Topic: What happens when the US makes crypto-currency illegal? - page 8. (Read 8827 times)

I've seen this question a lot over the past two years and I've come to the conclusion that the asker still hasn't grasped the concept of crypto currency.

The cake is a lie.

Prison rape. Lots and lots of prison rape.

We will eat cake.

I hope you are right.  I suspect that the last run-up was a notable wake-up call, and things are not so complex that it would take a long time to get up to speed.  Most people do, intuitively, recognize Bitcoin as subversive and as something of a threat from an early phase of their understanding in my experience even if only semi-consciously or in ways that they cannot quite put their finger on.  Of course to some people that is good and to others it is bad.  The former tend to become the enthusiasts.

I also believe that there is probably a good deal more capture, storage, and analysis of what happens on the network than a lot of people realize.  Bitcoin was probably on the radar enough to give this traffic special treatment from fairly early on.

Lastly, a possible 'attack' might be to simply leave Bitcoin alone and let it blow itself up.  It lack of scalability is a remarkable Achilles heal, imho, and if I were tasked to destroy Bitcoin, I may actually approach the problem by adding growth hormone...if that were even necessary in order to achieve the desired effect.  The trouble is that there will likely be follow-ons which learn from Bitcoin's mistakes.  But there will be anyway no matter what.

BTCUSD probably will double/triple after the initial shock.

Well said.


I think we're still at a stage before that. Governments and banks don't really understand Bitcoin just yet, and they are only barely aware of its existence. I don't think it strikes them as something that needs their urgent attention just yet. They see it as a fad, and as a toy for nerds that is too complicated for the general public. This will obviously change, but for now we still have time to make preparations. And of course, Satoshi - whoever he was - was already making preparations right from the beginning.

I simply lose the investment i totally can sleep at night without. srry. my bad

I gotta admit that I wear the same tinfoil hat as you seem to, and in the security work I've done, I've kind of trained myself to assume the worst case scenarios.

Although it does not seem to be the consensus...at least on bitcointalk.org...I personally doubt that the policy makers in our government are stupid.  They may have been and still be a bit ignorant about distributed crypto-currencies, but then again, so is everyone at this point.

I strongly suspect that the decisions about if/how/when to crack down on Bitcoin will be made with a decent amount of care in predicting the likely outcomes.  If a course of action is counter-productive (e.g., it chases the solution underground where it is more difficult to monitor) then it probably won't be taken.  A similar example would be to fragment things into a myriad of similar but smaller solutions.

This leads me to be strongly of the opinion that a durable distributed crypto-currency should do everything in it's power to retain a position of strength.  This means to actively develop around attack vectors which are not currently presented.  A sub-set of this is to remain jelously 'peer2peer' and to actively foster similar, and even 'competing' systems such that it would be less likely to successfully attack at one point.

If Bitcoin is on a trajectory which will make it easier to attack as time goes by, the wise course of action from the point of view of an attacker would be to sit on his hands.  Similarly, if there are 'upsides' (e.g., participant identification / honeypot effect) it also may make sense to bid one's time.  I would not rule out the possibility that both of these things are a factor right now.

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Oh ya, that reminds me...I still have an open question for the Bitcoin Foundation:

 - What will you do if the regulators 'just say no' no matter how unfair/unjust/wrong it may be?

There are legitimate reasons to keep the answer something of a secret, but I think that the benefit of openness here will be cause more good than harm and is something which is worthwhile for the community to know.

To get it widely accepted outside of the US first might slow them down. Sadly this leaves the problem with the other governments.

This might slow down Bitcoin, but it wouldn't stop it.

Military grade cryptography changes the rules of the game forever, just as nuclear weapons did, though in a completely peaceful way. It exists, there are open source implementations in the hands of the public, it cannot be uninvented, and it has many legitimate purposes. It leaves society with a stark choice: either we allow it, in which case its tremendous power has far-reaching consequences, both good and bad, or we try to suppress it, in which case we need draconian measures and will likely at most succeed in taking it away from honourable citizens rather than criminals, who will not be deterred. Radical liberty or tyranny. There are of course less dramatic compromises in between, but I think we'll find that the power of cryptography makes these compromises unenforceable.

See: Untraceable Digital Cash, Information Markets, and BlackNet

buy some lobbyists with Bitcoins

Hi Bitcoiners,

At some point in the not too distant future, the government of the United States will figure out that Bitcoin is a very high risk to its Hedgmony. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony, Alan Greenspan loved this word.) The United States will make cryto-currency illegal because it will threaten the government's form of money (Federal Reserve Notes). Something similar happened on April 5, 1933 with Executive Order 6102. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102). History tends to repeat itself.

Those who disobey the upcoming Executive Order or new law will learn what truly backs a Federal Reserve Note, that is, the force of its military and growing internal police state.

What is the solution to prevent the United States government from implementing such an action against cryto-currency?