Bitcoin Forum

What if some countries just simply ban bitcoin? To the point that its against the law to own it and use it.

can you ban internet?
you'll have to stop everyone from using the internet if you want to fully ban bitcoin.

Countries have also banned drugs and stuff. In the past alcohol was banned in the USA, but moonshining became big business..

They can't ban bitcoin.

Exactly, like someone has told above, can you ban Internet? This is a beauty of the blockchain technologies and Bitcoin, you cannot really ban them. I mean you can outlaw them and shake confidence of the investors a bit but the bottom line is that Bitcoin would exist and run even if all of the countries of this world ban it and this is why I am into Bitcoin, freedom at last!

I get what you all mean but you get "punished" if caugh doing anything illegal...drugs, young drinking, killing etc...if they say using bitcoin in any form is illegal and can get fined or jailed than it will happend...so i ask again...what will happen to the price? It would also be harder to introduce it to a lot of new users.

Btw..if the goverment tells all internet providers to cut everyone off they will..or they destroy servers/satelites

Bitcoin is big and dangerous to powerful fiat people...anything can happen :)

I was asking what will happen if they ban it!! Not if its possible ;)

You mean just like many countries have banned piracy of music and movies?

We've all seen how that worked out. Same with technologies like Bitcoin. Old industries wish to hold on to their monopoly, but they're no longer relevant. It's not gonna make a difference. You can't stop technological development and advancement.

Thank you, what about businesses not being able to accept it as a payment?

All Bitcoin banning would do is driving the interest up as in people being curious about it and it would basically backfire on their initial intentions which were to scare people away from it, thats why Putin backpeddled and ended up accepting it after banning it.

Apparently you can. In some extremely unpleasant places of the world Internet is heavily censored or even banned to the point normal citizen can't use it.
Total ban of internet is reality in North Korea and China has some parts of the internet censored. Basically we are talking about all countries without democratic background here...

Bitcoin owns his value to the users that agree that it is valued so. This is not illegal by any means, and do not think it could be banned.

Thats why they start to regulate it i guess

Bitcoin is only banned in countries with weak economy and currency, high inflation and unprepared for real competition on the economic field.
Countries like Bangladesh, Ecuador, Bolivia, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam are afraid that their currency will devalue even faster if people would have choice to use Bitcoin.
Regulations can be separated into 2 categories: Japan type (bitcoin is free, unregulated by law and any economic standards) and China type regulations (financial institutions cannot use or involve themselves with bitcoins).

Bans look uncool. If a country wasn't into the idea all they have to do is strangle the fiat gateways. There'd still be a bit of activity but it would be greatly reduced.

A ban can only take full effect if they were to, as mentioned, ban the internet, -somehow- trace all the users of Bitcoin in their country and do whatever they see fit to prevent them from continuing to use it, and find some way to prevent any goods or services from changing hands using Bitcoin.

There is no real way to ban Bitcoin, as long as goods and services can be purchased.

I don't see a way to ban BTC, the internet as a whole.  Even when Syria tried to firewall the whole country Anon managed to send pre-coded dial-up connections for activist to post to YouTube and Twitter.  Nothing will stop a movement with enough backing, nothing...

It actually cannot be banned

True, they can only make it illegal.

you cannot legitimately ban bitcoin.
unless you can do 51% attacks to monopolise all.

Bitcoin is a deep Crypto cant be stooped by Trivial Rules, Gambling is Banned in US, do you think that people in US do not do Gambling? similarly BTC as being anonymous you can only make it hard to spend bitcoins , but you cant stop people using bitcoins.

The OP, Czechkid, is making a great point. It's important not to completely piss off government in the name of Bitcoin, because Governments and banks have power and power can make laws and influence business.

What if a country made it illegal for a business to accept payment in Bitcoin? Just like it would be illegal to accept cocaine or weed or a person for payment of some service.

If businesses can't transact in bitcoin, how much volume will we really have? And if people can only bitcoin to send money to people, how much value in the currency (the value of its utility) will be lost, and therefore drop the value as an investment?

Bitcoin cannot be banned!
Government cannot ban bitcoin until they spend billions of dollars and do a 51% attack on the network :)

Exactly this would be nearly impossible to enforce.
They banned "illegal file sharing" but it still happens and a lot people do it.
This time instead of sharing software, movies, music and games it's money.

Thank you finally someone see my point.

People keep writing about drugs and downloading music...in my first post i said to the point that its illegal...there are many things in the world that are banned/illegalby the law yet we still do it. Its ok until you get caught. So if you used bitcoin and got caught youll be fined or sleeping in jail. :) we dont want bitcoin to be black market.

A country that bans bitcoin only hurts itself and it's own economy, it does not hurt bitcoin.

If they manage to ban it in one country  (which they won't ), they won't be able to ban it another country . all countries can't agree to do same thing beside there is already shitload of business into Bitcoin that costs million of dollars right now , they can't just step up and ban whatever and whenever they want to

partially true, if every country ban and restrict heavily bitcoin, then it can have a bad effect on bitcoin also, because no one will be able to use it or exchange it for fiat, unless you are talking about a distant future where bitcoin is not dependent of fiat anymore

If the government bans anything then it becomes more popular in the residents of the country.
As the government is in the favour of banks and banks are against Bitcoin so government should never ban Bitcoin because if they ban Bitcoin then it will definitely come into news by which more and more people will know about it and it will be more widely used.

It's not like drugs or porn. They're fun and they address desires that are as old as our DNA.

Bitcoin's selling point is its utility. Take away the ability to openly utilise it in said country and who is going to put money into something they can't spend and others won't want or accept?

I'm not gonna think 'goddamn it that sounds desirable.' I'm gonna think 'Fuck that.'

Sure, there's black markets, hiding money, transferring it across borders but that's relatively niche. If BTC was made effectively useless tomorrow I struggle to see how that's going to turn people on. There are plenty of other options for them.

Then people can go to http://poloniex.com/ and change all the bitcoins to litecoin.

Was like Just-dice, they got some problems with their country gob for use bitcoin and how did they solve it? Changing the casino to Clams.

They can kill bitcoin, but can't kill the idea.

After government bans Bitcoin then people search for a reason of it.
Then they see that someone was buying drugs with bitcoin anonymously then they think that heck yeah I finally found a way to do this. And bang Bitcoin is adapted by them.

But in second thought, whole country cannot be a drug abuser.

how can they ban it?

Countries can make laws against bitcoin, but they cant just ban it.

If you see, drugs are illegal in almost all countries, and people stop using it?

Nah, they can't do that and theres a lot of altcoin. So it's useless to ban a bitcoin because of altcoin.

It would be like banning torrents or file sharing. There  is not point to ban bitcoin, heck you CANT ban it it's decentralized .

Right, decentralization is bitcoin's strength now. It is possible to change the code so that certain coins are redlisted or blacklisted and can't be safely spent. Mike Hearn has made rumblings about such things and is one reason to oppose Bitcoin XT. If he succeeds in his bid for a hardfork there is no telling how bitcoin could change for the worse. Mike Hearn as lead developer scares me.

I suspect it will work about as well as the ban on porn. Remember when *everyone wanted to ban porn on the internet? The law gave up on that years ago and now only go after child porn and horrible stuff like that. If you really enforced the laws on the books you might be shocked at how many places it is illegal to see a photo of someone getting a BJ.

It would be harmful to ban it but the state could ban it.

Then them bitcoiners will need to pull their fingers out and start war with their govt. Jokes aside that is something they are never going to be able to do and why would they? It is not a threat to them we don't have nearly enough users for them to have any worry. Even if they did try people in said country would continue to use it and their is nothing that can be done short of cutting the internet off :)

All of you brave young men that say "they can't ban Bitcoins" need to spend a few nights in solitary confinement with the threat of 5 years in Federal prison hanging over your head in order to solidify your deeply held beliefs.

They won't ban Bitcoins as it will be too profitable to just arrest you, throw your ass in jail, and then make you pay into their "asset forfeiture fund" to let you out - USD and Bitcoins accepted there.  

I leaned the hard way to the tune of about $300,000 exactly what they are capable of under the marshal law (patriot act) in which we currently live.

Very well written article about the case, and civil asset forfeiture in general:

http://coinjournal.net/burt-wagner-localbitcoins-case-shows-danger-of-overbearing-government

If you live in the Boulder/Denver area I will be speaking:

http://www.meetup.com/Colorado-Bitcoin-Society/events/224676885/

Updated web sites:

http://www.burtw.com/

http://www.jmwagner.com/

Thanks for the post.  I was thinking about you as I read this thread and then you posted to it.

bitcoin not illegal, why a country should specify a bitcoin?  :(