Bitcoin Forum

Governments can issue regulations as they please. No doubt about it.
The promise of Bitcoin was to leave governments unable to enforce any kind of regulations using technology and decentralization.
The problem with that promise is that it is enormously expensive for consumers to run Bitcoin nodes. Therefore everyone uses third parties, there's not that many of them and there's absolutely no way for them to stay resistent to regulations.

So as I see it, there was a time when governments couldn't enforce their regulations to decentralized currency. Now they can.

What do you think? Is the Bitcoin promise broken?

?

Like you said, the government will and can enforce anything, and they can definitely enforce regulations concerning bitcoin. The "promise(?)"(I didn't know an asset can make promises) of bitcoin isn't that the government wouldn't be able to make regulations, it's that bitcoin would be able to easily bypass those regulations. A digital asset can't magically remove the power of the government to enforce laws.

It depends. They can't enforce it enough where it is completely banned, or so they actually control the prices of the coin (since it's a decentralized coin), so that aspect of bitcoin still remains true to this day.

However, and we are currently seeing this happen with China, countries can basically bottlenet the coin and make it impossible for people to buy and sell the coin (by banning exchanges, etc), and also restricting peoples from use of the coin.

More than that I've see one country regulation geing opposite the other

the government cannot enforce these rules fully, but they can limit or narrow the circulation of bitcoin in that country, for example the government will give heavy sanctions to bitcoin holders, of course people will think twice when they want to have bitcoin in the country.

Right. And right now, most governments are pretty lenient when it comes to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. I think there's no need to be concerned about it. As you've said, and I agree, governments can enforce any regulation if they want to. And a lot of people also feel a little more comfortable and confident if it comes to this because they're already used to government backed banking systems.

But we should ask ourselves how bad is regulation?, some months ago we have the Fintech regulation in México and that bring order about crypto business, that way anyone could have their own crypto-related business, so, for that kind of moves, bitcoin regulation isn't bad at all.

But if the government uses the regulation to start investigating al their crypto users then we have a problem

Not really buddy, i wouldn't say the Bitcoin is broken because bitcoin still works as it is supposed to work. I mean, you can still send money to someone using someone in an "encrypted identity" as it was built. The governments are however doing their best to stop the tech but the fact is that you can't stop this tech. You can't say China's ban on bitcoin and crypto trading has made Bitcoin incapable to work as it was programmed to. Regulations became necessary when bad actors joined the game.
 

These are the things governments can do to prevent you from using bitcoin:
1. Prosecute the bitcoin miners.
2. Raid the exchange offices running in that country
3. Some banks will freeze accounts if they are suspecting you to transact in bitcoin or so.
4. Attempt to extort you of your money or honeypot information from you.
5. Internet censorship

Although all of these are not possible some like 1 and 2 have happened in the world and thus people should be cautious. We have seen exchanges shift their location once or twice to keep away from authorities and run their businesses or just shut down.

However none of these stop your from using bitcoin.

I think the government have ways to regulate cryptocurrency and bitcoin but it is not going to be easy, making a move in the market could easily affect differently the economy of the country.
I think bitcoin cannot be regulated in a country as a currency, to be an implemented currency in one country just like fiat money we need to regulate the currency itself to control the price of the money,
it is different in bitcoin because it depends on its market price in the supply and demand of the users and we cannot implement a currency that is over a thousand market value. It is better just for the bitcoin to be a secondary currency all over the world that we could use as a currency and also as an investment.

i don't know what scale you use when you say "enormously expensive" but it sounds like you have never bothered trying to run a bitcoin node before you make this statement. of course you aren't downloading a tiny app like a music player that takes up 20 MB!! but the cost is by no means "enormous". not to mention that there are a lot of different options to reduce the resources it needs such as limiting upload rate, connection count, storage space,...

actually if someone doesn't want to use a full node they use an SPV client, which could still be decentralized and resilient to any kind of regulations or censorship.

For hardware requirements, it's not "enormously expensive" to set up, and run a full node. For bandwidth, the expenses do add up.

Big blockers will never care until constant 10mb pass through their networks, but I believe they believe it's impossible. Hahaha.

No promise has been declared, nor any assurance of government's non intervention. Sure thing that Bitcoin aimed that separation from the government and traditional financial methods, but saying that it assured it would be maintained that way is utter false. You cannot stop governments from interfering with anything unless you (the people) demolish your own government, in which case it would just be chaotic. They could, and would, monitor all things under their sovereignity because that's their job.

You know what, in terms of cryptocurrency and its systems, what they can just do always is to block and ban, they cannot really interfere the inside structure or systems associated with a particular cryptocurrency. In this case, even though people are using nodes, it will not break the system of cryptocurrency, especially bitcoin. What I mean in simple terms, we all know that government wants to utilize taxes with crypto, and there is no way they can manipulate the codes and encryption that enables a cryptocurrency to run.

That's somewhat true! Bitcoin can't be controlled by the regulatory authorities! But they can certainly provide a framework to use cryptos within the mainstream economy and to mitigate the risk of illegal use of it. I think it is very important to curb the illegal usage of cryptos. The deepweb is one of the examples of illegal crypto usage and it is rising alarmingly. It must be stopped before it gets out of the hand!

So even if the bitcoin promise is broken, it's better to have some sort of legal framework around cryptos. It will fuel adoption as well as make things smoother for crypto users for longer term!

Sure, the governments can enforce some regulations about the use of bitcoin in the real world but what if we continue to use in the digital world like it has always been? There will always people who are willing to purchase bitcoin and others who might want to sell in this industry. I don't know about all of you guys but i think we made the governments believe this industry have seen great heights even without their participation.

If many governments implement regulations like China, then bitcoin will be difficult to develop in that country. Because the ban carried out by China is so serious that it monitors all its citizens and prohibits the use of coins. But current government regulations vary according to their respective policies. There are those who support and there are those who close themselves from bitcoin.

it could be because some factors and one of them is because you are opening yourself to public and engage with govt too much.


centralized exchanges suck, that's all. Ideal exchanges for decentralized world should have no office and not centralized.


we don't need to use centralized bank anymore. You can cash your assets without bank.


any information should be kept for yourself, no one should give their information to public.


there are so many way out there to solve this issue.


Well, basically govt is free to do anything just like we always want to freely use bitcoin, should not be a problem here and we have solution for every problem. Sometimes, people are just too far away from decentralization and make everything looks complicated.

What promise? is there any promise stated in the whitepaper? Even with regulations, the governments can't stop nor touch bitcoin. It's their people they are regulating about the use of cryptocurrency or bitcoin. As a matter of fact, it's not always bad when we're talking about the regulation of bitcoin. It would still depend on how they are going to regulate the use of bitcoin. As long as we're living under a government, they can always interfere whenever they want.

The majority of governments of the world are against Bitcoin in its original form which is decentralized, distributed and free from manipulation. You can still send and receive Bitcoins without any intermediary like majority of us do.
The only way the government willing to accept crypto is through regulations. In my view regulations destroy the main purpose which satoshi proposed. You have both ways to use, the choice is yours.

And you expect to operate a mining farm without involving any sort of services like electricity and maintenance?

There is nothing called ideal in this world. Added on top is the number of DEXes being shut down with authorities tracking them. They are good but not even close to perfect.

How do you propose the same?

Easy for anybody to say that. You never know when a certain official who might be working in your operation and siphoning off information to authorities. That was how most whistleblowers have worked.

Most of them have but again you wont be able to rely for too long on one method of circumvention. It ends up being a cat and mouse chase.

Bitcoin now is really just becoming known to everyone. We are increasing and so are the people who wants to ruin it. Those are people who just earned it lately. Crab mentality as they say. Why are we just be happy and be as one to have a progressive nation. Government regulations if that would be enforce then I hope it is fair and just. Its not just about the money, its about how we can be improve and evolve in this fast-changing world.

I was about to say that and looked for a similar comment.
I guess OP wanted to say mine Bitcoin not run a node, because running a node is pretty cheap. For most people a 1TB drive is very affordable and that + any computer, even an outdated one is enough to run a node. You can even buy an old laptop for $100 and run a node on it.

What governments can make expensive is mining as increasing the cost of power can make it impossible to mine in a given country. That does make BItcoin dependant on the government. You can't effectively ban it but you can ban mining and you can ban fiat trading.

Government will regulation using bitcoin as legal currency payment transaction if know by their many people, when bitcoin only know by several people in their country can using for fault mistake like crime cases, but when many people have know whit bitcoin and price of bitcoin they will allow using bitcoin as legal currency payment and increase their economic country become better.

How did you talk to bitcoin?
How come he can make a promise?

There is no promise there. It is how you will use it.
Other governments doesnt like the idea of people having privacy but we are not a one government in this world. Some did accept it and others might also.

Are you speaking in behalf of your country?

The government unfortunately does not understand that crypto is the future, and resistance to this future will only slow progress.

Centralization will break the intentions of this system. But likewise the only way government will accept or embrace it completely is by means of controlling it inside their jurisdictions. The government will make certain rulings in order to imposed laws that will grant them much higher authority to control this industry inside their premises.

What I meant was that for ordinary people wanting to use Bitcoin as a payment instrument, the $100 laptop seems overly expensive. You wouldn't pay $100 just to have your payment card working. Or maybe you would - depends on the part of the world you live in.
(I myself run several nodes, two of them are full nodes, one of them serves as a backend for LN node. But that's not how majority of people would use Bitcoin, so..)


That's another possible attack vector from governments. I would say they have a lot of options now.


You all are right, Bitcoin didn't literally promise anything. But we all had the same expectations, hadn't we?

I will partially agree to your point because it's true that the government can regulate a cryptocurrency or the taxes for miners and other stuffs like that, but they cant regulate Blockchain in general, because the decentralisation will be off if they do that. There are privacy coins in which we can use to bypass them.

The nature of BTC still is decentralize, it hasn't changed but then we are now regulated because of the illegal use of cryptocurrencies. You can't expect the government no to intervene because if its not going to be controlled, more will probably scammed. We saw these happened when in 2017 and were just jumping out after the bullrun.

P2P still offers decentralization and some coins are pretty much unregulated still. If you are onto that, you should move on into those privacy coins.

I agree, but the problem with government regulation in general is that they don't have to answer to anyone. Some amount of regulation is generally good but who draws the line? The people who benefit from it. Banks. All kinds of institutions connected to governments. And these institutions don't want regulations to be good for people, they want regulations to be good for themselves. But this is no secret, everyone knows how these things work. That's why someone tried to create technology layer to prevent it. But technology alone can't do this. I guess our only option is to educate people. Because so far people don't care what the government is doing as long as they have enough to bring the food on the table.

Privacy coins do not offer much of an advantage. It's very difficult to find someone that's accepting them. I really expected privacy coins to take over like a year ago, but I couldn't be more wrong.

I underestimated how important brand awareness and acceptance is, and there is only one coin popping up as the absolute nr 1, and that's Bitcoin despite the fact that it doesn't offer any actual privacy features.

Governments probably see that as a good development because the transparent nature of Bitcoin makes it easier to trace criminals, especially when they feel they can't be traded and start to act recklessly.

Restriction and prohibition is the main weapon of any government. Bitcoin can not circumvent that, in everything else the coin is still unregulated because it is a decentralized asset

The real question is why any government needs a weapon against its own citizens.

where did you mention it was a promise .. ?? I think it's just a conclusion that you made yourself ... ???

I think you have to open your eyes and think broadly about of your question because the answer that you were looking is in front of your eyes. A little common sense and it will sink everything into your brain.

The government can do/make any regulations regarding of the needs and security of their people. And if Bitcoin will become a threat to them due to its decentralized attribute they may follow the steps of other countries for banning Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

No, they won't fight Bitcoin and cryptocurrency when it becomes a threat. They will fight it when it becomes personally beneficial for them to do so (regardless of it being a threat or not). That's the problem.

Exactly. In fact, most governments are concerned about the misuse of cryptocurrency for illegal activities, thereby limiting their mobility. However, if the government is in line with the cryptocurrency scheme without interfering too deeply in the case you explained, then that is no problem.

bitcoin never really promised that. it depends on the internet (at least it does today) and the electricity infrastructure, among other things. those are totally subject to government regulation.


the claim that bitcoin nodes are extremely expensive to run is not self-evident. the storage costs are actually quite cheap, and significant optimizations have been made over the years to mitigate for low bandwidth conditions.

i think the reason so many people use 3rd parties is out of convenience.

Especially if people really want proper use of cryptocurrency, abiding government regulation is a good thing to consider. It doesn't mean that since bitcoin or other crypto is providing us freedom in our financial assets, we will not abide the government. Let us help them do their part in maintaining good governance. Blocking illegal sites that will promote misuse of cryptocurrency should be supported thinking that it is for us not for them in the first place.

I agree. There are some regulations that are good, amongst others.

People are so many concerns about how their money grow from the risk inside crypto, thus they looked somebody could give them assurance and that is how important to see that the government will protect with them. But somehow some of us here are in doubt about what will happen next if the government will take control of crypto.

First of all, they are afraid that taxes may impose( as we are celebrating it for free till now) and next, the control about market prices and afraid of not seeing bullish again. Enforcing government regulations might have a positive and negative impact, may some of us will agree to have it but some also declines. It runs into a process( might be long), if the government will finally after the benefits they might get in the crypto market, then they will work on it for sure.

Actually the government can't enforce anything and do what it wants. Laws must be carefully voted into legislation. Bad laws never work. Forcing people into something will never ever work because people don't obey laws they cannot respect. As you say you can easily bypass restriction since bitcoin is free and nothing can ever hold it back even the government. It is impossible to stop bitcoin and the governments have better things to do. Not enough people are using bitcoin for it to be a problem for them.

Let me write my own opinion on this. I think states will not use Bitcoin. No state can willingly enter the Blockchain economy. This is not an easy event, maybe it would force this transition. Bitcoin is a great puzzler.

The government that we have are in favor in bitcoins and that's why they regulate it but they comply in anti money laundering law. As a citizen, we are able to use bitcoin but there is restrictions. They created laws and regulations to protect their citizens to scammers. Our government will not ban bitcoins because they are now also using it due to its function and advantages in our economy.

Maybe you have a wrong perception, bitcoin never makes promises. Bitcoin is claimed to be able to disrupt the banking system at this time, therefore a government regulation is made to limit the use of bitcoin only as an asset not a currency. The proof is that bitcoin so far has disrupted the banking ecosystem, it can be seen from the many appeals from the government to stop using bitcoin because they have the potential to have a high risk.

What bitcoin promise? Bitcoin is a way for people who want to feel free to manage their money, even if the government cannot control it. But we cannot deny that bitcoin growth in a country in which we need regulations from the government so people can use bitcoin without any problem.

Bitcoin will grow fast with approval from the government, so we cannot force the government to approve shortly. I think the government will create regulations about decentralized currency, and the government will authorize cryptocurrency in the long term.

I cannot find anywhere that Bitcoin promise anything.  Yes it is created for p2p currency that can be send anywhere without 3rd party intrusion which is still in effect.  Regulation of government does not necessary means that it can't be send the way it used to be. 

I doubt it will be easy to keep government away from bitcoin if it gains more traction. Whenever money is involved people trust government. That's the inbuilt mechanism of humans. As you must have noticed that the crime rate when it comes to crypto has risen significantly. In such a case if you want more people to come and buy crypto, you need to gain their trust which is in a way connected to government only as people trust government in money matter. So, a few rules and regulations without jeopardizing the basic idea of bitcoin won't harm anyone.

As many said, the main advantage of Bitcoin is to bypass those regulations. In a country like India where the RBI has banned banks from transacting with exchanges, people are still trading using P2P exchanges. I agree that these regulations affect the community but with crypto there is always a new way.

Bitcoin, (Satoshi) already did it's (his) part making it decentralized. No government and third parties. Bitcoin already achieved that. It's just the government are the one trying to involve themselves with Bitcoin because they saw that it's succeeding with its goal being decentralized and having no regulations. They're just trying to stop it by using the law which the only advantage they have. But the so-called promise, was already fulfilled in the very first place.

We are now on the edge of the cliff where we are to decide on two choices, whether to accept the technology or to stay firm with the current that we have right now. And it is not impossible for government and to state to utilize bitcoin and cryptocurrency. In fact, they way they are allowing blockchain projects to run on their country is already one of the signs that they will accept it, we don't know if the people working inside the government do really utilizes bitcoin? holistically, they might show some negativity, but in the end, we'll all benefit on bitcoin.

What regulations are you talking about? Nothing has been inforced here. How can it be? How can you claim governments can make whatever regulations they want. Where the hell do you get this info? Im sorry but that's crap. How will the government know how many assets you have. Thy cant control crypto. They can try though.

If we are to think about the mining facilities before, the nodes that people are purchasing isn't that too high to consider. It do really depends on how much the bitcoin price is and how easy it is to mine bitcoin. But today, the price is comparably higher than ever. With this, it is still reasonable for those that are already established their nodes because it is in fact, bought in times that the bitcoin price is low and processing transaction is quite easy. So, the only challenge is when you are new to start building nodes if you decided to contribute that much to bitcoin.

The government will not make a regulation without a study, so when we support bitcoin to be legalized, we must give our study which will later be restated by the government of a country. the process is complicated because all regulations are not made at will because they can affect a country

The government seen the big success of this crypto currency and how people engaged to invest inside, they need to have the advantages and not to be left behind. Implementing rules in order to have the power to control this market inside their jurisdictions is the main goal of any government ho are now reviewing this system and working to adopt if they've seen the big benefits.

Well, the government can always regulate internet and electricity. It can switch off internet and also cut electricity thereby controlling Bitcoin in a sense. But it's just surface controlling, it can't control the internal system, and can't manipulate, create fake coins or stop or reverse a transaction.

Of course, they wouldn't take any action without examining/studying it. But I don't think that even if we support bitcoin to be legalized and give our study, the government won't consider it since they will take their own activity of studying it so it is impossible to just consider the words from the public.

I don't think that it would even be a thing.

Turn off the internet? Do you even have an idea of how many datas are needed that goes in and out in a country? Do you even have an idea how electricity are badly needed in a country? They can regulate those especially the internet. What they can stop is those ISPs and companies that give generate those two, get it?

The circulation of money in the state has always been part of its policy, and only it established and establishes the rules for their circulation on its territory. Cryptocurrency cannot be an exception. States and their governments cannot change the technology of functioning of cryptocurrency, however, it would be simply silly to think that they would not notice the circulation of “no man's” means of payment on their territory that are profitable by one and are a means of crime for others, as a result of which many citizens turn to state law enforcement agencies for protection.

That does not sound like a bad approach. They can study and see how much of the economy is in crypto and with that data they can decide on how to deal with crypto for future in a way that is fruitful for both the crypto users and the exchanges. But that also means that government has to keep an eye on transactions going through and enforce KYC on these exchanges.

However if you trust your country's government and willing to get KYC then you should be fine with trading unless you are doing something shady with your money.

We are still a long way from purely decentralized systems. Just one payment mode being so does not make the others change.

If running nodes is expensive, I guess the best way to encourage more people to run their own nodes is through incentives. Incentive doesn't necessarily has to be monetary... Maybe valuable Points can awarded regularly.
If running of nodes is very important, people could be rewarded for having them online 24/7

Turning off internet is basically isolating their own country from the flow of information and if there's a country do that it's NK and their higher ups are still connected to the internet. even if they intend to enforce law, shutting off internet is simply stupidity and none of country with the right logic would do that.

no offense, but I've always looked at two advantages of using bitcoin, and those two advantages in my opinion are:

1 -) Cheap transaction fee

2 -) have private key control

Now the fight against governments if it's really objective (I don't know about that), then it's a futile fight because governments can arrest anyone who uses bitcoin if they want to.


When you open a bank account, who controls your money? The bank controls your money, which means you have to ask permission from the bank in case you want to withdraw a lot of money or the government can freeze your bank account if  they want.

When you have bitcoins in your wallet you have control over your money as long as you have private key.

So I think bitcoin is doing its job very well

Regulations are enforced by government,  despite the decentralization proposal of bitcoin,  that doesn't make it  above government regulations.
Bitcoin promise is not fully broken except in cases where government are strictly against it striving.
No matter how we claim to be decentralized system,  we uses a high percentage of centralized exchanges.  So how centralized is bitcoin?

The only thing they can put regulations on are third-parties you are mentioning on. There will come a time where Bitcoin will become so expensive that the price of fee would be viable. In that time, the promise of Bitcoin would true. But this is pipe dream for now. We really need regulation to avoid so much frauds and money laundering happening left or right. Without that, a lot of people would be a victim. 

Third party or even government themselves could only regulate centralizd services like exchange and so on. They couldn't do things more than that because they simply have no authority over it and to take control of these whole decentralized market is kinda hard even though having control over some famed exchanges is already giving significant effect to the whole market. If there's any 3rd party out there could enforce regulation to a decentralized currency like crypto. I'm sure they have tremendous resources to back them up.

In any case, no one will be able to control the owner of the bitcoin if the owner wants to hide his ownership of the cryptocurrency.  But if this Bitcoin is traded on the exchange or some things are bought using Bitcoin, then an anonymous person will become famous in any case.  In this way, the government will control the use of cryptocurrency and collect taxes, because no user will store Bitcoin just to save it.

Exactly, we have the same thoughts. Government cannot fully control the utilization of Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies but they can narrow it down by just putting a prohibition upon any transaction related with Crypto or probably they have exterminate the crypto trading platforms.

I also believe with this, that the government will not be able to do a full ban, they can only narrow the circulation of bitcoin in the country. but fortunately in my country there is no article about imprisonment if you use bitcoin, but if the case is fraud then there will be penalties

You need the help of third parties like exchanges to purchase and sell BTCitcoin and if the government will come up with regulations then we might not see these frauds happening in the market.

I did not understand the logic behind it, how will the promise of BTCitcoin be true when the price rises, with the present situation if the price rises then the transaction fee also rises.

There is no doubt we need strict regulations to collect funds in the name of experimental projects and all the projects that are collecting money should be monitored about the progress they are doing and that will force the scammers out of this market.

Any government on different countries has the power to ban or stop the regulation of bitcoin. But bitcoin has the power to bypass those rules that is why some other countries can't completely stop the bitcoin in terms of doing transaction. What government can do is that put some fine when someone uses bitcoin in their country. But for sure, bitcoin will bypass it again since it is hard to trace.

Replying to OP - I don't think any promises has been made. It just originally aims to provide a platform to send funds without limitations and an alternative mode of transfer of funds.

You must sacrifice one for another. You want more security in times of theft? Then subject yourself to regulation to implement KYC on all exchanges, to make it easier to crack down on who stole ones Bitcoins and therefore, can't convert it to fiat.

You want anonymity in the platform? Then forget regulation, but be wary of your every action. Once sent, it can't be retrieved. A feature exploited by thieves.