Bitcoin Forum

What Do You Think?

You are asking 2 completely different questions.

Your thread "Subject" asks:
"Will The Government Ever Find a way to Regulate Bitcoin?"

Your poll asks:
"Do you think the United States Government will ever have total power over bitcoin?"

Regulating is not the same thing as "total power over".

The results of your poll will be meaningless since you won't be able to tell who is answering the first question and who is answering the second one.

Of course they will. It'll be difficult but they are going to regulate it one way or another.

Governments aren’t just gonna sit back and let us use and launder this money for free. They're going to want their cut. Regulation is inevitable in some form.

Governments can regular the exchanges (Bitcoin <-> fiat), but I don't think they can regulate bitcoin itself...

Right, not anymore than they can regulate cash.

They can watch the entry and exit points like a hawk. (Banks, etc)  but two guys exchanging cash for something in an alleyway will be hard to crack down on.

That isn't to say if one of the guys tries too many alleyway transactions and becomes perceived as a menace (like say a drug dealer) they'll certainly TRY.

Never underestimate the security ramifications of a rubber hose.

I think they will do.

In next 15 years.

It will never be 100% regulated just a tiny bit controlled.

They will most definitely regulate trading and Bitcoin  will be given a legal status so they can tax it.

Surely cash isn't 100% regulated either?

They'll most probably just tax it when you spend it or exchange it for fiat.

They will , so btc price will be fixed .

yeah agree with you , the heading of the thread and the question asked itself are contradicting each other..!

fixing btc price for a particular time-period is fine like they do with petroleum in my country but then again they Raise it every second month.. I won't complain about BTC rate soaring the way i complain about petroleum :) 

To answer both questions, you will find Bitcoin will work a lot like Bittorrent so as is the case with Bittorrent, the people who keep trying to shut everything down will cheer and declare victory when they've shut down one website or arrested a couple of people ( As they have with Silkroad ) and then several more websites will pop up after and people will simply migrate the activity or operate from countries that are more friendly.

I'm really doubtful the nightmare scenario people sometimes fear will ever happen, for one thing, the people in charge who are against Bitcoin and Bittorrent have always been incredibly stupid.

Its already regulated if you exchange Bitcoins to fiat.

Bitcoins to Bitcoins is harder to regulate, but given how many stupid laws are here, I wouldnt be surprised

But nowadayd you dont realy have to turn btc into cash. You can buy things for btc :)

One of possible ways to regulate bitcoin's price in a bad way is simply close down major exchanges. Think if they manage to close gox, bitstamp, btc-e, coinbase and localbitcoins.
This will affect price seriously. Just my IMHO.

They'll never be able to close them all, so it'll be futile anyway.

Perhaps they might be able to regulate exchanges that convert bitcoin to fiat or which deal with financial instruments (options, futures, etc.), but it is hard to see them regulating bitcoin itself.

That's how they'll do it.

As long as you keep things p2p, it will be very hard for governments to regulate....maybe except for Florida  :)

This is just beyond my imagination how they could control money flow if it does not go thru any exchange.

yes, if they can control exchanges.

Did they find a way to control internet downloads?

I can't stop making the resemblance between bitcoin and "illegal" downloads.


First we had simple direct software like napster.
Napster was taken down and everybody thought it was the end.(napster=MTGox?)
Then clones came with extra securities.
New hardware was invented, the market will always supply what is requested.
Even when it's "illegal"

Eventually what we have evolved to now is Bitorrent.

Bitcoin will experience a simular transformation like napster did to bittorrent.
It's gonna take a while though, and a lot of bad news is going to surround bitcoin getting there.
people are gonna be arrested
people are gonna be sued
people are gonna kill each other
people are gonna panic
people are gonna hate bitcoin
people are gonna think bitcoin is for terrorists
media is gonna spam bad reports

But eventually, it will make bitcoin stronger.
Cause these events are small insignificant splashed on an ocean of technological revolution.

When the americans released the internet on the world they had no idea what they did.
Any anarchist should applaud to them.

I think what will happen is that governments will start whitelisting bitcoin addresses and not tolerating any transactions over unlisted addresses. So they will control anyting going through the whitlisted addresses and will make any contact to unlisted addresses illegal.

The foundation of bitcoin is still unstable, look at the recent events.

It still needs a lot more years, as major retailers adopt such as tigerdirect.