Bitcoin would continue to grow because it offers the lowest possible transaction costs of all competing currencies for distanced and online transactions, and because the future will come to depend more heavily on those kinds of transactions as the world economy comes online and even in-person purchases begin to feature an online component.
In a world of ubiquitous internet, the digital transaction is king.
I would liken bitcoin today to the status of oil before the invention of the internal combustion engine--undervalued and largely off the world's radar. Oil was a curiosity and a nuisance before the ICEngine. As the ICE took off, oil became very important indeed. And as digital transactions take off, the compelling business proposition for bitcoin is its significantly lower transaction costs compared to credit transactions.
Bitcoin also offers turn-key infrastructure for developing economies. With a single cellphone and a bitcoin app, anyone can become a merchant, send or receive payments, or act as a bank for the whole neighborhood. While carrying cash has risks, a 3rd world bitcoin transaction can be done one-way, where the guy taking payments can be just a hired vendor without access to the private key, and thus can't be robbed of bitcoin. Nor does he need a bank to control his money.
And for the record, I don't think the US will take an outright oppositional stance to bitcoin, because they're smart enough to realize that bitcoin is a hydra with a hundred heads. They will instead try to tame it with regulation and slowly tighten the reins over time.
Topic: Imagine: BTC totally illegal in US. Would it continue growing? Why and how? (Read 549 times)
June 10, 2013, 05:44:55 PM
June 01, 2013, 06:56:02 PM
+1 Bitcoin grew by a lot when Cyprus and Greece found out about it.
Exactly, Greece especially is one place where the local population are NOT at all happy with the robbing political system that has brought them to the situation in which they now are...
Yeah, that totally sucks. It's so oppressive to its people, I'm glad that Bitcoin is around.
June 01, 2013, 04:10:18 PM
+1 Bitcoin grew by a lot when Cyprus and Greece found out about it.
Exactly, Greece especially is one place where the local population are NOT at all happy with the robbing political system that has brought them to the situation in which they now are...
June 01, 2013, 04:03:47 PM
Yes. It would continue to grow since there are many other countries other that the US. GMO is banned in some 30 countries yet it's still pervasive in the US food supply. But I don't see BTC becoming illegal, instead it will become heavily regulated and controlled.
+1 Bitcoin grew by a lot when Cyprus and Greece found out about it.
June 01, 2013, 03:40:42 PM
Society doesn't yet realise that it will have to choose between tyranny and radical freedom.
Tyranny = give up as many responsibilities to a central (tyrannical) power so you can focus on your own material enrichment
Radical freedom = being responsible as much as you can about what YOU can do, giving your grain of salt to society so that society can be as be a place where you CAN be free do as you want...
In the end, bitcoin and the technology behind it could finally give the world a way for each and everyone of us, from where ever we are, to create a trustworthy polling system to really take on the problems that affect us all a ground level, not what the politics of each place dictate as what they think is best - the truly community decision made between the educated majority (those who have the professional experience to be able to make a properly educated evaluation about the topic in question) i believe much more effective than the weighted decisions in politics...
In the end, if we all realize how interdependent we are on each other, and therefore that all our grains of salt can add up to the most educated evaluation of those topics that affect each of us most closely, then we wouldn't even need a political system, we could sort it all out between ourselves... each to our own speciality, trusting that the rest of us also do that very same...
June 01, 2013, 02:02:09 PM
Thank you for your great answer. Any more opinions or comments on this?
June 01, 2013, 06:40:02 AM
It would grow more slowly, but could not be eradicated completely, unless you managed to take away military grade cryptography from the people. That would require turning the US into a draconian police state, and even that might not be enough, as the example of Iran shows.
If individuals manage to maintain access to the internet and the use of military grade open source cryptography both on the internet and offline, then this will have tremendous consequences, both good and bad. Cryptography, like nuclear weapons, will change the rules of the game forever, whether we like it or not. It will enable totally untraceable digital cash. David Chaum has shown this is mathematically possible, and the fact that Bitcoin has shown a grassroots P2P open source currency is possible, makes it inevitable. Also, just like nuclear weapons, cryptography cannot be uninvented, and by the Streisand effect it cannot be taken off the internet without shutting down the entire internet. At a minimum, governments will be just as unable to eradicate Bitcoin as they have been unable to eradicate the drugs trade and money laundering.
So, cryptography has great consequences, and it will take draconian repression to try to stop it, and in the end, people aren't going to accept draconian repression. Nevertheless it's going to be a long, hard struggle to maintain our liberties. Society doesn't yet realise that it will have to choose between tyranny and radical freedom. The power of cryptography does not allow for a compromise position. It's not so much that more reasonable compromises cannot be thought of, it's that they cannot be enforced. Any enforcement action that can counteract the power of cryptography requires draconian repression, and is therefore by definition incompatible with a compromise position. See http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm.
Nevertheless, politicians and society at large will instinctively seek a compromise position, and it will take time for them to realise that there isn't one. Unfortunately, that means that they will initially be unwittingly supporting the move towards tyranny, until they finally realise what's going on. What we in the Bitcoin community can do is to try to speed this process along. The sooner people realise that the world has changed, the less collateral damage there will be.
If individuals manage to maintain access to the internet and the use of military grade open source cryptography both on the internet and offline, then this will have tremendous consequences, both good and bad. Cryptography, like nuclear weapons, will change the rules of the game forever, whether we like it or not. It will enable totally untraceable digital cash. David Chaum has shown this is mathematically possible, and the fact that Bitcoin has shown a grassroots P2P open source currency is possible, makes it inevitable. Also, just like nuclear weapons, cryptography cannot be uninvented, and by the Streisand effect it cannot be taken off the internet without shutting down the entire internet. At a minimum, governments will be just as unable to eradicate Bitcoin as they have been unable to eradicate the drugs trade and money laundering.
So, cryptography has great consequences, and it will take draconian repression to try to stop it, and in the end, people aren't going to accept draconian repression. Nevertheless it's going to be a long, hard struggle to maintain our liberties. Society doesn't yet realise that it will have to choose between tyranny and radical freedom. The power of cryptography does not allow for a compromise position. It's not so much that more reasonable compromises cannot be thought of, it's that they cannot be enforced. Any enforcement action that can counteract the power of cryptography requires draconian repression, and is therefore by definition incompatible with a compromise position. See http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm.
Nevertheless, politicians and society at large will instinctively seek a compromise position, and it will take time for them to realise that there isn't one. Unfortunately, that means that they will initially be unwittingly supporting the move towards tyranny, until they finally realise what's going on. What we in the Bitcoin community can do is to try to speed this process along. The sooner people realise that the world has changed, the less collateral damage there will be.
June 01, 2013, 06:29:12 AM
Imagination game:
The US gov (or an earthquake/meteorite/whatever) comes down so hard on BTC that the US market is completely gone. (please do not deviate into the validity of this imagined assumption, help us keep focused on the question and the thread on topic)
In your opinion:
Would BTC continue growing?
If so, what would be the main driving forces behind it?
At what rate would it grow, in which countries, etc...
(FINALLY, any other comments you think are relevant)
The US gov (or an earthquake/meteorite/whatever) comes down so hard on BTC that the US market is completely gone. (please do not deviate into the validity of this imagined assumption, help us keep focused on the question and the thread on topic)
In your opinion:
Would BTC continue growing?
If so, what would be the main driving forces behind it?
At what rate would it grow, in which countries, etc...
(FINALLY, any other comments you think are relevant)
Jump to: