Topic: I don't like the idea of governments holding millions of Bitcoins. (Read 1482 times)

You don't need to catch every criminal in order to have a law be effective.

Then you probably meant something else in here:

I don't believe any of those things, nor do any of the points I am making require I do.

I got it from:

• Your belief that whatever the US government enacts will be unquestionably supported by the rest of the world, which to me, seems a pipe dream, especially regarding decentralized systems. In the long run, free enterprise efficiency and innovation outperform government bureaucracy (this is why the US became the dominant world power post-WW2), and Bitcoin epitomizes the extreme free market. While Bitcoin activity in the US might decline (temporarily, since governments change), it will continue to operate internationally, as it always has. And in addition to non-US Bitcoin companies, there are also decentralized exchanges, which are even less susceptible to government intervention.
• Your claims that the US government can effectively prosecute every person using the original Bitcoin, which is the same as claiming that they can prosecute every piracy user. The entire world is hostile on piracy sites, yet the BitTorrent protocol is intact.

While it will be good if the government buys bitcoin on daily basis because that would skyrocket the price of bitcoin.
But then again it would only benefit the early adopters by making them rich.
Government holding large amoutn of bitcoin would impact on decentralization nature of bitcoin and so it is better that the government sells off all the bitcoin it seizes so that the bitcoin network can be more decentralized.

I have long known that the authorities have been playing a hidden agenda, they publicly clamp down on the cryptocurrency ecosystem, making it seem like a financial cancer that needs to be cleansed but secretly holds a larger share of it. The scary part is that they can detect how the market flows one morning if they feel like it. The ecosystem was created to put financial power in the hands of individuals but somehow the whole genesis and ground root idea is being lost. The more government authorities interface with the ecosystem the faster it becomes another government-owned financial institution.

They've been selling just to help support their own currencies (Fiat). But who's stopping them from hoarding Bitcoin? If they did it with Gold, they can do it with BTC. In a country like El Salvador, Bitcoin is already being used as both a store of value and a currency. The government keeps accumulating BTC without selling.

Would you imagine if most (if not all) of the world's countries do this? There would be a massive concentration of BTC's supply among a few (centralization). Average people like you and me will be left behind in the dust. And there's nothing we can do about it (other than forking off to a new chain). It's a free market, anyways. At least, government's adoption of BTC will help boost market prices in the long term. We all want to make money, right?

Ever since, I have not heard anything before or even currently that someone has said that a government has bought bitcoin and has accumulated 1 million or 2 million bitcoins in the history of bitcoin. Are there any? I know nothing yet. Even El Salvador has less than 1 million bitcoins in its hands.

And let's assume that there is a government that can buy or hold 2 million bitcoins. That does not mean that they have the capacity to control the market 100%;; they can only lower or raise the price of bitcoin, but to control all the market price is vague. But that will help raise the price of Bitcoin in the future.

I think our slight disagreement here is that you are generally more optimistic with respect to the future "reserve currency" status of Bitcoin. If we could "bet" that no government would bet against Bitcoin in any time this could prevent them from attacking it.

For me, this is one possibility of many. My "bullish" prediction is that Bitcoin could compete with gold but not replace it completely - i.e. not "the", but "an" important reserve currency. But there are also slightly less bullish scenarios which could also be a good outcome, e.g. an international trade and minor reserve currency.

A point we could mention is that Bitcoin's main virtue, censorship resistance, is irrelevant for reserve currencies, at least of democracies. In the case of sanctioned dictatorships this may be different. But most countries would hold Bitcoin only to participate on its value evolution. This is however similar to gold's case.

I'd almost bet that the consequences of a "Satoshi sale event" would be far less dramatic that some people fear. My prediction would be a flash crash but of less than 50%, and mostly after Satoshi moved the first coins and not as a consequence of the sales themselves (Satoshi would be probably intelligent enough to not use a big market order, but proceed like the LKA Saxony with mostly OTC trades, almost not influencing the price at all). After the fact Bitcoin will have a better distribution and one reason for bear FUD will be gone

The problem is that we can't predict the same thing about a government or state which wants to do harm and thus sell the coins on the "wrong fork" in an aggressive way. The scenario I fear is very similar to the ETH-ETC conflict in 2016. Maybe a "FATF blacklist" would be an extreme measure (I may actually have only mentioned this one as a click/postbait ). But we can speculate about many protocol changes which would be far more subtle and "sound correct" for some user groups, for example another big block discussion, or a slight PoS addition like Ethereum's original PoW/PoS plans. They would not sound like they could destroy Bitcoin but could, for example, erode censorship resistance slightly, and move in a "certain" direction.

As I wrote I'm not totally against the "reserve currency" idea but in my opinion it's not intelligent to promote a too high state involvement.

I also agree with you because government holding bitcoin means government support for bitcoin. Moreover, if bitcoins are illegally traded in a country and confiscated, it will be held by the government. Whether there is any connection to the government holdings having a negative impact on the Bitcoin market is not very plausible to me.

You have serious reading comprehension issues:

Maybe you should stop misquoting me?

2027 won't be the same as 2025, even a low IQ person should understand this.

Wait, now I'm confused. You hate America so much that you are hoping it will collapse, and yet you favor Trump even though you don't think he will destroy America. That seems contradictory.


I what? Huh? Where on earth did you get that? I not only don't believe that, I don't even recall discussing the relative efficiency of... governments... (?)

If you are going to say that governments being inefficient makes it impossible from them to enforce the laws their citizens pass, well, I once again wish I could believe what you believe .

It wasn't a personal attack. I was genuinely curious because it seems you view the government as an extremely efficient and effective entity, whereas my life experiences and a plethora of evidence suggest otherwise. The government is a slow and inefficient organism, which is why free-market innovations like Bitcoin are always ahead of it. We can code faster than the state can regulate.

It's called a hardfork. A hardfork is making valid what's invalid. Bitcoin Cash, for example, is compatible with Bitcoin until block 478558. After that, hardfork rules apply, such as 32 MB block size limit.

Tough competitors. Remember that Craig can't tell what's an unsigned int. Hard to beat that.

I love the good ol' USA of the 70s/80s/90s, not the woke monstrous USA of today.

Understand the difference?

Trump is not going to destroy America, 2025 will be fabulous for Bitcoiners. I'm willing to take a bet about it.

But there are other geopolitical factors that will manifest themselves in 2027 and they're above Trump's paygrade...

Okay. You do you. But personally I love my country. You clearly don't, which is why you hope Trump wins here. I guess we should agree to disagree.

Have Fun, Stay Poor (when the US collapses later on this decade).

I doubt you hold even a single satoshi judging by your ignorant comments...

I have more experience than you in the IT space (since the 80s) and I can confidently say that you constantly spout BS.

You still have not addressed my IPv4 vs IPv6 question and that says a lot about your "experience"...

@BlackHatCoiner

This guy is even more ridiculous/arrogant than HmmMAA and CSW combined!

He doesn't even know how Bitcoin works and yet, he claims he can write Bitcoin software from scratch.

People who claim that a Bitcoin fork (let alone an unpopular one!) will ever be successful do NOT really understand how BTC works.

They treat BTC like they treat fiat currencies.

Fiat currencies are centrally controlled by a single entity (Central Bank), backed by the government/monopoly of violence (army & police). BTC is backed by math and energy, nothing else.

Bitcoin (and Gold) are decentralized.

Banning Bitcoin is like banning Gold (US has done this before).

Guess what? Gold never "vanished", nor it lost its value (quite the contrary)!

He doesn't know jackshit about Bitcoin or how forks work in general!

Bitcoin is a public ledger. All data the Bitcoin network uses is available to anybody who wants it. Anybody can create a compatible fork anytime they want.

If Bitcoin is forked so United States can have a 'legal' version of it while we are running the 'illegal' one, it would be useless and the original Bitcoin will still continue to reign.  Imagine people would quickly work together and create a way to Atomic Swap between the two so you could have any of the 'illegal' or 'legal' versions according to your choice.  They are not going to Fork Bitcoin, it would be stupid.

-----

Excuse me if I am having an empty brain moment right now but it is late here and I am tired.  How can a Bitcoin Fork be compatible with the existing Blocks of the original Bitcoin?

Anyway.  This thing can be done by ANY Government at ANY time with ANY absurd Laws included.  It did not happen however and I think your doomsday scenario of Bitcoin is pretty exaggerated.  I do not even know how the discussion of Republican vs Democrats attitude over Bitcoin turned to this scenario.  Just my opinion however.

So when a politician, elected by a majority and within the rules, lies to you in a way that contradicts your policy goals, then that is "dictatorship" in your mind. Interesting.

You seem to be extremely anti-American in your comments, which I guess would be a good advertisement for any American who is in favor of their country continuing to exist to... do the opposite of what you are asking to be done .


The US government can create an "altcoin" that is:

1. Called "Bitcoin" and trademarked as such, such that if you have anything else called "Bitcoin" then you would be prosecuted;

2. Compatible with the current Bitcoin's existing blocks, such that all current holders of Bitcoin would continue to have their holdings;

3. Legal in the US and it's allies to hold and trade, as opposed to anything else, which it would deem illegal;

And then they could deem the "old" Bitcoin as:

1. In violation of their trademark, such that anybody who used the term "Bitcoin" to describe it in any variant would be prosecuted;

2. Illegal to hold or trade in the US, meaning all major US brokers, apps and wallets would instantly drop this fork for fear of prosecution.

So yes, in your own mind what the US would have created would be "not Bitcoin", but in all practicality the US government would have replaced Bitcoin as we know it with their own controlled software system.

I don't know how else this can be described. The idea that any significant number of people would risk prosecution and all of their Bitcoin holdings so they could remain "pure" is just... nuts to me. Maybe you think people would do this, and bitcoin-orig would rise above bitcoin-us somehow in the market (what market?), but I simply cannot imagine any scenario where that could happen.