Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin is growing and booming. The governments are watching it, they waited and now they have figured out that it's time to takeover this cryptocurrency. Now they want the masterkey of blockchain but the problem is who really owns the masterkey? Satoshi Nakamato?

Nobody owns a "master key". This isn't a bank. Please read more... There's a Bitcoin (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Help:FAQ) wiki where you can start.

yeah that's what I am telling , since nobody owns the masterkey how could the government ask for a masterkey?

They can't.
They won't try to control it, but they will regulate it..

If your post had irony, sorry, I didn't see it.

No government asked for a "master key", as they know that this is impossible. However, governments might try to regulate Bitcoin usage in a way that hinders its acceptance.

Morgan Stanley recently made a statement about blockchain master key


Bitcoin is an open source protocol, no such thing as master key exists which would give power to a single entity to control the whole network.

People who believe a master key exists are either too dumb or clueless about how bitcoin works or they are just fooling around hoping that such a thing would exist or they are simply convincing themselves that they would be able to control bitcoin network with an imaginary master key.

No, if the government on the world's and international bank interesting with Bitcoin, they can creating new coin with technology blockchain and banned using Bitcoin, then released their coin and use as a digital cash online for replace visa, internet banking ... it will easy and better than control Bitcoin

You need not worry government indulgence in bitcoin until and unless government bans it which I didn't hear a case till now.
Regulating bitcoin will going to contribute in increase spread of bitcoin rather than limiting it. People need to understand when it comes to bitcoin regulations, it doesn't mean traditional regulations.

You don't expect something that is not successful attract the attention of government and its agencies and I think for bitcoin to command attention from them, then its good news all the way which also points to the fact that they cannot do anything about it because if they can, then we wont be having anything near this discussion the best they can do is to regulate and stop chasing the shadows of controlling.

As the poster below mentioned, without going into too much detail there is no such thing as a "master key" of the blockchain. As a matter of fact, it is the exact opposite.

The only way the government could do anything to stop Bitcoin is by shutting down the entire internet.

This is EXTREMELY unlikely, because if it were to happen there would be mass riots in the streets the likes of which have never been seen before and will never be seen again.

People are really addicted to Facebook... they would never let it happen. xD

But in all seriousness - that is the only way to stop cryptocurrencies at this point. In my opinion, at least.

The only other possibility is someone like Jihan Wu who has so much influence and control due to his mining network.

Nobody holds the masterkey. There is a question is such person as Satoshi Nakamone exist at all?! Government can't take the control on bitcoin, but it can regulate it's use with necessary laws, such as open use on all theretorry or banning.

lolz, this topic made me laugh so hard that my heart will some right from my mouth. common government became so helpless that they are trying to take over on it. seems like the government does play Minecraft. what if they actually are given the master key of blockchain that only allows them on the new transactions but they can not change new transactions without changing the old once so if they changed any old transaction then we have to mine all the old blocks again or else they will become invalid.

They can not, maybe they will try to get backdoors in the code by trying to bribe the devs, it is the same they have done with microsoft and apple, but they will soon discover such methods are infective in open source code, the moment a change like that was proposed then everyone will reject that new code and it will go nowhere.

The government doesn't care much about Bitcoins popularity, it care about its taxes that it can make people pay by regulating It. Their existing earnings are effected, but putting taxes on Bitcoin gives them a whole new scope and that's what they have intended to do. No as people have pointed out to you there is no such thing as a master key and so no one can control it, this was all thanks to the idea of satoshi who had for seen this problem could arise in the near future.

Yes it is booming and growing and the transaction made by Bitcoin is pretty huge everyday, the government is looking for a way to taxed Bitcoin and the government want to regulate Bitcoin, but the government can't take over Bitcoin because it's belong to all of us, and the government can't control it

What is regulation if not control? While Bitcoin started off as a completely unregulated entity/ecosystem, the more people who get involved, the more likely regulation is. People will demand it, out of a sense for their own protection. Regulation is not automatically bad.

It is true that the government is really eyeing the btc, but it is very difficult to acquire and manage it because btc features are not suitable for concentration in one place and are taxed by the organization.

Satoshi Nakamoto might not even be a single person. Good luck to them.

But I think even if they want to bring bitcoin down, they simply won't succeed. And, one more thing, they are actually studying bitcoin and the crypto world real hard. They trying to adapt to it considering that the crypto world is embraced by many people in so short a time. They will have to learn some important lessons from the existence of these cryptos.

And Morgan Stanley isn't saying there is a master key, they're trying to convey the level of singular control or access Regulators need to know exists (a single throat to choke if things go bad) before they offer their endorsement of accessing bitcoin and the blockchain through the channels they regulate.

Here's the article where Morgan Stanley made that comment: https://news.bitcoin.com/morgan-stanley-regulators-looking-for-a-master-key-to-the-blockchain/ (https://news.bitcoin.com/morgan-stanley-regulators-looking-for-a-master-key-to-the-blockchain/)

Lol the whole master key thing is hilarious. How stupid would you feel if you publicly asked for this. Every bitcoiner knows you're an idiot but everyone who is as clueless as him go zomg bitcoins have a master key to shut the whole thing down. Oh noes! I'll buy shitpple instead.

please clarify that by "the governments" you mean only the US government, not all of them. so far we have seen in other countries they have accepted bitcoin as what it is, as an open source and decentralized cryptocurrency, and they don't want no master key :)
but it seems that the US government is the only one that is resisting the adoption so far.

Do your own research on bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is decentralized. No one holds such thing as a "master key". Qnd no, the government can't take over or even ban bitcoin. For them to achieve this they have to ban the whole internet, which is obviously very unlikely.

I believe that you saw this article written by marketwatch here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-needs-government-regulation-to-rise-further-morgan-stanley-says-2017-06-13 which mentions the idea of a master key.

The fact is that, the bitcoin network does not have a master key at all. It is a concept that they just stupidly made up. Even if satoshi wanted hand over control of the bitcoin network, he can't. Because he never had control of the bitcoin network is the first place! The whole point of bitcoin is to combat centralized banking, by implementing a p2p payment processor it means that no government can control your wealth, inflate it etc.

You're suggesting that bitcoin's popularity makes governments want to get a piece of the cake, and this is true. But we really don't have to worry about it. They can make all their demands but ultimately bitcoin will remain a decentralized network, untouched by the government.

Although only a few countries accept bitcoin at the present time, it is a sign to prove that virtual currency is universally acknowledged. Everything will be better if more countries accept bitcoin.

They cannot ever get the master key of it because no one proves it is theirs. Nakamoto is in silence of this. Government is so eager to have it because money comes so fast to every man that has an access to it but they cannot get or trace it due to its being decentralized. Once government have the access to it for sure they will just control it, the pricing and putting taxes to each transaction done which is for sure will be burden. So I guess those who knew the key just keep silence to make more users happy. :)

they don't even need a master key they can view every transaction on the blockchain easily, but some address are hidden even on the explorer, maybe they want full transparency

still by not knowing which address belongs to who, there is no way they can have full view over this, so better they forgets about this crap of master key which is not something that will ever exist

seems that the governments didn't learned that by knowing only the address you don't know shit about the user, until he spend those coins to shop something and link his home address

Chinas government has the power (thru the great wall, internet censorship, etc..) to make BTC very difficult to use if they chose.

The US government has nowhere near that power, and if they tried to obtain it by screwing with the internet it would get ugly (it's one thing to pull out of the Paris Accords, but make it hard to use Facebook and there will be riots in the street).

The chief concerns governments have with BTC are:
1) are these folks making a fortune paying their capital gains taxes?
2) are these BTC being used for money laundering or to fund bad actors?

I'm hoping they manage to find a suitable level of regulation that they can make sure 1) taxes are paid, and 2) anyone so inclined gets busted.

I'm also hoping they don't over regulate and stifle innovation.

It's a tricky balance, I'm sure it's going to take a while for governments to get it right (and their bias may be towards over regulation 'just to be safe'.

I do agree the overwhelming and increasing popularity does limit the approaches the government itself can make to bitcoin, but in the end, the fact majority of the world is governed by laws and you can't ban something on a whim, I guess this is the main reason US or UK did not ban bitcoin.

China, in which bitcoin was getting a tremendous popularity, made some heavy regulations almost stopping exchanges work (I think it has been lowered to some extent right now). Russia too made regulations even outlawing bitcoin ownership and use at some point despite the popularity, so I guess it depends on the country not just popularity.

There is no possible way to get a master key, since bitcoin is decentralised which makes it impossible for anyone to take control of the currency. I would recommend you read some articles about this before posting here. The only way it is possible for countries to ban use of bitcoin would be to create a great firewall like China. Most countries are like, if they don't ban bitcoin it is allowed to be used. If a country was to ban bitcoin, then it would severely damage that country's market and economy since bitcoin has been receiving heaps of media attention and banning it would severely cripple their economy.

China only added simple regulations, to you they seem heavy but when compared to forex market for example they are nothing. and they did that because the exchanges were doing some illegal and unregulated stuff.

and Russia has never outlawed ownership of bitcoin to my knowledge. up until 2017 they have been talking about it and was never happy about bitcoin but from early 2017 they also changed that "talk" into more positive and accepting laws.

Yeah bitcoin is becoming more popular and it is attracting more investor and it is also attracting the government,
But the government can't take control of it because it is an open source.
And I think bitcoin doesn't really have a master key.

1) There is no such thing as a master key.

2) The whole "master key" was just an expression but a lot of idiots have taken it literally.
What was meant to be said was "taking control over" or "having somebody in charge of".

Also this topic is a clone of:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1966785

/endthread

Personally I hope that satoshi was a single person that made bitcoin, if it was a group of people then there are bigger chances that someone is going to talk or say something and then they will be tracked down, if it was a single person then that becomes more unlikely to happen.

There is no real "master key" that exists, and the only way to really get at something like it would be through forking the network to a blockchain that has such a "master key" (which requires users to comply with such an action), or by taking over the network through a hostile mining power takeover, and that doesn't give you a key; it just allows for you to control transactions.

It's a good thing that there is no key anyways. If there was, someone would have exploited it somehow by now.

No. Bitcoin doesn't have a master key because this isn't a bank that can control it internally. It's a open source so, government can't control it internally but externally, like imposing rules and regulations in exchanges oor in bitcoin holders, government has the control. I think due to fact that bitcoin is growing, it gain the attention of the governmet

It is true, nowadays because of the popularity and price of Bitcoin government are now targeting Bitcoin how they'll gonna get money from people who are using Bitcoin when they do a transaction. It will not take long before we all pay for a tax when we are doing trades plus the payment in 3rd party sites plus miners fee.

i would really understand if the master key word quoted , government don't want to take control over the whole transaction made in blockchain but they want to have full monitoring over every single transaction in every secs which it's could be tracked easily . the problem are on how to make it easier to read/monitored. correct me if i'm wrong.

  The Government already run its own Bitcoin and Blockchain ... It's your typical online banking.

Them Trying hard to make their own "Bitcoin" is really funny.
They need to ask themselves Why Bitcoin/Blockchain was created in the first,  it'll probably help them understand how insane their idea is.

There is no Master Key for this Bitcoin. If it does exist, the Masterkey is us as a bitcoin user. And again, you do not have to worry about vulnerability to government.

I agree with you! The government has nothing to do with bitcoin, its a totally different thing which is controlled by the community as a whole. Its not some corrupt economy system where the money rotates in few pockets rather it’s something anyone can have and claim. And they can never bane it because half the world invested, there will be chaos if the govt do such thing.

They will try to do so in order to confuse people, they will probably use misinformation campaigns stating the fact that bitcoin is not backed by any government makes it risky, and that their coin fully backed by the government is better, that does not make sense, but they are going to use that argument.

Well it is not only the US government that is resisting adoption. Other governments are doing worse by banning Bitcoin completely. However, people still end up using it. Because Bitcoin can't actually be banned. Get a good VPN and you are safe. But I think the reason behind US government "banning" is because it is afraid of its pseudo-anonymity. They can't actually track which address belongs to who and what their intentions are in sending the money or anything like that. Its scary for them.
But anyways, it is to be note that the bitcoin network does not have a master key at all. The whole point of bitcoin is to combat centralized banking and fiat by implementing a peer to peer network. That means that no government (not even the entire might of the US government) can control your Bitcoin. In a sense it make Bitcoin untouchable and that makes it uncontrollable, an enemy almost. That it why they are resisting Bitcoin adoption.

Bitcoin nature is resistent against control of an entity over it. There will be many attempts to control Bitcoin users and the currency movements, but it's too hard to be done. There will be always someone able to avoid the governments regulamentations to continue using Bitcoin as it's now.

Bitcoin shouldn't be "accepted" by any country, this is one step for the government's control.

I have been expecting that thing to happen before i went in to bitcoin and my expectation is now becoming a reality since the bitcoin price boosted in just a short period of time tho even if the government can centralize bitcoin its purpose will still be served

And what will you do with your vpn and your coins?

Once exchange will not be allowed to let you deposit funds or coins and withdraw them?
Once stores will be banned from accepting coins?
Do you think somebody will be nuts to risk its entire business for one or two sales a day?

All you will have left will be the dark markets and all the "investors" will flee seeing there is no room for growth.

Pray that no real government from the G7 will take a stance against bitcoin.

If goverment take over bitcoin by using master key , decentralized concept is no longer entitiled for bitcoin
Bitcoin is unique investation so they must be regulate in different way not by control it

Yes I believe in this bitcoins popularity made it vulnerable to governments especially the bank. Well the bank and bitcoin wallets are fighting or clashing each others right now.  You can't make bitcoin and bank as one because they are enemies. And government controls the bank which means vulnerability.

The bigger countries like Japan / USA / UK / Australia has already shown that their governments are "Bitcoin friendly" so the rest will follow if the

countries with the stronger economies will take the lead. The thing is, if the rest of the world accept Bitcoin and you do not, then a specific section

of the global economy are closed off to you. This includes tourism and ecommerce etc..  ;D

Every day for 7 years now I see that bitcoin is going to be taken over by some government. What I have never seen is an explanation of how this could even be done theoretically. Your example of a master key is , of course, impossible.

In some cases yes other government parties around the world will follow but not all the time the mere fact that they are going to established rules and regulations for its usaged that somehow threatens the freedom of its users im just saying tho

First thing is that how you can say that it is vulnerable because I have not found any person in my whole life of Bitcoin work where anyone told us that his account get scammed for the Bitcoin , or the Bitcoin wallet get hacked .
The wallet ( I am telling about official wallet ) will never get hack until we expose our all the details to anyone .
Well here the owner of master key is only the network of the blockchain , not the Satoshi nakamoto or any other person , because  this is
Not a matter to handle all the transaction and details but also making all the transaction fully safe and secured , so I don't think anyone in this world has theaster node key of the Bitcoin , and I would like to advise the any of the authority of the Bitcoin that don't try to get into to get the control of the transaction other wise people will use more and more to go against them .
So instead to get master node , the governments needed only to make better rules to use Bitcoin our own ways .

Are you freaking kidding me? Where did you get that masterkey? If you did fully read the Whitepaper of bitcoin you will able to tell that no one really owns it even its creator Satoshi. Government cant really centralized bitcoin no matter what they do. Going back in the past on where they didnt really like bitcoin from the start and now the price starts to cling up unbelievably which really caught their attention but talking centralization its impossible to happen on bitcoin and thats what bitcoin users do really like from it.

The OP does not know what he is talking about, governments may want to take over bitcoin, we know that is true, but there is not such a thing as a master key, that will be a single point of failure and we will depend on the holder of that master key to keep us safe, so satoshi created bitcoin without a point of failure like that.

No one knows who owns it because even Satoshi do not show himself and claim it by his own. I guess government gets it that bitcoin is getting more popular and increasing rapidly with out their prior notice and bitcoin is getting more into every family now so later on maybe government is afraid that the whole world is using it without controlling the money that enters to every wallet.

Exactly! No government can get full control over bitcoins because of their decentralized nature. Government any state does not pose any serious threat to bitcoins blazing future. They can just regulate their trading and usage as per the circumstances of a particular state.

Bitcoin in the first place is not like a doorknob to have a master key. Also government cannot easily manipulate bitcoin usage and transactions taking over. That is why bitcoin built its decentralized block chain for some instance that it will somehow apart from government hands to enable individual users to access and manage their own assets.

That is definitely true and correct, the government may want to take charge over Bitcoin to control and to benefit from it. Bitcoin has the big impact for them if they restrain it. Million people have Bitcoin and the value of every count of Bitcoin has big and will increase if government holding it back.

I think if the government takes over and controls bitcoin it will certainly change the rules and systems that have been run by the bitcoin system.
Even bicoini may no longer be a decentralized currency, because it has come under the control of the government.

still its hard for government to takes over bitcoin and controls bitcoin because bitcoin is not designed for centralized currency. governments attracted with bitcoin because now many people using bitcoin and makes money from bitcoin. since bitcoin is not controlling by any one, governments can not takes over and controlling bitcoin.