Topic: How to Destroy Bitcoin (Read 3566 times)

That's right. The only way to kill bitcoin is for (lots of) governments to ban it. Why would they bother to "fiddle with the Internet" at their borders (which  is a hugely expensive, difficult task) when they can just ban the thing.

But judging from the last 6 months, all governments will do is "attempt to classify" bitcoin rather than ban it. Even the "bitcoin is illegal in Thailand" story was nonsense. Just some government official saying it hadn't been classified yet, so you can't set up a new business around it. There are several bitcoin exchanges operating in Thailand. The Thai government will always have bigger things to worry about than stuff like bitcoin. Like how to stay in power ..........

From what I heard, it's existing financial institutions that should not integrate bitcoin in their operations, others are free to continue. The reason is that China is afraid that if bitcoin fails that it would bring more of the financial system with it if it became too integrated in the existing financial sector.

I had that from a redditor living in China. Basically what he said was that if bitcoin failed, the Chinese Govt. would have it so that it would not affect any other systems much.

they can't stop shit, if you buy/sell directly in btc

I'm a bit more optimistic. I eventually see banks and governments working with bitcoin not trying to get rid of it.

It is true though that if you wanted to "kill" bitcoin all it would take is for most governments to outlaw or heavily restrict it's usage. Obviously you can't kill it 100% but if businesses aren't accepting it on a large scale than it would never expand and go mainstream, it would remain a niche thing.

When people perform packet analysis can they tell whether it is bitcoin related?

As in previous scenarios:
If somebody manages to separate this entire network in a few pieces , and I'm not talking about Egypt or Syria here , what happens to bitcoin will be our last concern

Sorry about that. I'm tired too, so I'm probably rambling.
Referencing my thoughts several posts ago, one of the methods used in destroying bitcoins involved manipulating the internet links between countries.
By separating the bitcoin network, you can create a fork in the blockchain.

However, each "forked" blockchain has a copy of the historical transactions that occurred before it got forked.
So you, as an entity out to destroy bitcoin, have several addresses with a few BTC each in them.
You then split the network.

During the time of the split, your addresses spend, transfer, do many transactions - etc, with each other and various merchants.
However, your addresses do this in more than one "forked" location, and each "forked" location will have different transactions.
You let your transactions confirm, then remove the disturbance.

Now, you have several different blockchains of various lengths, with many different transactions competing to be the real blockchain.
No matter which one wins, transactions on the losing blockchain will not be reflected - hence everyone on the losing blockchain will be upset.
Especially if they take a monetary lost. (The reason for having many accounts enacting transactions is to prevent any easy manual repair/syncing - hence all the transactions taken in each "forked" blockchain must be different)

Well , you lost me there.
I'm too tired to try to understand what you're trying to say with that.
I'll give it a try with a nice cup of coffee before me in the morning.

Not really, I mean, people are still farming lite-coin and feather coin aren't they?
What purpose do those two coins serve other than its easier for non-ASIC users to mine; so they can trade them for bitcoin?
Similarly, even if something better than bitcoin comes out, people might still mine it in hopes of trading for that new currency.

As the question was how to destroy bitcoin, you'll also have to destabilize the network to get people to move on.
Having 1000 separate accounts sending money to one other (different amounts) when you fork the network in several different countries would be a good start.

Especially if you spend the money in your home country. Can you imagine the confusion and anger the merchants would have when their payment is unconfirmed/never existed since the block chain it happened on happened to be shorter than the longest chain?

WE SHALL WIN! Honestly, I think bitcoin will overcome this war and be victorious in money payments!

Isn't that the same thing?
If you replace it , nobody is using it so you can consider it dead.

Ummm..... but they aren't issued by a government

Umm... primecoin and gridcoin both work worldwide.

The question was how to destroy bitcoin; the answer is to replace it with something better while at the same time breaking bitcoin.

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1) Step up my own coin (make it more useful to society like primecoin or grid-coin)
2) Offer a guaranteed minimum redemption price on that coin (ie, 1 coin is worth $50, no question asked)
3) Offer Faster transaction times
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If they issue virtual coins, they wouldn't be fungible across borders. So effectively doing nothing but complementing their own physical coins. What benefit is that to the world? The point of bitcoin is that it works worldwide. One world, one currency.

I have several thoughts on how I, as a government, can destroy bitcoin

1) Step up my own coin (make it more useful to society like primecoin or grid-coin)
2) Offer a guaranteed minimum redemption price on that coin (ie, 1 coin is worth $50, no question asked)
3) Offer Faster transaction times

and/or

A) Throttle/shape internet traffic
(Ie, what's AT&T and cable companies are currently doing)
A2) Control internet traffic - ban/modify the packets

B) Put unknown traffic/headers into the "slow lane" - lose packets randomly
C) Go after the servers that host the clients
D) Go after servers that hosts pools
E) Change DNS entrys
F) Infiltrate various bicoin forums as a sleeper agent

G) Break encryption (or pretend to have)
    This is done via distributed computing and/or injection (control a large pool).
    Claim that there's a flaw in bitcoin's implementation of sa256 and that you have cracked it; say you will prove it by sending money from Satoshi's wallet to one of your own (ie, vanitygen something like I've hacked bitcoin).
    Send a satoshi every 10 mins

H) Fork bitcoin within my country borders. Bonus if my allies do the same (ie, temporarily disable the trans-atlantic cable, etc)

I)  and various variants on this

it's plausible. they'd probably ban bitcoin and infer that everybody should salute this - unless you hate FREEDOM.

it's kind of like the tactics when governments want to stop protesting/demonstrations. send one of your own guys in as a protestor, have him cause a ruckus, and then let the police beat down on innocent people.

Yeah , but no getting paranoid every day on the same topics that have discussed for 2 years till now.

Love to know how we are going to stay ahead of government regulation that hasn't even happened yet. Crystal ball anyone?

i think it's super important to acknowledge and recognize every thing that can disrupt btc in even the slightest, and address them now.

we need to stay ahead of the curve and it's something that we have done and i sure hope, continue to do.

or like rats fleeing a sinking ship they could quietly buy and horde them.