Topic: Is it possible for a country to block bitcoins (or even the whole cryptos) - page 4. (Read 2761 times)

Yes it is possible to ban people from that country to use the sites related to bitcoin or cryptocurrency but still people will find a way to access it. If there are laws implemented that will have severe penalties then people will find a way like using VPN to access it. They will just avoid getting caught but if bitcoin has a good effect in the country then the government will not ban it and a possibility of supporting it.

i think its be a problem because as long as internet connection is not block and people can still used the connection, people will find the way to use bitcoin. especially if they want to make money from bitcoin, they will search from other way and maybe they can use vpn to connect and using bitcoin again.

Bitcoin is blocked in a few countries at the moment, but people can still use it because the governemnt doesnt know about this, for example in the united states, you cannot buy bitcoins in any exchanger, you cant invest in forex if you live in usa, or even crypto-exchangers.
I dont know why, but nowadays a lot of countries are legalizing bitcoin, it is the currency of the future.

I think it is impossible for the government to actually prohibit the use of bitcoin, in the sense that making bitcoin is not used by prohibiting, prohibiting could have been applied by the government but bitcoin is decentralized and is on the internet, where no one can intervene

Yes I think its possible, the government in a country can choose to have all websites in relation to bitcoin to be blocked. They have the power to do so. They can probably even prevent all exchanges to have bitcoin exchanged to their local currency. A government can declare bitcoin or cryptocurrency as illegal then users will have to find ways to transact under the market and public eye.

i do not think it may be so easy to bain  bitcoin or stop it in a particular area, because if it was possible the some countries may already done it. but i think it is not possible that they can stop bitcoin in a particular area.

Exactly
 You could use bitcoin in jail if you wanted to, it would just require access to someone on the outside that is willing to make transactions for you. This is the beautiful thing about btc, you are only really trafficking in information. I've known folks behind the Great Firewall that don't have a problem, and no one government has implemented this yet, so it doesn't seem feasible/efficient. The easiest way to restrict bitcoin is to make its conversion to Fiat illegal. It's waaaaay easier to track Fiat

Yes, f it was possible then I believe it would have already happened somewhere in the world. In this era where technology is advancing day by day, it is impossible to keep people blind and to stop them from dealing with bitcoins. Moreover, to block something you need to own it. But bitcoins have decentralized nature. Apparently it is impossible to stop the storm of this digital currency as far as internet is working.

You can accumulate it and then spend it online. How would they know? If you buy something online, nobody asks you how you

paid for it. You just pay the import duties and taxes with Fiat, then they are happy.  The other option is to spend it on a Bitcoin

holiday in another country, where Bitcoin is accepted. Japan will be a shopping Holiday of a life time. 

No, I believe it is not possible to block bitcoins because its decentralized and people need only connection to get this crypto currency, buy and sell it everytime without any issue.

It is actually possible. They will just block sites which support bitcoin payment or exchange. That is not so hard if the government developed in this sense. It is going to be the same as the government make some porn sites or online casinos unavailable if they hold politic against this.

Some countries block the whole internet for most of their populations, like North Korea. No internet, no bitcoins.

Some less drastic resolutions: make Bitcoin illegal and punish everyone caught using Bitcoin, block all connections related to Bitcoin nodes for the whole country

Sometimes it is not possible because Bitcoin is not paper currency, everyone has the right to register in any exchange where we can trade.
But will insist them not to use the Bitcoin but people who invested will still, using the Bitcoin buying and selling.

How can they block Bitcoins, when the blockchain is decentralized? The only option is to impose a blanket ban on internet (that will be extremely difficult, with satellite phones available on every nook and corner of the earth).

Hello,

    Let's think about a solution outside of the context of a regulatory ban or outright denial of service.

    Here's the hypothetical.  Let's suppose you wanted to broadcast a transaction but didn't have a node which was caught up with the network for one reason or another.

    If you're lucky enough to have just an input or two in the transaction; then the transaction will be very small (in bytes).
    In a disaster situation where there are people helping people, it wouldn't be hard at all to imagine a scenario where some guy with a paper wallet finds some guy with a HAM radio.

    It would be very easy to modulate a small signed transaction even in Morse code; so that it could be verified and broadcast over the network.

    This probably only works easily to get your Bitcoins *out* of the disaster zone.

    Another way could be through steganography.
    Let's suppose in this case, the ISP has a something equivalent to the Sandvine traffic management filter which was used to kill Bittorrent P2p networks... such that the wire protocol was inspected and Bitcoin nodes weren't able to operate in the clear because forged TCP RST had been sent to the remote end of the connection.

    Maybe you can't run the full node, but you could get a signed transaction out to someone who does.  It is doubtful that in the same parallel dimension where Bitcoin is blocked that posting images or sharing music would be blocked too...  otherwise, why have an Internet?  There would then be easy ways to encode your signed transaction steganographically into some image you uploaded in a new facebook post.  A contingency where you pay someone in a safe country to watch your facebook posts to see if the images contain a concealed transaction -- is definitely far from ideal, but technically a possibility.

    With the growth rate of the blockchain and the 1MB blocks; it wouldn't even been too imaginative to consider a situation where the same street markets which sell pirated DVDs and CDs could have a "July 2017" bootstrap.dat for you to import all of the blocks that you missed since the end of June 2017 (on DVD or Blu-ray) -- so that your "offline node" is still able to have a valid (albeit latent) copy of the blockchain and verify that the Bitcoins you had sent covertly had indeed been broadcast to the network and included in a block.

    I guess in short -- censorship of the Internet or legislative blockades to Bitcoin will in all actually only slow down the ability for the determined to transact in Bitcoin.
    I don't think it would ever be able to make transacting an impossibility.

    Remember the BGP hijacking in the Arab Spring when Egypt cut off most Internet and cell phone service?
    How successful were they in totally blocking all of that reporting... (hint: not so successful)

    What are some of your Sci-Fi Cypherpunk Bitcoin Hero hypotheticals?
    How would you get a transaction broadcast -- how would you go about keeping a node going and ensuring the copy you have is the Best Chain?
    Would it be a team effort or the story of a solo practitioner; would you just say, "Fugget About It" and then be a good boy working in the labor camp?

Best Regards,
-Chicago

No,i think its hardly difficult for a country to ban bitcoins completely.If it had been possible to do so,china and russia would have done it much before.What they could do is just block some popular sites to avoid trading.The two main reasons for which most governments fear bitcoin is that they would not be able to control illegal activities funded with bitcoins and they would not be able to impose tax on bitcoin earnings fully.

Bangladesh banned bitcoin in 2014 under anti-money laundering law and using it is a punishable offense, up to 12 years in jail. There are a few other countries that banned bitcoin around 2013 - 2014, at a time when bitcoin adoption was in its very early stages.

Countries can ban bitcoins by proclaiming it illegal, but still it would be a bit tough to enforce this ban. It ain't 2014 anymore, bitcoin has tremendously grown in popularity. When countries like Japan, Australia, India, Russia, US etc are in favor of bitcoin, developing or underdeveloped countries wouldn't outright ban bitcoin, neither lilegal nor banned.

With its store of value aspect, similar to gold, and a safe haven during political, economical, and social uncertainties, neither belonging to any particular country nor correlated with other assets/conventional currencies. All these makes bitcoin a good alternative world reserve currency. Rather than banning bitcoin, I think in future most countries would be competing to cash in on bitcoins reserve qualities.

Yes, of course. Any country can block bitcoin if they really want bitcoin to stay away from their country. As a matter of fact, there are several countries where bitcoin is illegal. Who would then try to spread bitcoin in a place where bitcoin is too alien a concept?

And some countries that are now open to bitcoin used to discourage the use of bitcoin.

Im not so sure this would happen,
think of all the bad stuff online that people have access to, Why is that not blocked already?

The only thing that is actively being pursued is not paying for T.V packages and illegal streaming. Because that hurts big business!
All those Soccer stars being paid Hundreds of Thousands on a monthly/yearly basis have to be paid, and it aint gonna happen if more
and more people are illegally streaming.

We over here in our crypto corner are not on the radar [yet] generally speaking.

You would be surprised how many people in China use VPNs and Tor. Usually everyone has someone to set it up for them, since you only need to set it up once. It is just like when people don't know how to use cracks for programs and video games or even torrents. They just ask someone who knows. It really isn't that hard, is isn't programing or nothing needing skill or education, it is a normal function of an OS. Same as people setup WiFi or anything else that is not an everyday task.