Bitcoin Forum

If net neutrality is repealed by the FCC in mid-December, how will this affect bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole? How likely will ISPs throttle or outright block your access to mining pools and major exchanges, and how much would the price of bitcoin will fall due to these setbacks?

Edit: moved from btc discussion to avoid being buried under the mega-spam threads. Mods pls PM me if this is the wrong section.

It's hard to say, but I assume it wont.
ISPs will try to throttle services like Facebook & YouTube in order for them to pay for priority access. Blocking/throttling mining pools & exchanges which have very low traffic compared to social networks won't have much benefit for them.
I really hope that competition solves any kind of censorship. It's sad to see the US at such state. This doesn't seem like a very first-world condition does it?

just another sign of how third world america really is compared to other advanced countries.

they have much, much bigger fish to fry than anything bitcoin related. video will be where the battles take place.

You're wrong unfortunately, the ISP simply block or slow down the websites in the entire internet world except theirs and any company within their relationship.
Basically if this net neutrality is destroyed, we'll all be doomed, maybe we can't access P2P network like torrent or else, same goes for bitcoin blockchain, well, atleast in america.

I think thats a really terrible thing to happen.
Crypto Market / Mining will not be affected now i guess, but it may will as CryptoCurrencys will become more serious to the fiat market.

Other countrys than the USA might lose net neutrality too as they see how well it works.
Social media addicts would pay much for a fast access..there is a lot potential for money milking.

Germany might be the next one doing it

what's the deal gonna be with vpn users? essentially you're accessing the vpn provider's connection down a hole, but you're also heading there via a non neutral place.

I think these will only affect the people whose days are not complete being in a social media, ISPs will be taking this as an advantage to gain a lot of profit out of these people who will pay just to surf loads of sites online.

Just read the discussion going on in reddit though, VPN comes after ISP, if the net neutrality gone, we can't access to the website that's outside coverage of the internet plan/bundle.
So, there's big chance that we can't connect to the VPN either.

Fake Net Neutrality.

That would be totally bullshit considering that it always been like that since the inception of the internet. For sure ISPs would demand for a premium to those who are getting loads of money on their operations on the internet i.e. miners. Just a quick scan of your history and these fucks would milk you out of your resources just to get what you needed.


It could be possible but if they do that first, too many people will complain ending in reversing their decision/stance on social media sites.

i guess this is primarily a problem in shitholes like america where huge areas of the country only have one isp.

if you live somewhere civilized you still have an element of competition. if net neutrality goes in places with competition i can imagine there'll be isps guaranteeing neutrality. at some point it's gonna bite the providers who start to screw with everyone's access.

What do we know? We know that the internet is essential for the Bitcoin network.  We know that nodes are also essential.  Bitcoin nodes use a considerable amount of bandwidth. These new neutrality rules effect the United States.  The United States has the highest percentage of nodes(>25%).  Nodes do not receive any reward for operating.

Will new net neutrally laws further increase the price of running a full nodes?  Could a potential increase in internet costs deter Americans from running nodes?

With those laws in place probably not for long. :D Internet based businesses are going to have a hard time switching from one provider to the other.


I don't think so. In most places you have more than 1 ISP to choose from, so the one that would block a certain site could lose clients to the other one. Nodes are basically free to run unless you're buying out a connection just for that. Your ISP could decide to slow down your node connection, but I doubt they'd try to block it, as it could cost them clients. If I were using a site and my ISP limited my connection I'd write a review of their services and tell others to choose a different one if they're planning to access this or that site and since we have a free market I'm sure someone would start advertising as the one that doesn't limit this or that, to persuade us all to move their camp.

but what about the areas of america served only by one isp? there are a whole lot of them.

i think that's mainly why luke jr is always going on about smaller blocks. he's trapped in some florida backwater on pseudo dialup with no alternative.

I don't know whether this can affect bitcoin as a whole or just a specific part of the world such as america. ISP's may block the exchanges but i think this is where proxy comes in; also, what i think is that the ISP's may just block the torrents and any illegal sites but not the exchanges where a lot of bitcoin transaction happens, it is not just us that may lose something with this kind of move but i think there are influential people who is going to lose more than what we have so my bet is that this will not affect much the bitcoin community.