Topic: Lets say they try to make bitcoin illegal (Read 3805 times)

I laughed.  You should submit this stuff to Leno.

Liberty...

• ... in the land that gropes minors and grandparents "for national security"...?
  
  
• ... in the land where you can be detained and your property seized and searched for absolutely no reason, anywhere within 100 miles of a border... an area in which 2/3 of Americans live?
  
  
• ... in the land where a soft drink larger than 16oz can be made illegal...?
  
  
• ... in the land where citizens are unconstitutionally spied on with wiretaps or drones...?
  
  
• ... in the land where you can be tracked and your cell phone tapped indiscriminately,  without a warrant...?
  
  
• ... in the land where corporations are people, the people are subjects, money is speech, and speech is terrorism...

"In liberty we trust..." ??  Wake up, Neo... you're living in a dream world.

Shostak thinks that BTC is not money but rather a new way of employing existent money in transactions. (http://mises.org/daily/6411/The-Bitcoin-Money-Myth)

I want whatever cheap shit you're smoking, it seems pretty good.

I think US will be the most possible place that bitcoin will receive mainstream acceptance, because "In liberty we trust", other nations might be quite conservative with such new idea but they will follow US

Since it is politically neutral, if one country banned it due to some political reason, it might be accepted in another country who have totally different political view

If there were no exchanges as of tomorrow, there would be still 11 mio bitcoins on the loose, every one divisible (almost) indefinitely. Those would be highly-coveted by freedom-lovers all over the world and would be exchanged for real products. At last, all bitcoins will permeate through the supply chain, it would take just little bit more time.

what bitcoin? Nice hat man...  oh look a pony!

C'mon people. Just give every US congressman/woman and senator one bitcoin! And then in few months americans will pay taxes in BTC ;-)

Then we would be living in a society where free speech is deemed illegal.

I dont want to be rude but I dont think you fully understand who and how powerfull the one making the money are. these people control the government. they are a group of people that are not elected and are in charge of the federal reserve bank. these people or entity simply prints money and sells it to the US government, how do we pay for the money if its money? with debt esentualy....or government bonds....these bonds are promisary noates that say we will pay back the 100 billion we take out a month and pay it back ...WITH INTEREST. that is why the US is in debt (though a few countries hold these bonds as well, china being the main holder of us debt) but we are only in debt to ourselvs....or the ones that make the money. now you think the actual governmnet will allow this money? this money that is not taxable or traceable? i dont think so. how will they pay for there own jobs and for roads and for schools and for cops and for EMT etc etc etc. i love bitcoin as an idea and for maybe one tenth of the cerculated money but I think its a bad idea to compleatly convert over to it. i do like the idea of just giving some one a five for a tip not .0020003420 bitcoins.

the fed and the gov will come down hard on this and the have many ways....making it illegal is just one of them.

but I could be wrong I guess we will see.

+1 thank you

being illegal, made drugs cost *less* .....now if only they were as transportable as BTC

I've already posted about this happening. Its not matter of if, but when.

And you can't make BTC illegal due to the way its set up, nobody can stop it. So just make exchanges with them illegal.

I think if there is any unrest, it may expand beyond simple legislation and currency legal battles. A change of some sort is on the horizon, I don't think the status quo can remain as it is for that much longer, we're looking at 20-50 years tops, imo. It's starting to fall apart, I fear we're all in for a bumpy ride before things get better.

But I guess we shall see, we are indeed living in an interesting time.  

Why would they make BTC illegal? It helps a lot to fight against precious metals, without bitcoins they couldn't orchestrate a massive paper selling on gold and silver this month. Bitcoin isn't a threat to fiat. Just opposite: BTC helps to increase computer hardware sales, it makes people to innovate. If fiat supports the technology, it will support the BTC. Simple. Gold and silver will never become a friend of technology. And yes both metals are widely used in technology. But I'm talking about the goldbugs community here. Who is more tech-friendly: cypherpunks or goldbugs?

Not yet, anyway.  Until Bitcoin sees majority adoption in any given area, it'll stick with being valued against fiat, as opposed to fiat being valued against Bitcoin.

Because still BTC value is related to fiat, and they control fiat. We really need to break the loop and FORGET about fiat to have a chance, and this is not happening.

I don't agree with the last sentence. There have been many succesful revolutions during history. Why wouldn't we succeed?

Controlling monetary supply = ruling.

Bitcoin could have the potential to endanger the position of the most powerful men in the world, if it really gets serious they won't hand over their power without a fight. And obviously they would very likely win that fight.

Agreed.  If government had any sense of its citizen's well being in mind (especially in light of financial crisis that's awful popular today), it will encourage the use of Bitcoin and/or PM, and fix their mistakes by picking up some form of standard for their own currency (or just ditch it for Bitcoin and stop worrying about it.)

However, most governments, if not all, are directly beneath the foot of the banks, which do not have the citizen's best interest in mind; they only want to make profits.  Because politicians accept bribes (a.k.a. corruption), anything could happen.  If any government knew what it was doing, it wouldn't attempt to limit growth; it would instead encourage it, and would stop censoring the Internet, and allow Bitcoin to grow where it will.

whats illegal about keeping our transaction log distributed?

i don't get it...

Do not use bank's

I agree with every sentence except the last one. I think the best thing for governments to do would be to accept Bitcoin and even encourage its growth. But I also think governments have a track record of not making sensible decisions.

It fucks with the status quo, of course it is illegal by nature

Would justification would they give to ban bitcoins in the mature and democratic countries?

Money Laundring? Well then ban banks as well because billions are laundered through them. Remember all those articles about how the biggest provider of liquidity in 2008 was the mafia?

Drugs? etc, Ban cash too then.

Moreover, if they tried baning bitcoins it would be seen as an unreasonable, even unacceptable, restriction of freedom by everyone from journalists to all sorts of think tanks and economists. Many would convincingly argue that it would hurt the economy etc.

So it is never going to happen.

If it does, then bitcoins would go underground. It would probably still be used to buy drugs but also for more seriously criminal stuff. It is after all a very fast, anonymous, safe, way to transfer wealth. So I think the price would crash as the news comes through, but then it would slowly recover as many people simply ignore the law as with copyrighted sharing, start selling it in a one to many platform rather than many to many as in exchanges. Then, as it would become harder to get because many want it, especially the black market, the price would go up and up to the point where honest people might even be willing to risk prison to have one.

And that would be the best argument in my opinion against making it illegal. First, it would hurt the economy quite badly as innovation is being stopped, thus the economy would not become more efficient. Secondly, it would take the benefits of this innovation and efficiency away from honest hard working people and drive it underground, because it certainly is not going to make it vanish.

For those reasons, I do not think the government can or will ban bitcoins or overtly interfere with its development. 

Good point. It will never be allowed to be a threat to the current regime's fiat, unless they find themselves unable to stop it, however unlikely that may be.

I think I agree with this. Everything is about money, sad but true. That said, there will be plenty of FUD media from the interests that stand to lose money. Ultimately the internet is beyond most governments' control, therefore bitcoin is.

Will be too good to be true, if they let bitcoin grow and grow.
I also think a war is about to come down on us ;( Time will tell the outcome

Realism. They destroyed countries who threatened to us dollar. Killed their leaders.

So you think they just pass it inside and welcome? Haha. Its a trap.

the old system banksters are noticing that there is a lot of money to make with/via/on/through bitcoins. that is what they live for, that is their reason to exist. so they will adopt it. use it. milk it. but they will not make it illegal. there is too much money in the game.

So native... fincen passed guidance for bitcoin exchanges, not bitcoin itself. They just can't regulate bitcoin itself, so eventually it will be declared illegal imho.

There will be no adoption. There will be war when they figure out what bitcoin really is.

I see increasing regulation on exchanges, not regulation of Bitcoins itself. Otherwise, they may as well try to regulate Magic the Gathering card trade considering it (literally) was traded for fiat like Bitcoins.

We're probably safe right now. After the next Bilderberger meeting you never know.

Interests of US and other developed countries elites are pretty much same. If they find it as threat to themselves and US elite do their work to make bitcoin illegal you can bet most of developed countries will do the same.

Not sure they'll attack in full mode though but they might step in to take a bigger piece of taxes on bitcoin money.

Fuck yeah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L4YrGaR8E4

Actually, bitcoin is not illegal. FinCEN even passed guidance suggesting adoption would be accepted, but regulated. I'm not sure where you are getting your information, but you need a new source 

I don't really see the illegality. Unless you mean illegal in nature as in laws can't affect it still being used?

Bitcoin is anonymous and resistant to any kind of regulation by design.

It is illegal by nature.

I would go on using bitcoin to buy and sell things. I bet the price would stabilize, which many see as a plus.

The United States might enact policies to give bitcoin some difficulties, but fortunately, it is not the international police, at least for developed countries. I don't think the entire world will attack bitcoin.

Russians has still deep engrams from Stalin dictature. (or learned how to use FUD)

This would do wonders for price stability, so hey, it would not be bad thing.

I'm having fun and making slight profits playing the exchanges, but would not mind a bit if the only way to buy in/out BTC -=> USD was through sites like localbitcoin.

+1

One of my favorite quotes "People should not be afraid of their government; governments should be afraid of their people".

If it happened now, to be honest, I'd sell all my bitcoin off as soon as possible in any way I could before the price plummeted.

I'd keep like 10 or so as souvenirs.

Making bitcoin illegal, at least in the US would kill it.

I don't believe this will happen though. At least not in the near future.

If bitcoin gains wide acceptance before it becomes illegal, I'd probably hold on to them.

Exchanges are our only means of assessing value to our coins. How would you do that without comparing to other currencies via exchanges?

Won't happen.

As shady as it is, somewhere, somehow there is always the possibility to transfer money into and out of even more shady enterprises than bitcoin exchanges.
The whole black market (no not the puny stuff on tor) depends on it and in a way the system of multinational cooperation, and the war machine depends on the black market.

It's just a cat and mouse game which goes on and on and on.... or to better say two anacondas trying to devour each other.
The eternal battle between chaos and order.

Signal aliens for help.  

No but really, it's unlikely they would ban it worldwide, and if an actual nation could be convinced to use it in some form as it's national currency, it'd be alot hard to ban. It's unlikely that the Chinese yuan will be banned etc.

In any case, I would not sell my BTC.. At least I could print them into a paper wallet and hang it on the wall. lol.

You can still get in and out of bitcoin without exchanges. Want bitcoin? Sell something. Have bitcoin you want to get rid of? Buy something.

Yeah... if you could explain a little more that'd be great.

Could you tell me more? Why is it illegal by design and which country has the right to prohibit its use?

I doubt that all the countries in the world would issue such a law all at once. The exchanges would be forced to move their bank affiliations to countries with sound laws.

We would likely end up in the same place eventually, albeit with swiss exchanges.

imagine:
put a superman comic next to the bible next to a book of law.

now tell me:
Which book contains the least amount of metaphysical plunders?

Hopefully by then the public is fully aware of what Bitcoin really is and they can see the power and injustice of the banking cartel when they try to prohibit Bitcoin. It might end up with the banks shooting themselves in the foot.

Me myself i'm holding. And the more they threaten me, the more i will hold just for the sake of it.

It is illegal by design.

All legal "adoptions" are just dreams which will be burned.

I'd rage against the machine.

Bill 0110010
KILL BITCOIN ACK of 2014
"No bank is allowed to hold funds for bitcoin exchanges."

what will you do?
what will price do?
will you sell your 100BTC bitcoin stach locally for peanuts?
will their be a new way to still be able to trade large amounts online?