Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has struggled to find support in the U.S. government, with president Donald Trump, along with Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, leading the criticism.
Now, it's been revealed the U.S. Department of Defense has wargamed scenarios involving a Generation Z rebellion that uses bitcoin to undermine and evade "the establishment."

Read more here https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/06/10/pentagon-documents-reveal-the-us-has-planned-for-a-bitcoin-rebellion/

My question is: does Bitcoin need to find support in the U.S. gov? I don't think so

I will guess they're not planning for the more obvious and disruptive option that's staring them in the face - those meddling kids buying or earning Bitcoin legitimately and not coming back. That's vastly more sustainable and vastly more likely.

An army of people stealing untold amounts of dollars and buying BTC with it seems a little outlandish to me. You don't magic up another army of BTC sellers willing to take red hot money out of nowhere.

@Karartma1. The American government knows that bitcoin has an important part to play in society despite many of their criticisms. They are clearly afraid that its part is on helping the disintegration of civilization. It is clearly more than how we use it today.

There was also an article on Coindesk written that bitcoin will only having value in a dystopian society. The present situation in the United States might be the nearest to dystopia occuring in its whole history.

It takes a bit more than the actual situation to reach a so-called dystopian society but it seems to me we are heading there. All sort of conspiracy dreams from 30/40 years ago are now becoming a reality for all of us.
Black Mirror is unfolding before our eyes I guess.
I sincerely hope to see btc as a way out from all this but at the end of the day we all live under the same sky, unless you take Elon's space shuttle.........

What is amazing is that the highest of authorities expect these things as threats:
1. A tech-savvy generation burdened by debt and disillusioned by the shackles of monetary system (college debt, mortgages etc)
2. Availability of a non-freezable "money" which a potential resistance can use to fund themselves.

Does this sound like pre-empting revolution against a corrupt state to anyone? The "wargame" is based on the premise that this tech-savvy generation has been affected by events like 9/11 and the recession in their childhoods. They grow up to find themselves in debt and want to build a better world. Whose side exactly is the pentagon on?

How is it acceptable that they can treat this as a potential method of resisting the status quo of the monetary system? How isn't there more outrage about world's biggest millitary resisting social change supposedly brought about by people?

Bitcoin has the potential to destroy the ability of authoritarians and collectivists - whether socialist, fascist, communist, totalitarian, any of that group - to enforce their will upon people who want to be free.  Look at how it helped some people in Cyprus when the establishment gave depositors a haircut.  Look how it can help people in Hong Kong or Taiwan protect their wealth from the Chinese.  Look at how it can help people in the EU, US etc protect their earnings from huge, controlling governments.

Bitcoin has the potential to help reinvigorate civilization, not destroy it, but destroying the myth that one person has the right to use force to make another provide for them.

@cr1776. Destroy or disintegrate civilzation or society as we know it hehehe. The next clear step forward is private transactions or anonymous, private, scalable cryptocoins.

the source of the article is The intercept, the same channel that moved its sticks to defend the PT party in Brazil so that this party, which already has many cases of corruption, was more likely to attack the current president of Brazil. And now theiy are talking about bitcoin and pentagon, I don't know how far that can be true, but I keep thinking that it doesn't matter much since there is a big adoption of bitcoin by people who really want to help the world have more freedom of choice and privacy

Don't get me wrong here: I believe we need way more than bitcoin to reinvigorate our fu**** civilization. We need more awareness in the way we live, the way we treat each other, the way we utterly don't respect nature. I think I could go on forever, you get the message

How about more transparency for government moving money they got from us?

What has changed since the last Presidential election? During the last Presidential election Donald Trump surrounded himself with Bitcoin supporters and now suddenly his government has gone the opposite direction.  ::)  Was this just election promises or was this sparked by some event that happened?

This might give us a clue... " Trump registered as a Republican in Manhattan in 1987 and since that time has changed his party affiliation five times. " - Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_Trump

I think his ""Americanism, not globalism" credo also explains a lot in this shift against Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is a global currency and it is a direct competition for the US Dollar.  ::)

Their answer is: "That is impossible"!  lol. 

How would they hide their corruption then?  How would they hide all the graft?  How would they pay off others to hide what they are doing and retain power?  :-)

The best thing of 'impossible' is, Bitcoiners can enforce such imo

The title given by Forbes was very misleading as it doesn't talk about any kind of plans on how they will have a "rebellion" against Bitcoin since the article is mainly talking about how the Zbellion and how they can stop it since Bitcoin transactions cannot be controlled by the government. In this part as well they have no mentions on any kind of legal action against Bitcoin transactions, I'm just surprised that Forbes created a clickbait title which is rarely seen.

@Harlot. You misunderstood. It is not about a rebellion against bitcoin. It is a rebellion where bitcoin is used as the main source of funding by the dissenters.

Also, there is no type of legal action the American government can do on how to stop person to person bitcoin transactions. It will be a dangerous precedent for free speech.

The main source of funding is stolen dollars. They haven't explained how you turn a large amount of those into Bitcoin. You're going to have your work cut out.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickchong/2020/06/18/boltons-book-president-trump-wanted-to-go-after-bitcoin-as-early-as-2018/#1c4acede4e0c

According to John Bolton's yet to be published book our Donald wanted to 'go after' Bitcoin in 2018. Not sure what that actually means.

@gentlemand. However, every politician and government would go after bitcoin. This is not new to us. I reckon John Bolton, similar to the other people that support the democrats or the skeptical me would think, paid by the democrats, only wants to destroy Trump's reelection bid.

to me, that's a nod to the possibility that there will be a robust and liquid grey/black OTC market uncontrolled by regulators. think of the chinese OTC market for bitcoin and tether---but magnitudes bigger and applied on a global level.

it's not completely impossible, especially by 2025. a lot can change in 5 years.

@figmentofmyass. Agreed! However, I reckon that the whole gray market might never be bigger than the legal market. It might become only big enough to be good alternative.

I have been encouraging smooth and others in the Aeon community to apply for listings on exchanges that do not ask for KYC hehehe.

Freedom of speech? How can that be violated if we are talking about Bitcoin transactions here? When someone is sending or receiving Bitcoin there is no ideas or opinion involved when they are merely transacting in Bitcoin. Not unless you think about their Bitcoin transactions or them showing evidence that they are indeed funding a terrorist organization as part of freedom of speech then you are wrong about it, it simply makes them part of that terrorist group who is planning an attack against their own government. They will have a lot of loopholes to see when it comes on legal actions so I won't be surprised if they will come up with something.

This idea has been discussed in the past.

There's a few people here who've opined on it - https://cointelegraph.com/news/is-bitcoin-protected-as-speech-under-the-1st-amendment-experts-answer

The consensus appears to be largely no but it hasn't been put to the test. Ideally it never will be.

Of course you can uncover the opposite thoughts just as easily - https://law.fiu.edu/2019/02/26/bitcoin-will-find-no-first-amendment-refuge/

@Harlot. Also, bitcoin can also be considered a software message passing system similar to whatsapp, facebook messenger and also the bank's SWIFT is a message passing system.

The government must be careful on how they regulate bitcoin because it might create dangerous precedents.

@gentlemand. https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4591&context=umlr

Have they planned for a cash rebellion as well? It's far more anonymous than bitcoin and usually when shady people are doing deals or the US is trying to over throw governments they'll use cash themselves to pay people to do their dirty work. Years ago I even tried to buy some drugs from El Chapo in bitcoin but he said that they only accept cash  ;D ;D ;D. Imagine if everyone just started using cash for purchases. There'd be a lot more taxes being evaded because there's often no record of those transactions. There's a reason a lot of self-employed people and businesses prefer cash because it's easier to cook the books.

This is very interesting indeed, thanks a lot for sharing! Imagine what it would be like to be btc to be ruled that way. Will look into it.

That plan came to life through Covid19. Cash is dirty and can transfer germs between people so it's a great moment for some anti-cash propaganda.

The real reason to remove cash is of course anonymity. Nobody is buying drugs or illegal weapons with bank transfers. It's all done with cash and without it governments will have total control over your expenses.

The only problem is most countries have the use of cash protected by their constitution but Putin showed the world how easy it is to rewrite it.