Topic: If you were the government, how would you fight against bitcoin? - page 6. (Read 953 times)

You ask in this forum with the majority of bitcoiners about how to fight bitcoin? I personally know how bitcoin works in general, I'm not going against it.

I have no idea that even governments feel threatened (unless they have a highly corrupt system), instead the threat is aimed at the fractional reserve system of bankers. If leaders want a transparent financial system, then they must follow how bitcoin works.

There isn't a perfect method to fight bitcoin. It was created in a way to difficult regulators persecuting bitcoin adopters at its maximum. The techniques used by governments must be extremely intrusive and time plus effort demanded to keep every citizens under control, what it's not practicable for real. There will be always gaps abused by bitcoin adopters to avoid being caught by authorities. Governments are wasting their time thinking about fighting bitcoin. It's a lost fight already.

There is actually no realistic threat against Bitcoin. The reason is simply that Bitcoin is unstoppable. No government can stop it. Many have tried but look at where Bitcoin is now. It is up and running and growing and even adopted by governments themselves.

The very fact that we are now discussing about the possible ways to stop Bitcoin means that Bitcoin can't be stopped. But you can at least make it illegal. That wouldn't stop Bitcoin of course but at least you're instilling fear to the people.

I think attacking the endpoints of Bitcoin is the easiest way. Nobody would get far by tracking down each and every Bitcoin user if some dumb government were to make Bitcoin illegal (again³). The endpoints in this case are, for example, the centralized service platforms. Like a centralized crypto exchange. Centralization is too easy to control, freeze or close down, if I were the government.

So I go after the people who sell services for and with Bitcoin. But thats easy to avoid when everyone switches to web3 and since nobody needs centralized platforms to sell/buy goods and services, using decentralized services will compliment the decentralized nature of Bitcoin really well. And not only that, but the disconnection from government-traceable platforms will make fighting against Bitcoin impossible...

In other words, if I were the government I would do nothing because I can do nothing.

Ask yourself why no country is doing it. The answer is, because it can never work in a Western country, where people have some basic freedoms. How would any court justify imprisoning people for owning a digital form of money? Nobody would feel safe if they started busting people's doors and going through their computers because they bought cryptocurrency.

The best way of fighting it is doing what they're doing, trying to make a centralized version of digital currency that they control and that is linked to the current financial system to satisfy people who want fast digital money that can be sent 24/7 with minimum fees. CBDC will cover that for you, be accepted even in places that don't accept bitcoin and allow the government to track your purchases, charge you as you go and such.

It's already being done. The goal is to create a society where you get a ticket and the money is taken from your account. They don't ask you to pay the bill, they just take the money. You get into argument with your wife and leave home, she calls the police, says you hit her, they access your wallet and see that you bought a beer in a bar, they go there and arrest you.

Another situation. The government decides to additionally tax all owners of cars that are over 25 years, or over 2 litre, or whatever. They instantly know you own one and deduct the tax from your wallet.

The best way to fight something is to make people disregard it by showing vulnerabilities in the system and making something that is similar and doesn't have those exact vulnerabilities. It may have different ones, but they'll emphasize the ones they want to "fix"

Example? Bitcoin is vulnerable because of its exchanges. Our digital currency will be exchangeable at any bank, so you'll be able to create a digital currency account and transfer any amount of fiat currency into it through the bank's API, with no fees! We won't tell you that this digital currency is centralized and we have full control over its creation and destruction. We'll concentrate on making you fear crypto exchanges and feel secure exchanging at our bank.

When we weren't able to control something we'll try to regulate. This is how things used to get into regulation. In such a way I'll try to keep it regulated with certain limitations. We know there are possible ways to make use of it amidst the regulation. For now having control over the centralised cryptocurrency related service providers is the best choice. This could help in keeping things on track atleast to some 50%

Giving punishment to anyone who adopts bitcoin is actually too much if indeed this is enforced in my opinion because in this case bitcoin is not a crime. As for later, there must be excuses about money laundering, fraud and supplying terrorists, for example, that obviously doesn't really have an impact because of course bitcoin isn't wrong because they are just objects, so in this case I still feel that the action to give punishment, let alone severe punishment, has been definitely can't be done.

On the other hand, I actually still feel that a ban like this won't have a real impact no matter what happens and it won't be very useful.

Technically speaking, it is impossible to prevent anyone from using Bitcoin unless you succeed in cutting off the Internet completely from their devices for a long time. There is practically no effective way to stop the use of Bitcoin.
On the other hand, some governments are restricting users who can identify them, but this does not stop the wave of adoption. We have seen governments discredit Bitcoin and others warn about it.
The best way to deal with this is for governments to legalize its use and benefit from it, which seems far away due to the stubbornness of the banking sector, which is considered the most affected.

I've often heard that nothing can stop bitcoin.
While this may be true, I would like to make a list of all possible ways in which banks and governments will try to fight against BTC. So we could find ways to anticipate against it.

Some ideas:

- Prison sentences for people getting caught owning BTC, trading it or selling goods in BTC. Penalties so severe that most people will back off. I often hear local media associate BTC holders with criminals and money launderers, and expect governments to treat them as such. Local banks in my country can face penalties if crypto profits are transfered to a local bank account.

- Regulation for exchanges getting so tough that they can never comply, which will cause them to be shut down, which would generate a run on crypto with a similar effect to FTX bankruptcy.
- Liquidity crises of the exchanges. In case of a bank run, banks can pay about 3% of their account holders. I wonder which amount of liquidity an exchange should have to be solvent. FTX behaved like a bank, but the difference is that FTX' bankruptcy can cause a crash of BTC price while a bank run just leads to the bank being bailed out by the IMF, without the currency getting destroyed.

If you think that none of these things is a realistic threat to the system, let me know.
If there are other threats, likewise.