Bitcoin Forum

As Bitcoin needs the mining farms to maintain transactions, how easy is it to shutdown?

Lets take China as an example, since they are the major farms...

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?
Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

or

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

If China all of sudden stopped mining, the difficulty of the network would go down, making it more profitable for people elsewhere to mine. So no, Bitcoin wouldn't go down. The difficulty might go down, but that wouldn't be a problem.

...although, my Jalepenos would love to be hashing again...

Shutting down bitcoin is not as easy as you think since even China will not mine there are new and large mining factories cosntructed in different parts of the world such as the new one in Canada. As long as there is monetary value and demand in bitcoin there will be miners if not a factory individual miners will pop out. It is not easy to increase the supply of bitcoin but it is still not a problem which cannot be solved.

How easy is it to shut down Bitcoin?
Assuming the Internet is functioning, then Bitcoin cannot easily be shut down.
If all major ISP's were pressured to block BTC's port # we would have temporary chaos and many fun challenges.

Bitcoin could easily change port number or potentially piggyback on a different protocol that is opaque to content (such as HTTPS).

It is not easy to shutdown bitcoins, You need to cut first the internet, Cause if there is no internet there will be no bitcoins. and if the miners stop the mining , but i think they wont stop mining cause they are gaining profits from it

It's nearly impossible to shut down bitcoin.

Even if those chinese miners go down, it would be a feast to many other miners because the competition is less and the difficulty of mining will dramatically drop.

One possibility of bitcoin shutting down is within the internet shutting down itself for good. But that's nearly impossible.

It would be easy.  Just shut down the internet.  You could go with the escape from LA scenario.

No, the network would most certainly not go down. Do you even know how a P2P network works?

Yes.

Why would they do that? Mining is a 'self-regulated' cycle. If it becomes unprofitable, some are going to stop mining -> difficulty will reduce -> mining is profitable again.

If that were the case, Bitcoin would be the least of 'our' problems.

That's anything but easy.

If China stops, I'll probably will start myself. More profitable if they all stop.

All cold places has Bitcoin mining operation. North China, north Canada, Swedish, Denmark ...
Most places are very keeping it to themselves, except some niners in China.

No, the network won't go down. The difficulty will be the one going down since there are miners all around the world, not just China.

So it's almost impossible to shut down bitcoin even in a zombie apocalypse. I could set up a PC to mine bitcoins and power it with solar panels. Then, I can just abandon it, knowing that I'll have a sh*t ton of bitcoins once all the zombies have been eradicated. My chain would be the longest one in that case, and everyone else can use my chain unless a general consensus says that we should use the chain from June 29, 2016. I imagine there would be a lot of forks from people that thought of the same setup.

Government shuts down the mining farms, hashing power decreases, mining difficulty decreases, remaining hashing power takes over the job of the lost power, the market continues as normal. Nothing changes, everything goes on as normal.

Miners voluntarily shut down? Same thing happens. Hashing power total goes down, mining difficulty goes down, current hashing power continues to solved blocks, no change.

shutting down bitcoin is not equal to shutting down miners. the network needs to go away (shut down) if you want to shut down bitcoin which can't happen. miners shutting down their equipment only leads to change in hashrate.

The network itself would not go down but if a big enough number of miners were shut down it would definitely make the network a lot more sluggish. Transactions would likely take forever to confirm which would affect everyone everywhere. So while China suddenly going dark might not mean the end of Bitcoin, it most likely will be a struggle for everyone else at least for a while.

The same reason that an attacker with enough hash power will never try a 51 percent attack, the system pays you better if you play by the rules everyone else is following, huge decrease in hashrate in one place, diff drops for others, others profit, your loss, thus no one will do it

There is no easy way to destroy Bitcoin. There is only a complex and difficult.
State pressure. Changes in legislation and a few show trials are capable of inflicting a serious blow to the idea.
Bottleneck "problem cryptocurrency" not in the technical aspects, and in their heads. This is where being and will be conducted major war. The idea can not be destroyed, but it is possible to influence the media ideas, you can reduce their numbers, we can prevent the spread of information to inspire the masses misconceptions fueled hostility toward the idea. Those in power is not a novelty.

I think it's really hard. What can be done with all those mining farms?

None of those proposed scenarios annihilate Bitcoin.. they can only try to weaken it, but it will survive and rise again and again. The only way to totally ruin it would be to go on a global internet shutdown which is totally retarded and unrealistic so it's not a real problem.

The network wouldn't go down as others have mentioned, but I have to wonder why so many people use China as an example so often for these hypothetical situations. What event is related to this that creates some plausible situation were China wants to seize all the mining farms and why would that event go down with no resistance?

if for any reason Chinese government decided to shut down all the mining farms and they went down, there is still >40% hashrate remaining from other places in the world that can support mining until those shut down mining farms migrate to another place and start their business all over again. so there only will be a temporary problem with hashrate and nothing else.

I think it isn't easy tp shutdown bitcoin network, being decentralized and accessible to mine internationally.  Even if china has take down its mining farm, there will be someone from the other part of the world hashing to mine Bitcoin.  It will take more than china and us to shutdown  miners.

I've not yet seen a viable idea for stopping bitcoin.  Even though it is often discussed.
I suppose if I spent a billion dollars on mining equipment I might have a chance at forking the chain. But then what? I would likley only cause a temporary disruption and surely I will not cause the idea of crypto-currency to go away. So I have gained nothing and spent a billion dollars.

Nobody can shut down bitcoin just like Internet

Do not worry friend

not easy back your hand

it is not easy to shut down bitcoin. The expected value of the payout to any single miner is the ratio of the hash rate they control to the aggregate hash rate of all miners. Costs will go down as some miners exit, but people will start voluntarily paying transaction fees. so if some miners exit, even more miners arise.

There are people waiting around the world for China to do this, and I am one of them. I would like it, if it did happen. I would get my old miners <Asics> out of storage and start mining Bitcoin again, because the difficulty will plummet and some of us would be able to mine again, and even make some profits. ^smile^

Joking aside, I do still mine some Alt's, but would love to mine Bitcoin again.  ^smile^

It will be very, very difficult to shut down bitcoin completely, because even if there is only a few users left in the system, then the system is still up and running. It's just that no transactions might be made.

If China shuts down bitcoin farms... Then the firms will relocate elsewhere. Lol

Even if all big mining companies will shutdown especially the mining farms in China bitcoin will still continue. There are many solo miners worldwide and the price will skyrocket at that time, no more bitcoin of large amount as 1 btc but the mining will go down to satoshi. Satoshi mining will be very profitable since bitcoins price is at the peak. So no worry about losing major mining industries on bitcoin.

If China shut downs their miners that would be good for many people in different parts of the world and we would be happy of the difficulty going down a lot regarding the mining of bitcoin. I would be very happy and would start mining bitcoin again even with S5 antminer I guess should be optimal but China will never be out of the way so destroying bitcoin is not an easy task to do at all. And that is good for all of us who uses bitcoin everyday. However someone who said if the ISP-s blocks the ports scared me for a moment but I am sure a solution would be found soon after that so not a problem too I guess.