Bitcoin Forum

Recently many file sharing sites and torrents had been banned in my country to stop piracy.

Is there a way that the government or the isp may block the connection to bitcoin network by its users ??

That's right the goverment just be able for blocking the bitcoin through the IP, in this time that is referring into the bitcoin'site and not for the bitcoin currency. but it's just useless step for the goverment and isp for blocking bitcoin. according from the a lot of the various vpn are offering a good service in this day for passing a block and like using a tor network. goverment and isp just wasting a lot of their time for doing a sueless things.

In my understanding it can be blocked by government if they don't want it to enter on your country and some of countries label bitcoins as illegal currency or illegal of using it .but you can still bypass and access it as many of IP's are created to enter some prohibited network and now can enter that sites blocked sites by changing your country and location server.

can you give more information about how they banned/blocked file sharing using torrent technology? because there is no single IP to ban and the port is also changeable that is why i am curious to know how this can be done.

and as for bitcoin you can always make your transactions offline and push them on a block explorer even if it is blocked somehow!

for me, not because the network is decentralised unless there are no avaliable network even it is private, the bitcoin network is based on the method you won't know, like going the transaction via the vpn. ???

There is likely some system that exists to prevent people from being able to access it, however, if I remember correctly, they would have to block the nodes in order to really block the network. I'm not 100% sure about that, but that is my interpretation of the whitepaper.

I think it is impossible,because BTC is uncenter, u have net you can use btc !

governments cannot take down the network because the IP's are vast.
but lets not get lazy and think we are safe. apathy leads to vulnerability. by not keeping the network as secure as possible.

so lets be realistic and not have an apathetic utopian mindset.

worse case scenario:
(1) governments can take down this forum. the subreddits, github, and some IRC channels, and a couple other bitcoin sites/exchanges to cause some drama.
because that is only under 10 places to hit.

this will take more then a few days for people to try communicating with each other via social media to re establish a new assortment of collaboration of minds, code, markets.

but what i say above wont affect the bitcoin network at all.
however,
(2) governments take down the mining pools internet. because there are only ~20 pools.
causing block creation delays while mining pools switch servers.
this is a short term delay of under an hour. because pools do (well some should) have multiple servers(within their control but in different jurisdictions) to allow miners to "pool hop" to another server quite quickly.
some pools dont have a couple servers. meaning it will take more then an hour to allow their asics to "pool hop"

but what i say above wont see much interruption/delay on the network.

People will just connect to these sites via proxies and anonymous browsers and find ways to bypass firewall restrictions. We have seen this with the Chinese " Golden Shield Project " where censorship and surveillance are applied to restrict internet use. You might find some ways to bypass these restrictions, but you might also end up with some jail time, if you did that.

The other thing they might also do, is to ban "Crypto currency" use on the merchant side. If these merchants are forbidden to accept "Crypto currencies" then you would have no place to spend your bitcoins.

In the end, we just have to work with these governments to find a solution to satisfy everyone's needs and hope that they would not over regulate it, which I doubt. ^hmmmmm^

i don't think anybody can block users and stop them from using bitcoin, they can always threaten people into not using bitcoin the same way they threaten the usage of Torrent and prosecute pirates but it will always exist. so the same thing will be true about bitcoin. it is p2p and as long as 2 pees are using it, the network and be alive :)

yes , through location and ip service they can ban this connection of bitcoin .
but still they will not do the same because it is totally legal .
and also many bank services also comes in bitcoin to make bitcoin more clear .
so if there would be any chance to block or ban anything first of all government will announce already before ban or anything what you are saying ;)

rather than having a merchant service such as coinbase/bitpay in one jurisdiction. those services should set up 'mirror' sites in multiple locations.
so that if they receive a cease and desist order. they can continue uninterrupted using their .au or .uk domains. (out of the orders jurisdiction)

same goes for this forum. and other communication platforms. to reduce the few days of setting up alternative domains.

as i said some smart pools have a few servers running to use as redundancies/backups. scattered over a few countries. again to reduce the delay in getting users back up and running.

we should not be throwing code (github), communication(irc server host) and community(forum) all into an american jurisdiction and then lean to american government to give permission of use.
we should remain worldwide, involving distribution and diversity to not REQUIRE permission.
apathy is the worse thing to have in regards to security and functionality.
but instead utilise the diversity to gain government acceptance to not cause any delays/distractions, on our open and borderless terms

There is no way for the government or the isp are wanna for blocking your connection to the bitcoin network. the possible things if the isp are trying for banning the ip for accessing the blog or site but the network is always there and can't be blocked. The worst thing in my day can blocking the network are caused by the electricity are down and that's so make me feel worried.

if the government decides to ban bitcoin they will first start with setting some laws against merchants and businesses accepting bitcoin and then they will move on to setting laws against people using bitcoin and then they will try and block sites and anything bitcoin related.

but in all this time the only people who could no longer use bitcoin are the merchants and the rest will continue using it.

Bitcoin as a network can't be blocked via standard methods similar to which centralized services are destroyed (look at various torrent sites, file hosting providers).
But as some of you pointed already satellite bitcoin sites and services i.e. basically every exchange (as 99% of them are centralized), forums, reddit can be blocked.

IIRC something like that happened recently: Baidu the biggest Chinese search engine blocked word "bitcoin" from their search results.

It would be still a  useless move  because  even  how  government would  block  or  banned  bitcoin . There are  still ways  that you could able to access it without  being   caught  or  detected.  If your isp prohibits you to do so, you could  still use tor and  tweak some  settings  in able not to be  detected by isp and also  if  you are  just using  data , there are lots  of  vpn out there. thats  why it would be still useless in any  way.

Relevant: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=79913.0

I, personally, won't be satisfied until the Bitcoin network is running smoothly on a global wireless mesh network.

There are good VPNs or people can use VPS or other methods.

Blocking IPs isn`t effective.

Bitcoin can`t be blocked by ISPs.

Government can't block the Bitcoin network but they can block or seize coins in your wallet if they are product of criminal activities. At least in some countries they have the authority to do so. But ISPs don't have this possibility. Anyway, all this could be done only on valid legal basis.

so far there have been 1 or two countries that has blocked bitcoin and said using bitcoin is not legal and this is from what i have heard not my personal experience and these countries have already blocked sites that are related to bitcoin like bitcoin.org and this forum but i have neverheard them blocking the bitcoin wallets or the network in any way.

They stopped file sharing and torrent sites due to piracy and bitcoin is open source and can be used by anyone.

No bitcoin is decentralized which mean bitcoin have thousands of nodes so you can connect with any of them and can broadcast your bitcoin transactions or even you can make your own ip as one of the nodes. So basically if government even tries to ban all known bitcoin nodes ip and web wallets domains they can't stop bitcoin transactions. That's why all trust bitcoin and it is quite sure that bitcoin network will never go down.

Well if government could ban bitcoin or crypto cureencies they would had made it already, but we do know they cant, they try to hit bitcoin inside with several bad news, like the silk road to make people avoid bitcoin, but bitcoin achieved a level that no one can kill it without a big problem inside the code, something that till the moment no one found or will find , soo let the countries waste their resorces, vps and vpn should be the way to keep connected to bitcoin.

yeah,  i think goverment can block with IP but we can replace IP again

It will be very difficult to block bitcoin access, government only can block the crucial bitcoin site like wallet site, it is kind of difficult to block all of bitcoin related site because there are so many site that keep appearing everyday, then if the government blocked the IP of the site we can simply just install VPN to overpass the blocking

If government Block bitcoin , They will only blocked wallet and some famous sites. But large bitcoin holder will make a way to trade their bitcoin. If government blocked bitcoin maybe bitcoiners will only access bitcoin in darknet or deepweb . Bitcoin will be hard to convert into fiat if governent banned it

I think the government will do the same as block porn sites and gambling. it is also possible that the government simply blocking sites bitcoin wallet, exchangers or trading places.
but will not affect for bitcoin users. they can still use VPN, like I did it on porn and gambling sites that have been blocked by the government.

Yes, Bitcoin moves through the use of internet. The government won't have a problem when they control all the wallets that are being used for Bitcoin making all your bitcoins useless. But I don't know if that is also the government's way on how they plan to block bitcoin intro your country.

The only way an authority can seize properly secured bitcoins is with the explicit permission of the sole controller of the private keys. Anyone you've read about who has had their bitcoins seized without explicit permission from the sole controller of the private keys has failed to properly secure their bitcoins.

The only way an authority can block properly secured bitcoins is with the cooperation of 100% of the miners (I say 100% because any miner who does not cooperate will have their blocks ignored and will be mining a fork).

It is more like the ISP's will limit or even block the nodes from accessing the internet as the blockchain gets larger and larger. As the whole network demands for more bandwidth, the ISP's can only accommodate so much that it has to limit some nodes' access to the internet. There is a reason why we are seeing a smaller no. of nodes every year. One of the main reasons is that its getting harder to maintain a node because of the blockchain's size. Storage is not really a problem but bandwidth will be the real major problem. Give it 5 more years.

I think bitcoin might not blocked by an ISP. bitcoin is a valid means of payment yag today. first bitcoin is anonymouse. if there are ISPs that do it, then the ISP is very unethical.

Governments can block bitcoin too but only in terms of internet ISP. They can block internet users by ordering internet service providers to block bitcoin related sites from their service, but that won't affect bitcoin's real network at all. If we want to use bitcoin though even if our ISP blocks it, we can still use VPN to access bitcoin related sites and do some earning. Its only that it might be hard to exchange to fiat if government bans bitcoin in your country.

It can, obviously. You can get it blocked by them if the government wants, just like there are websites in North Korea that are blocked from any other country to be visited. I'm aware of that but I don't think they will do anything about it for now, as it's not really a big thing.

well only wallet and bitcoins related site,blocking bitcoin(currencies) is impossible in my opinion,some ISP can only block a contenct by its server IPs,and does bitcoin have IPs? i think no,and that's why it's decentralized

If the government were to pass regulations outlawing Bitcoin, they would probably do a few things
1. Stop any financial transactions.
Exchanges would be shut down and any payment processing companies would risk fine/ shutdown if they dealt with bitcoin.
This would make it hard to convert fiat into Bitcoin and trade Bitcoins.

2. Attempt to shut down any large Bitcoin related sites.
They may attempt to force ISP to shut down sites/ stop DNS from resolving to hostnames of big Bitcoin sites.

It may be hard to shut down the actual Bitcoin network but without a way to convert back to fiat and all the exchanges shut down a lot of people may lose interest quickly.

Governments can however force ISP's to block IP addresses from nodes and various pools in an attempt to push Bitcoin back. All nodes are public with their IP addresses, so in that aspect it's not difficult at all. Even when nodes are being hosted from new IP addresses it's just a matter of refreshing their ban list several times a week.

How would a government block bitcoin if there are so many users who have it on there computers using them as small nodes?  I understand what is being said, but how can they block it from the inside?

Yes there are possibilities that government can block all the website related to bitcoin but not the bitcoin itself if they want it, if they think that bitcoin is a threat to their country simply from illegal drugs transaction then they will block it and ban in their respective country , but I guess it will never happen, because I guess that some officials in the government is also taking the pleasure of bitcoin.

I think, the Bitcoin network cannot be block by government or an ISP. Still if they blocked Bitcoin, we have deepnet to use Bitcoin.

They can do this, but probably they will have to turn off the Internet or use a complete ban of access to resources from other countries. In fact, close p2p access is very difficult and finally there is not any problem to use vpn services.

ok. another worse case scenario.

a government could via united nations/interpol set up a sudden international tactical strike

this can be done by
https://bitnodes.21.co/
getting all the IP's and finding out which ISP that ip belongs to.
EG in the UK its under 230..in the U.S its under 1500

so imagine tomorrow under 230 homes out of 20 million households have their internet disconnected
at the same time
in america under 1500 homes out of 100mill households have their internet disconnected
and so on
even things like proxies are useless because the landline has been literally cut off for upto 6000 locations
think its impossible? its not. ISP's have millions of customers and regularly turn the internet off on 10's of thousands of users every week due to breach of contract/non payment of bill.

they would also take bitnodes and other DNS seeding locations offline to further cause drama of new node locations not being able to link up, though smart people will just join an IRC channel and request a list of working ip addresses to manually add node connections

as for the network
what would happen is that the countries with no "partnerships" to whatever agency is organising this tactical strike will continue on. and people who are affected would need to either move house or go to court to get their internet ban lifted or change ISP which can take upto 10 days in some cases.

again it wont require an all out "ban the internet" of 1.5billion people. but instead disconnecting the land lines of under 6000 people to cause alot of drama and issues.

the solution is to get more diverse. instead of bitcoin nodes running in just 91 countries it needs to be running in all 200 countries. and also needs to be running via satalite and other non landline/ISP reliant methods

Oh yes, it's possible and very easy to do. It's already being done in many places.

As I travel a lot, I often use free wifi services in cafes and the like, and in most places, FTP doesn't work. Sometimes I cannot use email at all, sometimes I can read my mail but I cannot reply (I'm using ports 995 & 465), and very often Electrum cannot connect. Some websites such as those of airlines companies which are heavily secured do not work everywhere, too.

If it can be done in a cafe, it can also be done at the ISP level.

Bitcoin system is like torrent P2P system. If they want to destroy bitcoin, they will have to ban everysingle IP which is connected to the blockchain. Which is pretty dump. Doable but it won't happen.

Im glad there are users in the thread who realize that the government actually has power to harm Bitcoin.
Some people undersetimate the capabilities of the major powers when it comes to cyber warfare, control of the internet, etc.
It's also foolish to think that they don't already have plans for Bitcoin or any other transaction system that requires the internet to function.

I remember five years ago telling people that the NSA was collecting phone data on everyone in the country and no one believed it.
"There is no way they could collect that much data!"

Then we are witnessing one threatened and angry government using everything they got just to stop an independent, decentralized and peer to peer internet tokens system which is giving more potential benefit to humanity just like the invention of the telephone. If they were to use their powers that way then they should start using it to stop child porn or something morally wrong.

actually government can block the internet for all users but this will break the world nowadays...

I don't think the governments will ban the bitcoin use, it's something harmless...

Some governs don't like bitcoins, principally dictators. Some time ago I saw that Russia government didn't want people there using BTCs, don't know if it continues. But more governments don't want the use of bitcoins, because they don't want to see independent people using an independent currency. The only thing they can offer to their people is poorness, and when their people find a way to have prosperity, they just forbid it...

If I good remember, some state of USA already blocked exchanges, so it's hard to deal with bitcoin in this conditions...
If government want, they can broke bitcoin...

i think government and isp can banned bitcoin for the connection like what they did with gambling and porn website. but i hope the government will not banned bitcoin so we can still make money and we can still doing trading. if in case government is banned bitcoin, i really don't know what i am going to do.

governments care about money. they pass on the duties of child porn investigations to local law enforcement.
after all you never see a senator or a MP raiding perves houses.

the government are restricted from directly getting a ISP to ban individuals from using the internet. hense why i said it would have to be done via interpol.
also interpol would need 'good cause' to get a court order to do such things.

with things like perves. stopping their internet is just an alarm bell for the perves to destroy evidence. and thats why they prefer to do 'morning raids' to surprise the perverts and avoid evidence being destroyed. rather than shut down their internet.

though cutting off the internet is both physically and technically possible. the procedures involved in doing so are not straight forward. a government would need to create a law to allow law enforcement to apply to courts to accept and create a court order without question.
much like a bitlicence can be used to stop a unregistered business in new york by applying for a takedown order.
so at the moment i cannot see it happening in reality any time soon to stop individuals.. but that can change much like the change that affects businesses in newyork

but just because there is no bitcoin ban law for individuals in 200 countries right now does not mean we should be apathetic and not secure bitcoin more to prepare/prevent the chance of future changes to the law. we should not leave bitcoin weak to internet banning of just 6000 landlines and then sit on our hands and hope to lobby government to not open the weakness to an attack.
we should not rely on government to solve bitcoin security/utility weaknesses. we should secure bitcoin to not rely on governments.

bitcoin should be at a self sustaining state that no law or individual can hamper it. and not at a mediocre state of hope and faith that bad things cant happen.

apathy and hope which causes lazyness is a security risk.
much like blind faith in devs without  personally checking what features and code actually does become a risk.
its how trojans end up on peoples computers because they trust too much that something wont go wrong.

NO.bitcoin wallets or exchanges ip may be banned but banning the entire blockchain network is not possible as far as I know

Yeah, I think nothing in our country that could be escape from government attention if they want to.
Government maybe can not blocked bitcoin if just doing sites blocked which could encounter through VPN, but if they ban merchant, store, ATM that accepted bitcoin, it may inconvenience bitcoin user at the country.

That depends on the use or abuse of the crypto currencies, if bitcoins are excessively used for some illegal or destructive activities then governments might make or introduce some legislation to regulate or ultimately block the digital currency

I think they can do it as bitcoin transaction, or anything for that matter has some code that would determine that it was a bitcoin transaction. However, similar to censorship in other countries, like China, there are ways to bypass such censorship. I think, in the event, Bitcoin does get blocked by the government or an ISP, there would be workarounds to it.

Bitcoins might get blocked by ISPs but we have alternatives with which we can use it without letting them know that we are doing it.
Why are we so worried when we are having many things available to bypass the blocks?

Yes its very possible, but why they should do it in the first place? The government will receive a backlash from bitcoin community. But when it happens, more great minds will seek any way to overcome this blockade.Remember,necessity is the mother of invention.  ???

If bitcoin becomes a headache to the government then they can certainly block it. Because government never wants that their citizen earns some free money which is hard to be taxed. They want you to pay taxes in everything. Since bitcoin is anonymous, it is hard for them to track it unless and until you exchange it in your local currency.

However, you can certainly use VPN service to open the blocked website. So it will not be much of a problem. But the risk of trading bitcoin in your local currency will have higher risk of getting caught.

as still not a single country has taken step about this , therefore no one know about the fact that either it can be block or not.

Well, if you are talking about countries in which BTC is illegal, they can search the players of online casinos by IP, for instance. I don't think people use TOR that much. The same holds for torrent websites or something else like that. But bitcoin can't be absolutely blocked and people from countries where it is illegal may still find a way to use bitcoin for online purchases.

Have read a few articles on this topic lately and some say that places like China are getting better and more sophisticated at breaking loopholes but then there are others that point out the cost.
The cost is really a interesting dynamic because they are double fisting the issue and bleeding money till something cheaper comes along.

Even if the government tries to block Bitcoin, it will be useless. We can easily surf the blocked websites with some IPs. So the government block will not have any impact in using Bitcoins.

Apart from replacing your ip when it is blocked by the government for using bitcoin should it be prohibited, you may safely use proxy ip or vpn and still access whatever site or business relating to bitcoin. Whether they block the ip or not, people will still find a way to use bitcoin surely.

That's a really old thread. There have been changes in TOR and government website seizures that change the game.  The truth is if the government wanted to get rid of bitcoin they could do it easily using any number of methods.  The good news is Bitcoin is such an inconsequential flea on the backside of an elephant that they have absolutely no reason to do anything.

Look at it this way, there are somewhere between 400k-500k daily heroin users in the USA alone but less than 250k daily Bitcoin transactions worldwide. There are millions of violent crimes, identity thefts, financial sector crimes from check kiting to bank hacking and thousands of other problems too numerous to list. Why would any government throw resources they don't have solving a non-issue like Bitcoin?

Every time law enforcement has been involved with Bitcoin it was related to another crime not Bitcoin. Illegal securities, illegal drug marketplace, fraud, kidnapping, etc are the crimes they care about. It wouldn't matter if those crimes were committed with gold, dollars, bitcoin or food stamps the result would be the same.

No government is going to shut down Bitcoin because no one gives a shit about Bitcoin. LOL

I am agree with you, although isp and goverment make a rule that banned the bitcoin. They still cannot stop the users to use bitcoin becouse users can use vpn to pass through it. So I think the statement that goverment is xan not control the bitcoin is true. I think bitcoin is realy appropriated to be virtual money and I think may be the most of people in the world will use bitcoin, just wait it to be happen.

Why would they block it though?

PS: I can understand now how it can pose a problem to regular fiat currency. But this can only happen if bitcoin becomes so big because many people are using it,
such as brick and mortar stores and consumers. If this happens, the governmental financial system is challenge and can crumble, giving the people financial freedom.

we should not care about why, where, who.
we should not be apathetic due to questions of why, where, who.

instead we should continue to increase the networks diversity and distribution so that questions such as:
why doesn't matter
when doesn't matter
who doesn't matter
where doesn't matter

blocking enactment by the internet service provider is a totally impossible !!
bitcoin is a financial system, not a criminal act that should be restricted for use !!

so your saying financial systems are not restricted?
ever tried to get more the £$500 out of an ATM
ever tried to carry more than £$10,000 in cash onto a plane

we should stop thinking or caring about government rules or possible future rules. but strengthen the network to not get impacted by any rules present or future.

we need to stop saying:
"i hope governments dont change laws"
"i hope hackers dont delete 6000 nodes data in one swoop"

and instead say
"hackers come try breaking bitcoin, you can waste your time it wont break"
"governments come try to take it offline, you can waste your time but new nodes will be up in 20 seconds"

its impossible to prepare for every situation .

If they can block sharing sites and torrents, they may be able to block the connection to the bitcoin network. Some bitcoin sites such as gambling sites might not allow users from specific countries to connect/register to the site, but you may be able to stop that by using VPN to connect from a country that isn't blocked.

This is what I am saying that a person will always find a way to circumvent the blocking :D As the technology is open to all, all are experimenting,reverse engineer to their own benefit.That is why, if there is a blocking, there is way to overcome it.

It could  possibly be blocked   by  the government  because  they  have  control  on the ISP's  on a  certain country  which  they could able to  command   on  blocking  it all  regards to bitcoin things but  still they  could  not able  to stop complete  to those people who would  really  love to use  bitcoin hence  you could always   use  VPN and   Tor  which  you could actually  acces bitcoin  with different  IP but  be careful hence Tor  browsing  would be  able to detect  by  isp's  but  tor has a way  on that   for them  not  able to trace you.

Of course it can be blocked by your ISP but you can always bypass it. The only ones that will be affected by this are the people that didn't bother to search how to bypass this. This is very easy to do. There are even VPNs out there that allows you to connect to the Internet without paying your ISP.

As quoted users can go with several bypassing techniques and applications. Same happened in my country of banning porn websites and torrents, but the ban didn't last long as expected. Within a months time people started using it through different bypassing activities which made the government to release the ban over several websites.

lol proxy bypass allows access to things banned while you still have internet available on your land line. but if your internet has been cut off completely due to a chance of your ISP's terms of service. then you are OFFLINE.. and no proxy bypass or tor can get around that.

it does not require making EVERYONE (billions of people) go offline to destroy bitcoin.. but instead just <6000.
yes it requires a co-ordinated approach to time 91 countries ISP's to do this at the same time. but it is possible.

relying on hope/trust that 91 governments or groups of ISP do not do this, is not good. we need to continue to strengthen bitcoin to not need hope/trust. but instead be strong enough to say "bring it, i dare ya" knowing they wont be successful.

It's either your government has nothing else to problematize so they ban porn websites and torrents or your government just want add another law just so people can say that something new has been implemented.

I think that governments that will be banning access of something on the Internet has never heard of VPN and all those anonymity stuffs. All of these can be bypassed by just using a single software. Actually, it can even be monetize by some people. They can sell an elite or premium account of a VPN.

It may be possible for a Government to restrict hosting of Bitcoin nodes by making them illegal or Bitcoin mining as illegal as well. Similar to how hosting a tor node in certain places are considered illegal. The Governments could also heavily regular the Bitcoin market, prevent merchants from accepting Bitcoin payments and also could artificially pump in a lot of funds and dump to scale or drop the Bitcoin price. But all of these still happen in a regular stock exchange, which really couldn't affect the price by a lot. Bitcoin nodes can be easily setup in other regions to counter this and mining could always happen elsewhere as well. The fact is decentralization of Bitcoin would be put to stake if they wanted to really poke Bitcoin.

So you just shouldn't care, is that what you are saying? Yeah you can't prepare for anything, but you can certainly prepare for the most likely and unlikely situations to happen.

Use a VPN.Everyone needs freedom to do whatever they want on the internet.Torrents will never die.FTP's will never stop.You just need to look at the right places.For instance,check out russian torrent sites.

Not unless they start taking actions against miners.How many IP's do you think they can individually start banning? They won't waste their time on this.

You can't run a mail server from a residence in the US because most murrican isp's block SMTP port 25. Murrican isp's also routinely block ports 443, 80, 110 and 21. Windows home server setup used to commonly fail because of blocked ports.

The truth is the govt could demand isp's block any ports they want and there's nothing anyone could do about it. That would start a Bitcoin port war where updates would roll out with default port changes and the govt would block those and on and on like Apple iPhone updates. Hackers learn to jailbreak the current ios and Apple responds with an update, bla, bla. No one in their right mind would ever use a payment system that is that difficult to use.

None of that will ever happen. If the government actually cared enough about tiny little Bitcoin to do something about it they would simply pass a law banning its use. That would terrify every legimate business and force them to stop any dealings with Bitcoin effectively ending Bitcoin use in that country. If they were really serious about ending even the most casual use of Bitcoin they would pass a mandatory jail sentence for Bitcoin use. That would crush Bitcoin like jello under a steamroller in that country.

If government block access to any bitcoin related site or web wallet we can easily access them via TOR browser as well as if government tries to banned exchange of bitcoin than we can have face to face deals which are off the record of any banks or online payment gateways. Also there are several bitcoin tumbling and mixing services to hide identity to not get linked to any bitcoins you are holding.

I think their know about that is why they dont do that.. because its impossible and customers who are using network service or internet service they don't want to apply it in their internet because they want no blocklisted site while they are browsing..
VPN is one of the solution proxy and ips most of them are cgi proxy. .
That can unblock connection.. that why they hotspot shield that can remove those block listed..

Governments can block you from using bitcoin just like they block you from:
Gambling
Porn
Music piracy
Joining a terror group
Creating a fake facebook account
etc...
In other words, they can't.  ;)

if government do the task with ips then definitely there will be some hack coming up because now there are many virtual server that gives user virtual ips which allows user to access ip protected sites. but if Government setup a firewall then it might be possible to stop or put a complete ban on particular sites.

What can they do? I bet some governments will try to do this, and we will see on example how much can some government do about this question. Examples I saw here like gambling, porn, different sites are very good, government can`t do much about anything on internet. They make few cases and couple convictions, but same sites appear in few hours from new location.
Bitcoin is unstoppable, it`s better for them to accept things as they are. It will be better for us and them, maybe bitcoin can unite us in many ways, and to be much more then currency.

No. That would be against you human rights. That would be the government forcing you to use your banks. If torrents are blocked simply use a VPN service or DNS to bypass the evils of censorship. Bitcoin is not piracy and is not stealing anything from anyone. I wouldn't worry about this. :)

Actually there is a way to block the connection but it would not be easy but they actually can. But I think bitcoin is not needed to be blocked by government, this move from them would be useless because bitcoin is not a bad thing.

Sites I've visited recently:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Website_seizure_notice.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/2/1380727964357/629d4012-f4ff-4230-97ca-248ec82dee72-460x276.png
http://www.v3.co.uk/IMG/134/231134/appbucket-android-fbi-takedown-warning-370x229.jpg?1345629923

If Bitcoin came under attack from the government kiss that mainstream to the moon bullshit goodby. There is no way a payment system can be even slightly useful if under government attack. Hiding in a dark room, running TOR, and biting your nails is not the way most people want to shop on Amazon. LOL

I think the fast way here, is baning the commerce, so don't matter how many bitcoins users the world have, none will have where to spend it... However I think they just don't care, bitcoin marketcap is low af compared to others fiat currencies.

A government can't block bitcoin directly.
But it can block sites where people have their wallets, such as blockchain.info.
And a government can prohibit businesses to accept bitcoin as a form of payment, maybe even declare the posession of bitcoin to be illegal.
Those measures would turn bitcoin to be useless for people and would be as effective as blocking bitcoin if this was possible.

It would be a disaster if they try to go to those lengths to try to stop bitcoin, it would be admitting that bitcoin is a serious threat. I don't see it happening. Even if they act at an ISP level, people will use VPNs to bypass it, and maybe proxies will be set at a protocol level to somehow bypass the ISP block. Governments can't do anything but put fear on people's mind, it doesn't work as we have seen in russia.

Technically I think they might be able to stop people from running nodes etc... but there isn't a way to stop you from using tor for example and using blockchain and therefore using BTC, generally banning bitcoins would be difficult in a country with decent law since this isn't like piracy...

If other people will continue to use it on illegal activities there is a possibility that the government will ban it.  And maybe if the government will see that establishments and some store will not pay appropriate fees or taxes.  Government still have the last say on everything in this world.  They are the one who manipulate or let say they are the one who were in control. 

I don't feel Bitcoin will be banned. So far there no news or indication it could be. Blocking it would be far more problematic. Hence I don't think government will be in Any rush to banned them. So take a chill pill

Banning commerce is definitely one of the best and most effective ways to lock people from effectively using Bitcoin, however it will not stop peer-to-peer transactions that can take place on isolated and out-of-the-way places on the internet.

The only way they could stop that, iirc, is by going and blocking each node.

In my country the Central Bank did not say that its illegal to use but use with caution, however it can be blocked using their influence since thers only a handful of internet providers in my country. Theres even an internet provider who was able to block porn sites from being viewed. If they can do that to porn sites, they can do it well to sites related to Bitcoin.

guys you need to stop with the "if governments do or dont do" rhetoric

we need to strengthen bitcoin to not care.

another point is by not scaling bitcoin we have already prohibited atleast half a dozen countries from using bitcoin ourselves.
a 0.06cent tx fee is an hours labour / 4 loaves of bread for just the fee.. in many countries

no on is going to pay that. would you want to buy 4 loaves of bread knowing its going to cost you another 4 loaves just to buy it. basically meaning you cannot get 8 loaves even if before making a transaction you had funds equivalent to 8 loaves.

the higher the fee gets the less countries see bitcoin as an advantage. paying under the average slows down when your transaction may or may not get confirmed. thus its not just a cost thing, but a slow system for those third world countries too.

we need to concentrate on strengthening bitcoin to not worry about governments. and also get more people desiring bitcoin by not putting up barriers of entry. but just barriers to destruction

I am not sure whether governments can ban bitcoin. They can impose fine and penalties on people who use it. They can also tax bitcoin with a higher rate to discourage its use. For now bitcoin is not facing any serious threats and I think we need to spread the message and get more people aware of bitcoin and it's advantages. This will help in the adoption and growth of bitcoin.

Certain countries already have a fine or other kind of penalty for people that are using Bitcoin even though the country in question has put up some sort of a ban in action.

Making people pay a higher tax is something that doesn't work as people right now can use Bitcoin to trade with, hodl it for a long time, etc, and all that without declaring their coins and profits. They will just continue to do that.

The only effective option they have, which has also been mentioned by some people in this thread, is to make ISPs ban the IPs from nodes all over the world.

I think  Iceland , Bolivia , Ecuador , Kyrgyzstan
and Vietnam  is  the countries that bitcoin is banned . Why are they banning bitcoin it can help their country by giving bitcoin users their a great tax to help their country grow not by just banning it. If they are worrying about the falling growth of their banks they I think they can merge it to make both profitable.

they are not banned.
they are just prohibiting BANKS from offering bitcoin services. to protect their economy by ensuring banks only handle fiat.
this has nothing to do with citizens.

My point is you still can do any of the banned activities. And trying to shut down a distributed network vs. a website is much, much harder. Lastly there are no legal grounds for an attack nor any suggestion of a will to do so; nor any method by which to accomplish it. We won brother.  :)

we have not won.
its stupid to think we won and do nothing more... its an endless marathon.
we should always be doing more.
getting 91 countries to get their ISP's to take peoples landline internet offline is achievable.

we should not be relying on "but they shouldnt".. but instead expand bitcoin to "but they couldnt".
we should never rely on the good nature of government not to do something but be prepared for their bad nature.

afterall billions of emails got copied to three later agencies before it even became a thing that users should encrypt their email.
even now people still dont encrypt their email. they just presume governments are not the bad guys and let governments do it.

apathy seems soo rampant in this topic. im guessing the many that are suggesting to trust governments as good guys are probably people that are not even running a full node.

I think the rumblings of a concerted government attack would be enough to seriously upend bitcoin value wise at least.

sure, there's a die hard hard core, everyone else who gives it value is an overextended scaredy cat with no real emotional attachment.

Imagine, goverment isn't able to block torrent websites and how can they to block bitcoin? No, nowdays there is no way to block bitcoins. We can to install bitcoin wallets in our computer and than make transactions and I think ISP can't track us in this way, if they can than we can to use VPN and hide ourself. If ISP is going to block something, than there is always VPN that gives you permission to unlock that.
So don't worry about that, keep calm and use bitcoin.

Let them even waste their time banning the IPs, people will still find a possible way of mining and using bitcoin, one of which is using proxy/tor/Vpn, I do not see any point trying to ban it by any Government or organization, rather let the just accept it wholeheartedly. I believe that will the only possible and fruitful way for a government.

I agree, governments, other than the most oppressive, don't care about Bitcoin. My point was that "mainstream" does not go with "government attack".

yes that is right to say that currently there is no announcement from the government side that either bitcoin is banned or not, so we are using it without any worry and hope that in future government will consider bitcoin as legal currency, and it will not be banned for ever.

Yup, it's true now no announcement about banning bitcoin as payment and I think it will never happen. Bitcoin cause would be one alternative tools deals for every single thing that exists in the world and will certainly become a digital currency used by most people in the world. But this could be an obstacle for users because there is a possibility of bitcoin, that the Government will find a way out in a transaction which does not benefit any rule

You could use a client like Shadowsocks to encrypt your connection to other nodes, so your information will be indistinguishable from normal data.

From this, an ISP could still shut you down, but they risk you getting shut down for not doing anything. That's what China does, and you can watch youtube, or use google or facebook freely with shadowsocks.

What are you talking about? Of course the government's know what Bitcoin is! You can't be that ignorant.

Governments are totally aware of Bitcoin and probably have workers looking into it. It's a complicated system, but one that could put their current banking system to ruins. They are faced with a decision. To adapt, or to remove. Naturally, some nations will chose the latter. We have to persuade them otherwise.