all people's Bitcoin if they ever get to have an order to seize all people's Bitcoin. I guess that these topics are popping up due to the war and all of the news that has come out. But remember folks, you can play dead and know nothing about Bitcoin if someone asks you and this is the importance of remaining anonymous don't talk a lot in public that you know that much about cryptocurrencies. Yes, we're advocates and educate people about Bitcoin but we should do it in a proper venue because who knows if someone is watching out like the FEDs and has got plans like these topics that have been brought up.