Bitcoin Forum

Okay, I know that the headline of this post seems to be too much but I am sure it has generated some eyeballs. Now, this is just another hypothetical situation: What if your government will decide one day that the use of and holding Bitcoin is illegal and anybody found to be contradicting this position can be thrown to jail with at least 5 years as the sentence without the possibility of using any internet-connected gadget?

I am assuming that the government would be using the latest technology and techniques  for surveillance and detection against people who are fond of Bitcoin.

Would you still be involved with Bitcoin or just be a sheep and follow along so you can't be a victim of the government overreach?

The government would be forced to make mass-arrests. I'd like to think that there would be major riots against it if such thing were to happen.
Though assuming the new legislation to ban Bitcoin goes smoothly, I would switch to Monero, as would many others.

I'm sure it's not difficult to hide your use of Bitcoin from the government but I can't bother hiding my "crimes" all the time.
Also you should define "latest technology and techniques  for surveillance and detection against people who are fond of Bitcoin" because I'm not aware of any such thing at this time.

Its already under action in Bangladesh.They have a law using which they can even imprison a person if found using bitcoins.I don't understand the contrast between japan,a technologically developed country legalizes bitcoin and Bangladesh,an under developed country goes to the extent of imprisoning a bitcoiner.But thanks to the indian government,they are taking steps in favour of bitcoin legalization.

I think they'd be much more interested in taxing it and taking your wealth rather than outlawing it. Most gov'ts are just interested in spending your $$$$ one way or another. They'd be perfectly happy spending your BTC as well.
Of course BTC does threaten the manipulation (by them) of the money supply and if suddenly they perceive it as a threat (threat being powerless to control the money) .. .then..they may do something. At which point you can vote them from office if you live in place where it's gov't by the people, which is becoming less and less these days. In the US people love to say "We live in a democracy" no..!!!!! We live in a republic, there's a difference!

This is a very serious topic. I don't know what I am going to do if the government enacts such as law banning the possession of Bitcoins. Perhaps I would stay away from BTC for a while. But when I face some financial difficulty, I will be forced to convert my coins to cash. If doing so is not possible in my country, then I'll be forced to travel abroad and convert my BTC to fiat.

why are some people still obsesses with this question? I don't get it.
most countries have already showed support one way or another for bitcoin. what else do you want? Japan has already announced bitcoin as a legal method of payment just like any other currency. other countries have showed interest and already set rules for usage of bitcoin and clearly stated they are only against illegal activities such as money laundering through bitcoin or dark markets.

Maybe this could happen in countries like North Korea or similar but not in civilized world. I think we have overcome such things and Bitcoin outside the law is something in the history. I beleive no government today will reach for repression against Bitcoin and its users because they are aware this is part of new era of economy where cryptocurrencies will be functioning along with fiat currencies.

I would continue to use Bitcoin in case it is forbidden by any law in my country. Surely not from my home but it could be pretty easy to find a public place to use. Or a VPS from a country without such law. You can compare with Iran where any porn website is blocked in this country, even their government monitor VPN, etc but it still doesn't block the citizen to access it when they want

It will not happen,  crypto currencies are here to stay regardless of government policies. That said, going to jail never stopped people from committing  crimes or breaking the law. A large percentage of adopters will use them regardless.

We are talking about bitcoin, so I guess in case this would happen, I will either liquidate all of my earnings or convert them to altcoins. But this event is less likely to happen. We are living in an innovative world where technology is continously developing. If some countries will decide to illegalize cryptocurrencies then they will get left behind by others if we talk about economy and development.

Yeah, I'd totally be a sheep and you'd not catch me with btc as long as it was banned.
 I like bitcoin, but not to the extent that I'd be willing to break the law and have my liberty threatened.
It's just not worth it as far as I'm concerned.

But do I think that'll happen?   No, not in my country.   I can see it possibly happening in China or
Russia, where the governments are pretty opressive.  That isn't to say that it could never happen; I
just think that it won't in my lifetime.

There is absolutely nothing to this. It may be a good fiction novel, but there is no reality connected to this persistent idea that (a, the) government is going to outlaw bitcoin users. There has also never been a way purposed to do something like this. It is no concern at all. If you just like to worry, then worry about a loss of net neutrality. That could sink the ship.

Illegal use of drugs is a long time problem to our country and now if Bitcoin would be illegal so what is new about it. People will still use what they want to use in their daily lives.

Bitcoin is used globally. My government can ban Bitcoin in my country, but they cannot stop me from using it in another

country. They have a choice, I can spend it locally and they receive the VAT {tax} from that use or they can ban it and I

transfer it to a friend or family in another Bitcoin friendly country and I spend it there. What do you think, is more profitable

for them?

First of all if Bitcoin becomes an illegal currency the government won't use the latest surveillance and detection technology to catch you because they can disable Bitcoin in a fast way. Bitcoin exist virtually and anything that exist virtually can be controlled by the government just by blocking all the possible wallets would render your Bitcoin inside a wallet useless. Just like torrent sites all of them have their days numbered.

It might happen to some countries if they did not adopt the rising technology of digital currency and payment system. If bitcoin or other crypto currenices are used for illegal transactions like drug trafficking and arm smuggling and might threat to the sovereignty of their country then holding of bitcoins is disallowed. Unless if the government were run by the corporatocracies where large corporations controlled the government then there's no reason to outlaw bitcoin, most major corporations are now engaging into bitcoin and blockchain technology.

Why would they do that? Instead of arresting pioneers that could potentially invest in the country with their bitcoin earinings they should work on getting their country back on track. Like seriously, wasting infrastructure on people who just use it really? I think it's just because you can easily buy drugs with it.

Give me your btc address. If that will happen I will send you Btc and government will put you on jail.  ;D . why do you think holding btc is crime? Just think btc as a digital asset, nothing more. Gov may try to track the btc transaction and put the taxes for it.

The topic is indeed misleading! I thought this thread was going to discuss something real. A threat of sorts to people that use and hold bitcoins. But to my dismay, it is just another hypothetical question. Well, we've been having so much of these lately. Anyway, personally, I don't think the government can ban bitcoins and also there is really little point in doing that. It is not harmful to anyone or anything, in fact it can likely help the economy and how finance work, so what's the purpose of banning it?

I will wait and see for a while. In fact it is illegal to download pirated movies and such and everyone does without many consequences. Things like that are pretty unstoppable in my opinion.

Making the law wouldnt be any problem but the issue would be how they intend to implement it which is the reason to understand whether I will comply with such law or not. Aside that, I am not going to comply with it and I am sure several governments would have consider this option and realized that its not possible to implement and then move to the second option which is regulation that we are now seeing from all body languages of government around the world.

never underestimate the powers of the dictate

What government can you present? You earn bitcoins on the Internet outside of your country. You exchange them at the exchange or exchange which is also located in another jurisdiction. The maximum that you can submit it tax evasion if they can trace the proceeds to a Bank account.

No it is not serious at all.
The most important thing in the post is "hypothetical situation".

You can start N topics with "the government decides to harvest organs from everybody born on the second of February".
This is just FUD and another swing at the "evil governments".

While we do currently have a wana-be dictator, a move on bitcoin will be ignored by America. Just as we ignore Trump's childish ideas about walls and executive orders. His foolishness will not be entertained.

What if people decided enough with the back and took up arms towards the government. I would. Noone has the right to tell me how to live my life. Like screw you dude. People will never out up with that shit. That's exactly how riots are caused. If you want to throw your country into a spiral of uncontrollability then that is the right way to go.

i think that talks was long long time ago , if you follow the news even Russia congratulate ETH & WAVE developers for inventing and developing those project .

Russia is somehow either trying to copy China or bringing trolling to another level
They are pro crypto then they thin about banning it then again hail it as a wonderful idea then again it is bad for money laundering and they never stop.

I wish they would just make their minds once for all even if it is bad and be done with it.
Uncertainty is worse than everything.

This is by no means impossible and I do get your point. If that really happens, I will still be using Bitcoin and will still find ways to avoid the government's grasp. But realistically, I'm thinking that the opposite will happen. Meaning that the civilized countries will wholeheartedly accept BTC as it is and follow what just Japan did in the past months. The amount of curiosity for BTC will increase by leaps and bounds in the coming months and the government will not be able to control it.

It depends, in my country there are thousands of laws and even some of the most basic ones are not applied, so if it was banned in my country at first I’m not going to be worried, if after some time I see they are serious about their attempts to crush bitcoin then I will move out to another country.

Bitcoin has become legitimate in almost all european countries, if you have too much Bitcoin, you can turn it from the stock market that you see fit for these countries, there is no objection.

as technology developes, BTC will eventually become outdated and fed away I think, but it is the gem of Internet and a concept of freedom for now, so enjoy while you can.

If holding bitcoin is a crime then something is wrong with that particular country. I do not see any reason why bitcoin holders should be imprisoned if there is no illegality involved in holding it, if a holder is not using it to perpetuate crime or laundering it then holding it is the same as holding other digital currencies.

What you said is also correct but it can happen only in that situation when btc purpose goes very illegal and not controllable , and i dont think that it will happen. Because more and more country are taking steps to first know fully about cryptocurrency and how it works and after that they are thinking of implementing it.

First things first, we must access what will happen to the community. For all the bitcoin community of course there will essentially be a rebellion. Why? Because every bitcoin-er would definitely think "why in the world bitcoin is illegal" well that would be a common reaction. So I would probably break all my connections to bitcoin until the rebellion successfully regain the legality of bitcoin. I would play safe and wait rather than join the rebellion and risk my freedom.

Government can ban bitcoin just so you know Sir and there are already countries who banned bitcoin. You can check it all here https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/top-10-countries-bitcoin-banned/ . If you read that article you will know why bitcoin is banned to their country and one of the main reasons is the anonymity of every bitcoin user, It can be used to fraud and any illegal activity like money laundering.

Ahan! Haters have started to pose a bad picture of bitcoins in front of the society. The best way to get out of all these minute issues is that you should keep in mind the anonymity provided to the bitcoin users. You should probably not disclose this to anyone that you are a bitcoiners as the government and judiciary have made strict laws against bitcoins. Stay calm and don’t think to be a rebellion as there is much hope regarding the betterment of situation in near future.

That becomes more interesting. First of, I believe that what you had in mind is not a work of fiction because government prohibits two things - something unprofitable for them, and something they want to take full control of. Drugs are prohibited not because they harm people but because the government (in my opinion) wants to limit their potential competitors in selling and cooking drugs. So if one day bitcoins become illegal you may want to keep in mind that they just want you to sell all (yes, they would be very happy to buy those) and once they have what they want - consider it LEGALIZED  ::)

That is an important point. So governments only could forbid the use in their own country, is that right? So if using bitcoin couldn't generally prohibited then we just could exchange online to foreign currencie and then exchange to our currency.

OP, governments aren't targeting imprisonment of crypto users. Their policy of choice is legalizing the confiscation of crypto holdings without warrant or just cause. In the united states, there is something called senate bill 1241 which has in the news not long ago for proposing this. The legal proceedings (if any) will be interesting as protections against unlawful seizure are mandated by the 5th amendment of the US Consitution.

You may have problems with the law not because you use bitcoin. Problems can arise because you don't pay taxes. If you find cashing operations of bitcoin then it will be a concealment of income. That is why it is important to develop faster trade for bitcoin.

I don't really know how to answer this question, but to rebut it. I highly doubt that will happen since the government would just be shooting themselves in the foot. A lot of countries have people who use bitcoin and they would piss of a lot of people.

I am a very obedient person so I would probably just quickly sell my bitcoin and then never use bitcoin ever again. Interesting question though, thanks.

I don't think government will do that, but in case that will happen i will still use bitcoin, this is also a technology's invented treasure that changed many people's perspectives on currency and secure transactions so i donot think there will be future trchnology to block bitcoin.

In my country's current situation, we only have one legit and trusted and with physical office online bitcoin wallet which is coins.ph.  on their terms and condition it stated that bitcoins from gambling or from ptc sites will be accepted but the account of the owner will be blocked.  this is a good strategy for protecting the philippine bitcoin users being involved to transactions that violates Philippine law.

I'd still be using bitcoins no matter what. Prohibiting the use of bitcoins would just intensify my disgust to the government since they haven't done anything good for the past two decades. Also, restricting myself to fiat and the banker's money would be a hitch since bitcoin is already a nice investment in itself and also a nice form of payment without extensive verification.

It's just a matter of how cautious one can be when crackdown happens to bitcoin users.

That's possible. But i don't think they can contain us or stop users for using this technology. Also bitcoin users are so many. I don't think local jails are enough to imprison the people who use bitcoin. Anyway, government already have solutions to regulate users from abusing this technology. KYC is enough to regulate people. They don't have to do such actions like arresting the users which may cause a lot of trouble and can turn people to be against the government

If it happens then there will be riots around the world. Because all the bitcoin communities in the world do not accept about this rule. There will be many people going to jail, and the prison in the world is full of people who invest bitcoin. But it's just a dream. Bitcoin is the largest community in the world. Lots of users of this coin. I'm sure they will not make such a rule right away. There are only a few provisions if using bitcoin. Bitcoin users will be monitored every transaction by the government

It is very difficult for the part of the government to catch users of bitcoins .
Because it operates using technology and how they can know who holds the bitcoins
Bitcoin is never controlled by the government. So why are the founders looking for it to grab and hold?
One can only say if you want to stop the rotation of bitcoins when it gets out of the country or shut it off all or full out all of the computer

You have to understand some basic game theory to see how if the government uses the ace of spades then he doesn't have any other cards to keep bluffing, and that's all governments do.

Once governments say "bitcoin is banned", that's the end on their part, they can't no longer keep FUDding. Bitcoin's price would take a big crash, but it would survive, and eventually would recover. At this point, the government can no longer create FUD, so the price can freely grow.

And this is why they will not go full-ban on bitcoin, they will just keep FUDding here and there.

If only bitcoin is illegal then try altcoin since they are only focusing on bitcoin. Why the government not funding bitcoin mining instead arresting bitcoin lovers. If this really gonna happen I will switch to ethereum, since ethereum is not as big as bitcoin. I think only some countries that limits freedom could do that thing such as North Korea or other countries ruled by a dictator.

The question was still rised with p2p before, they could never outlaw it ..

At worst they would make a legal framework to restrict the use, and mostly arrest big centralized Hub of criminal activity.

I dont think they can outlaw it entierely or they would even try after the p2p fiasco. .

If they want to stop it, they would use smarter technique than outlawing it.

More discrediting it, or trying to disrupts it in a way or another.

I hope that not all countries would act as bangladesh.People are even imprisoned there if found using bitcoins.I don't think that developed countries would believe that they could stop people from using bitcoins by such actions.Otherwise,Russia and China which were against bitcoins would have banned it much before.If such a situation arises,then i would have to stay away from the revolutionary currency bitcoin,but with half heart.

Don't underestimate the possibilities of blockchain research.

Every transaction is traceable, every balance of every single address and it's history. If you spend or receive Bitcoin only once in your lifetime on a place where your identity is verified (such as to pay for a flight in Japan or buying BTC on an exchange with fiat), all your efforts to stay in the dark are useless.

If any government or law enforcement wants to prove you are engaged in Bitcoin, it's easy for them to track you down. Even if it isn't illegal today, who knows what they will think about it in the future? Maybe after the next wannacry-attack with billions of substantial harm, the rules can change quickly, and you're done.

This, there is no way to ban bitcoin they can do it in paper but there is no way they can do it in practice, that is why the only weapon they have left will be regulation, they  will try to regulate exchanges as much as possible and that is something we are already seeing but with the development of decentralized exchanges things are going to become even harder for governments.

Assuming the government of my country start up with such….wait…have you heard of underground? Good. Everybody will just go underground, lol. Oh…you even added they will have a tech to track my activities. Okay, I will simply change my VPN address and they will hardly find out. Lol.

Haha if you think use VPN address can helps you avoid track them, you will be wrong because not have service can guaranteed they helps you anonymous 100%, just make people want track you have many difficult, don't say can't do that.

And why would you do so if you weren't able to sell them later on? Bitcoin isn't essential for life. You won't gonna die if Bitcoin gets banned. I don't find any fun using them when government of your country doesn't endorse so.
It would be better we find some other viable alternative to be in accordance with government rules than supporting Bitcoin.

If you are being targeted by a strong opponent, like a government, there is nothing you can do to hide, except living in a cave and never using any electronic device for the rest of your life, people underestimate the capabilities of the governments to find particular individuals, you need to be very careful if you expect at some point to become a target.