Topic: Can the government acquire all bitcoins either by seizure or purchase? - page 3. (Read 455 times)

It is possible for a government to confiscate bitcoins but it is never possible to confiscate all bitcoins. It is never possible for the government to know the amount of Bitcoin held by the citizens of a country and the security code or password or phase of each of their wallets. However, a country's government can confiscate all bitcoins held by a particular organization or individual. As the American government seized all the bitcoins confiscated from the Silk Road.

The Israeli government only arrested the person responsible for Hizzbullah's crypto wallet but they couldn't stop all the bitcoins or cryptocurrencies that came in as a form of donation for the war fund, bitcoin is a decentralized asset, no government in the world controls it, bitcoin is not like altcoins whose amount and value can be easily manipulated, there is no need to be afraid to transact and donate via cryptocurrency.

Yes this can happen if everyone holding Bitcoin decide that they would sell to the government then that is the only way the government can acquire all the whole Bitcoin
Bitcoin is decentralized so the government can order people to give them their Bitcoin that why some people choose crypto-currency over the traditional financial where the government can freeze someone account which is super unfair.

I read this news, and it was biased too, as when a war starts, many news outlets, take sides, (the reason could be anything) but when the news outlets take sides, they only show or write the side of their story and ignore the others. In this situation, we should read those news, which are not biased and are neutral. And, the topic you started, must be out of curiosity about how Israel seizes the cryptocurrency, please keep in mind that, they seize the cryptocurrency of some wallet or some platform. They just can't seize the assets of a person. And they are not the only ones to seize the assets, back in time, when bankruptcies and scams occurred, the US and many other countries also seized many funds. Examples are the silk road etc.
You are right, those governments don't want BTC to grow, but they are not going to seize all the funds and I don't think they can do it, because they don't own the blockchain, because Blockchain is distributed in all over the world, it is not some central or distributed servers which can be controlled by mother server.

We are talking about BTC blockchain, which is secure from any single entity's control. And They might have thought to seize the funds but they can only do that, by going home to home, person to person, and checking each and everyone, for their seed phrases and searching out the whole house, etc. etc. whatever method they will use, but a person can, of course, trick them and save the seed phrases, even by remembering them. I hope you are getting my point. And a government cannot just seize the assets of there locals. I didn't heard of any event like this.

Bitcoins that are in addresses on centralized platforms can be seized, it has been said on this forum for a very long time that if it is not your keys, it isn't your coins, the government can issue an order for your Bitcoins to be seized if you have it under a centralized control. If your coins are in a non-custodial wallet, they cannot be seized. As for the government purchasing all Bitcoins, well, someone has to sell it to them, and if you are willing to sell your coins, there's definitely going to be a buyer and it can be anybody or any institution.

You have often heard the saying not your keys not your coins. This means that if don't have the keys to your asset then you don't have control of your coins. Without the private keys of your wallet you cant access your Bitcoins without seeking permission form a third party that might eventually deny you your request. But if you have full possession of your keys the only mean someone could take them form you is by physically ripping you off of it, as long as you have not done any mistake top save it digitally or share it to someone (a friend, family or someone who you claim to love.)

When you store your Bitcoin in a wallet you are in full control of, there is no way the government can intimated you or there is no law written that stand that you have to open your phone or laptop and share you keys to the government. That is trespassing personal property. However if you store your Bitcoin in a company, exchange the government can exert pressure on them to gain f=control over the cryptocurrency  owned by the government citizens.
One faithful morning you could wake up and everything you worked hard for its gone.

This question of yours can be answered in a yes and no response.

YES being the fact that the government can take over bitcoin assets through centralized third party exchange if such case emanates. Since you have your bitcoin with the exchange, it does not belong to you because you have no access to the seed or key phrase holding the asset. So you can not in any way say you own it and if the government decides to act funny, all the assets with that exchange is gone as long as there is a tag attached to the exchange or your account with them.  

NO being the fact that in this situation you have control over your bitcoin asset and no one knows who owns the wallet address and no one can trace to see where or see the end of it all to know between the parties that did the transaction to act by taking over the asset. You own your keys and you have your asset under your watch so how does the government know who owns the wallet when there is no link to trace and know the owner of such wallet.

In all, there is possibility that your question is very much accurate because third parties are porous and are the arm of government in crypto so the government through them can do whatever they want since they have access to kyc of every account holder with them.

And what if I lost all my bitcoins in a boating accident? How will they be able to retrieve those? 

So far as the fund is passing through CEX, it is possible to seize them. To cash out cryptocurrency, you need KYC through which the identity of the user is known. It is just a matter of running background check on the user to check their activities and affiliations. 

As soon as the details about the user are gotten,  Isreal through the West will act through the exchanges since they control the global system, no body want to be in their bad book.

The possibility of the government to acquire all Bitcoin by seizure or purchase is impossible.  There are already inaccessible wallet address that holds Bitcoin due to lost keys.  Aside from this, there will always a Bitcoin holder that will continue to hodl Bitcoin.  Aside from that, the government will only seize Bitcoin if it is used for illegal means and/or use to support terrorists and the government will not seize the Bitcoin used in legit companies.

The government can only freeze bitcoin stored on centralized exchanges because most of them are under there regulations. But bitcoins stored on wallet cannot be seized or the account frozen, the only possible way is to trace the person and force the person to submit their wallet seed phrase or private keys. Apart from this two the decentralized nature of bitcoin can never allow any third party to have access to your wallet without the seed or keys.

So the only way is through tracing you and you can also minimize the risk of been Traced by using an HD wallet that generates new addresses for every new transaction. And you need to make sure to use the new address to receive new transactions, as such you can’t have all transactions linked to you. The other way is the use of bitcoin mixers. This two create almost total anonymity that can be a bit hard for the government to trace you

No, they can't; the government can't seize what they don't have access to unless they hold the citizen, and they are the ones who gave the key phrase to the government.
 
Do you know why people are advised to make use of a self-custodial wallet, aside from security and privacy reasons? As a result of this, they don't have any way to take over what they can't access. Even without a hardware wallet, self-custodial mobile and window wallets alone can't be taken control of without the owner giving access to the wallet.
 
Even if they succeed in arresting bitcoin owners, if they in any way identify any of its citizens who own it, they can't still forcefully take control over the wallet unless there is some advanced technology that they plan to use in doing that, and I still don't see any possibility in that.

This headline from the news is what has been making me think, Israel seizes cryptocurrency said to be used to finance Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The government has struggled hard to make sure that bitcoin does not develop and grow, they have made several policies and even created their own CBDC as a competition all to suffocate bitcoins growth. It is not impossible that they have not thought about seizing all the bitcoins so they can just hold it until we forget about bitcoins. So I am thinking, apart from physically confiscating hardware wallets and apprehending bitcoin holders to submit their seed phrase, is it possible that the government can seize bitcoins belonging to citizens even though it is a decentralized system?