Oh yes, like they squashed marijuana. Nipped it in the bud, so to speak.
Anyhow, that ship has already sailed. There is no effective way to prevent p2p use of encrypted transaction overlay networks with untraceable transactions.
And why would they want to? Bitcoin is just another revenue stream for them. They'll just tax it.
Governments will
want to squash crypto
if they find that it really works at hiding taxable income, bypassing AML and KYC, paying for illegal goods and services, financing subversion/terrorism/corruption in their soil, evading currency controls, weakening their currency, etc.
The first step will be to declare it illegal to use. Most people then will not use it -- they would rather pay taxes than risk going to jail, no matter how debatable the risk is. To deal with the small remaining black-market use, governments will do their usual things -- set up honeypot e-stuff sites, mixers, and TOR nodes, block IPs, hack into computers of suspects, raid and close mining installations, use big data tools to detect payments, whatever.
Squashing a crypto currency will be easier than squashing marijuana in many ways. Marijuana can be grown in secret in a basement and used by small groups of people, with no contact with other groups. Whereas to use crypto one needs real-time access to a single global network. Tracking sales of marijuana requires physically watching and tailing the distributors for weeks, one agent for each man. Whereas a single technician can monitor all IPs in the country and all transactions in a crypto network, from an office anywhere in the world. And so on.
If wishes were horses, beggars would rideAlso I have noticed that
want does not always equal
getPlus there is no small group of people that use illegal drugs, there are very very many people, and the drug trade is not just the Ganja, it is a multi billlion dollar black market, run by people with huge budgets, the idea that it is held up by people that "grow in secret in a basement" is frankly absurd... try fields and fields and acres and acres , warehouses of all sorts of crops, guarded by armed men at military checkpoints, and helicopters, boats, and the friends of the cartels (their good firends in various governments and banks) are well aware of this, and the produce is processed by factories and shipped globally via a huge network.. the guberment has not ever, ever,ever done jack to even come close, to having an effect on the drug trade, not even by 5% they are powerless in this respect, and also have proved quite inadequate at "policing" the internet.
Also I think you fail to see the direction that the internet/p2p and encryption is going in and will continue to develop.. in respects to stopping Cryptos their solution is not going to be a single technician sat in an office somewhere... if anything their only way will be at the fiat gateways... and frankly they had better get a jiggle on in that respect, if that is what you belive they will
want (which I have my doubts about)
At the moment they/we/Bitcoin are headed in the opposite direction... governments gap to stop this in its tracks is closing rapidly... it seems like they have no wish or the will to do so, actually it is looking more and more like the opposite in many countries, certainly here in the UK , the FSA has made very clear and explicit statements that they are looking to regulate, but let Bitcoin/cryptocurrency/blockchain tech flourish, ditto for parts of US NY/Cali, Isle of Man, Switzerland are making noises in that direction.. etc etc..
If Bitcoin gets to the point where the government suddenly think oh we had better try to squash this because it is too big, if it gets that big... and people, industry and banks all use and like BTC, then it will be too late and people will be like WTF?. If Bitcoin gets to that level, and it is seen as good for society, and is considered money, and money is considered freedom of expression, and people support it, then they will have a real vote loser/potential revolution on their hands... like I have said before the world is going to change so much in the next 20 years... I see that the governments of the world will work out (if they have not already) which side of this to be on, and will most likely leverage it themselves rather than squash it.
Not that that matters, I remember similar ideas about the internet 20 odd years ago, and how x and y will never be allowed, and will never catch on, and here we are 25 years later and there are plans available for a 3d printed firearm available online, and that is out there now, and the genie is not going back in the bottle ever... do you think that genie has been put back in the bottle? because it has not, and will never be regardless of how many techinicans sat in offices or politicians will it to... nor will the cryptocurrency genie be put back in the bottle...... it is already too late... by hook or by crook cryptos are here to stay, the question is, will it be a sensible gradual adoption, or will it be a prohibition style pointless and unwinnable long drawn out battle that they end up losing?
