Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone I am writing a small article on how Bitcoin can be stopped. Mainly to serve my little community who keep asking me questions.
My main ideas for the moments are below, any input whatsoever, constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Wall Street hand to manipulate markets
JPMorgan talking bad now entering
Coinbase ipo
Etfs
Institutional long and short
Bitmex guy under investigation


Bcash and other forks as a political control of the comunity
Political attacks
Auditing the chain through forks
divide and conquer


Government bans
Push market underground
On off ramps
KYC to persecute
Executive Order 6102

Hacks
51% attacks
quantum computing
Mt Gox
Cryptsy

What do you mean STOP? That totally no nodes anywhere operating? Or just a specific thing that wouldn't let people use their BTC?

Almost everything in your list has been accused to BTC and has been expressed. Despite that, look at BTC now. It's more vital than ever, and I don't think it's stopping anytime soon. Especially not in our lifetime.

Maybe I'm wrong or too optimistic about Bitcoin, but I believe the only thing that can physically stop Bitcoin is    a blackout electricity. If suddenly electricity goes away foever, we won't be able to mine/use Bitcoin.

The end goal of the article would be to show that there is now way to stop it. The nodes will be validating the rules, the miners mining and a block containing transactions will continue to be mined every 10 minutes.

So I am taking the ideas that people new to the system can have when it comes to their notions of stopping bitcoin. stuff like "what is government ban it", "what if they hack it"...

Bitcoin is not only a “currency”, or some consider a “commodity”, it’s a censorship resistant, multi-generational protocol too. The market can be stopped, but Bitcoin goes somewhere it can find efficiency and flourish.


Overestimated. Ignore.


Isn’t the government trying/have tried/or failed?


There’s no incentive to attack Bitcoin through 51% mining power. They will be more profitable by mining honestly.

Bitcoin hacks would be the tiniest of the world’s problems with Quantum Computing.

Thanks, that is helpful!


I think this is an important part, no matter what we think about "The enemy chain" it did polarize the community and managed to gather a lot of hash power. And most important of all, it audited the blockchain. everyone moved their coins, Exchanges had to prove they held funds and Big stash such as Satoshi and early miners didn't move.

Depends on what you mean by "stop". Do you want Bitcoin to stop existing, i.e. no new blocks mined, or preventing 99.99% of population from using it would also count as successfully stopping Bitcoin?

In the first case, this can be achieved with 51% attack that mines empty blocks - no transactions will be possible. But it requires continuously consuming enormous amounts of electricity, and having the needed hardware. No government can afford this.

Banning Bitcoin by most governments in the world, especially those with big influence like US, China, EU would push Bitcoin underground and make it just a tool for darknet markets.

I know one effective way to STOP bitcoin and that is through EMP or Solar flares or if we are unfortunate, a nuclear war too.

You've confused the ways Bitcoin can be stopped with its disadvantages. Everything you wrote about Wall street's manipulation, forks and government's bans already exists. But, Bitcoin is still here. How can this be possible?

Since constructive criticism is welcomed, let me respond you with counter-arguments. Here's why Bitcoin can't be stopped:

Decentralized.
Anyone is allowed to run their own node, with no permissions. The network works peer-to-peerly and thus, there's no border to "stop" it. There's nothing to be "stopped", only nodes communicating with each other through the TCP/IP protocol.

Censorship-resistant.
Since it's decentralized, there is no authority to freeze a transaction, which makes bitcoin censorship resistant to anyone who could govern the way money circulates. This frees people.

Anonymous.
Bitcoin is anonymous. Whether you want to call it pseudo-anonymous or not, it's anonymous if it's used properly. It doesn't require any IDs which makes it suitable for the unbanked.

Same rights.
It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what's your religion, your skin color or your country you're living. As long as you're internet connected you have the same rights as any other bitcoin user around the world. This globalizes a medium of exchange, which makes it very useful.

I'll be happy to get a response and continue this discussion argumentatively.

This brings in a new point. Can ISPs block or delay a node or miner traffic? Isn't the bitcoin related internet traffic hanging on the stratum protocol?
perhaps one can be tempted to say that if it does happen then we fork into using a new protocol. Then it will be a cat and mouse game.
Routing it over TOR would make the whole ecosystem quite slow, but is it still fast enough to keep the 10min block going?
Do I have it all wrong and the Bitcoin traffic is indistinguishable / piggybacking on the normal internet traffic?


Yes but government banning on/off ramps and illegalising the trade can and will affect the ecosystem. Pushing the whole system underground is the answer but at what cost? can it survive forever underground? will users still want to take a risk of using it? will the community still believe in Bitcoin at this point?
a lot of ifs... I know..

I doubt Bitcoin can be stopped for the simple reason that it is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful symbol of hope in the modern world. And everyone hopes, be it the poor or the rich. No one would actually benefit from Bitcoin disappearing. Even if the price were to suddenly drop to under $1, there would still be people hodling  :)
My guess is that it would take an extinction level event to stop Bitcoin.

ISPs can traffic non-Tor and non-VPN connected users who will run their own node. Not sure why should an ISP ban a node, since bitcoin is neither illegal or legal in most countries. Should I assume that you mean that governments will illegalize it? What government succeeded on stopping a p2p network? None. As for the mining traffic:  You just need to be internet connected in order to broadcast it. This can be done with a lot of ways such as with VPN and Tor if you don't want to be known to your ISP.

Assuming that governments will make it illegal, because they've tried and failed several times, I'll respond you with a nice example that has been discussed a gazillion times: Did the BitTorrent survive? It's been accused by governments since the majority of its users, use it for illegal purposes. That's the same with Bitcoin, they won't ban the protocol, but its use. They will not succeed, because no one ever succeeded on banning a p2p network, especially that big.

I believe that they should start adapting with it, at least those that haven't done it yet.

Bitmex is not Wallstreet. Coinbase also is not Wall Street. ETFs mainly is not even real Bitcoin just cash settled mainly and majority of it will not even touch BTC markets, so I think a lot of these here aren't even related. Institutional long shorts maybe want to manipulate markets but this has nothing to do with STOPPING Bitcoin?

I think they want to control it instead, just take a look at the recent progress on KYC/AML policies and stuff like that. I bet the government will use this to eventually increase their income through taxes, which is way more profitable than banning crypto without any real result. The abuse of the network due to some bad actors will always exist, so trying to increase the control on how, who, where, and when they use it would be a better choice imo.

I agree with that, if totaly blackout the electricity in the world, so we didn't have access to use it anymore or maybe the world war. but why do we have to stop things that are already benefiting to us.

Stop? very difficult, even if the internet is dead even with only bitcoin devices will still exist. Bitcoin is a code program with security and decentralization proven to be very secure since 2008 the bitcoin chain in wallet core is very secure, except for the carelessness of wallet owners. How do you think you can stop this?

Ehm.. quite weird how you've been in the space for 8 years yet you don't know much about how most Bitcoin attacks could be countered easily with just few lines of coding.

Government bans cannot do much to BTC - India and China attempted to ban it, but it ended up as a failure. 51% attack is a VERY resource-hungry task that is easily redeemed worthless by the community, KYC can be avoided, underground markets usually grow huge in prices and hoarding can't realistically be banned when you have DEXs in existence.

Quantum computing is something that threatens the entire internet infrastructure if such computers were made specifically for hacking purposes (guess this will become something realistic at some point in the near future). Mt. Gox is just an exchange hack that never "stopped" Bitcoin from existing. It was only the people's fault for holding their money on custodial services, or some people were just unfortunate enough to be caught with their money on there right before withdrawing.

I don't think Bitcoin could be stopped. It could have its adoption slowed down or its price dumped heavily to the ground, but other than that.. nothing much can be done to it.

Market manipulation, an idea but it isn't really going to happen. It could be effective for a short period of time but in the long run? Hardly doubt it. Plus, a lot of people can see what Bitcoin is, and its true worth, so I doubt that would happen, not to mention that some may just be fake join in on the manipulation, and use an anonymous account to actually profit off of it.

Forks, I mean, it's been done and has been tested, nothing really happened. It just became another shtcoin in the shtcoin universe that would probably never go past what it came from.  

Government bans, I'm pretty sure history could answer the effectiveness of that. Not to mention it not working on BTC's early days, much so today with it's influence being incomparable to what it was back then.

Hacks, I mean if it was possible, it would've already been done. The value of BTC is enormous now, and you'd have expected anyone that could attack it's network would've already done so. 51% is deemed worthless as others have said, quantum computing is still for the future, Mt Gox is just an exchange that got hacked, no where near close to actually touching what Bitcoin is. Looked up Cryptsy and it seemed like it's just an exchange as well?

Just kill the internet man, most effective way to do it imo.

*this is the most powerful way to 'stop' Bitcoin 'lol'...
since the beginning of Bitcoin was created, it is no longer possible for Bitcoin to 'stop' from circulating. Bitcoin owners and traders will continue to exist and this will make its circulation lasting as long as the internet and the world are safe.

Bitcoin is not something you can shut it down easily just like the a normal device by cutting the power. Due to decentralization of bitcoin, even if you shut down some node on a country other nodes will keep doing the job without of any problem. However since nothing is impossible, there are ways to damage bitcoin. For example, doing the 51% attack if 51 percent of nodes confirm an invalid block with false data or another example be forcing all people in the world doing kyc If all governments make the decision to do that they can probably damage bitcoin. But, even after doing all these you can not stop bitcoin and in the worst case the price of bitcoin will be decreased periodically and then recover.

This is a very impossible thing to happen but you can include a global shutdown of the internet including the satellite networks. Although it's like a myth that's impossible to happen.
But who knows if someone crazy would do that and is very powerful and has the resources to make that casualty worldwide.

Add also like what if every ISP banned where Bitcoin or any forms of cryptocurrency (assuming you're reaching out to other coins as well) are being exchange.
Then somewhere in the lines of people still using VPN will answer that.

Plus OP, for 51% attacks vs. Bitcoin, watch this Q&A with Andreas Antonopolous reply someone’s question about “what if a nation-state would coordinate an attack on Bitcoin through 51% mining power”, https://twitter.com/bitcoinmagazine/status/1197161029832265729

“Bitcoin has achieved a level of computing that no nation-state can overthrow it through computing alone”, Andreas Antonopolous

Lol! That can only happen if the world moves to a nuke war on reality. Otherwise, such kind of things will only ruin the world economy with trillions of dollars worth losses. Bitcoin will definitely be impacted but more impact will happen on global businesses which depends heavily on internet and satellite infrastructure. So we can consider the possibility of this happening is zero.

Yes, as I've told it's very unlikely and impossible but we didn't even a pandemic will occur in our time, and with the advancement and technology that the world is having these days, this can still remain a myth until it happens. I'm just thinking too much about sci fi movies that I've watched but for sure this one thing will really be affecting bitcoin and might stop it temporarily until things go back as if it's going to happen.

Bitcoin's success is only made possible through global mismanagement of fiscal monetary policy.

The way to stop bitcoin is for nations like venezuela and zimbabwe to cease and desist in hyperinflating native currency through gross negligence and mismanagement of printing and natural resources. The united states, european union and other countries are following in the same footsteps. Driving demand for inflation protected assets like bitcoin to thrive.

Banks too have created a regressive financial environment for bitcoin and alt 3rd party payment systems to thrive through lack of innovation and progress of the banking sector for consecutive decades.

The overwhelming majority of assets and commodities in the world revolve around short term profit cycles. These factors also contributed towards creating a world where an asset focused on long term HODL like bitcoin could be successful.

Stopping Bitcoins ?

-This would inherently be impossible since even in the worse case scenario the people who are holding, for example: Mr. Satoshi and the people who have actually lost their wallets ( believe it or not it all accounts for around 20 million!) These won't budge and thus the price would stay stable which would mean that:

It's impossible to STOP STOP! It's not centralized.
It's actually very possible to decrease the price but this would just mean that people will have an amazing buying opportunity and the price would recover really fast. Therefore I do think this is some piece of information that you should mention in your article.

P.S. it cannot be eradicated it will still make it's way up, we have numerous wallets just in our mobile phones working amazingly! A transaction can even be broadcasted over a radio lol.

It would have made sense if you would have said that electricity would go off temporarily.
Electricity will never go off forever unless there is some new type of energy the drives the world and that won't be happening in next few generations at all.
So basically there's no stopping to bitcoin. It will probably stay here for the long run.

I observed that Bitcoin price is not stopping. They are making new high to high levels. And i think it is a good news for the crypto community. Crypto community is growing day by day. And market capitalization is also increases. And it is unstopable. Because no one holds this technology. It is a decentralized technology based project.

At first I thought you meant how to shop Bitcoin and mistyped it to stop but after reading op I got very confused. What do you mean by how to stop Bitcoin?
You want to point out reasons what may ban Bitcoin or end it's circulation or you want to stop Bitcoin transacted?
Please be more precise in your post.

well, most of the things you're listing only delay the mass adoption of bitcoin. There is no such things called stop because bitcoin merely unstoppable. Many people say bitcoin is bubble and look at what they are doing, they are desperate in buying more bitcoin while boasting around how bad bitcoin can be

As long as you know how to protect yourself from those dangers, you will always be in the safe zone. If bitcoin drops, collect more bitcoin. If bitcoin drops again, buy double

I don't know about your list brother, those listed in it literally have tried putting bitcoin down to no avail, even JPMorgan is eating his words prior to bitcoin being more reachable than ever, plus more and more private individuals rallying behind Elon prior to his 1.9 billion purchase. It's literally unstoppable at this point, and if they were really passionate in stopping bitcoin, the only way this can be done is to stop internet from working entirely. Either set up a war that will span multiple nations. That is what can stop bitcoin from being reachable.

All this won't stop Bitcoin.

1. Wall Street may attempt, and perhaps even succeed to a certain extent, to pump and dump the price if it is moving as one and has billions and billions to play with the market, but that does not amount to stopping Bitcoin.

2. Bitcoin Cash and other forks are nuisance. Don't even bother with their existence.

3. Government bans won't even ban the use of Bitcoin among its citizens.

4. Hacks have been happening; Bitcoin is still here.

Bitcoin is unstoppable if you mean that bitcoin can be stopped by that hindrances in the market.

People who knew bitcoin will never stop using it and investing it as long as its price is increasing in the market. It will surely increase its price especially that it has a limited supply and some countries right now are using bitcoin in many transaction so it is already a part of currencies around the world.

This coin is really powerful right now and it has a lot of opportunities where its investor can benefit from.

Hardforks are not a political attack.Do you think that politicians care about Bitcoin being hard forked?
The Bitcoin community cannot be divided thru hardforks,because the vast majority of the BTC community will stay with Bitcoin Core.Only a bunch of opportunists will join a hard forked pseudo-Bitcoin.
What do you mean by "auditing the chain through forks"?I don't understand that statement.
The rest of your questions have been answered many times before on the forum.Just read some old forum threads and you will find answers.

So you are against Bitcoin am I right?

You cant stop bitcoin. It has been circulated already. If certain country will ban cryptocurrency, bitcoin will definitely stopped and controlled from that area. However, as long as bitcoin exists, you cant do anything to stop it.

You cant also go back to the time where it has been produced, maybe you can just change your article and do the opposite on ways on how to support it instead.

The OP didn't point that out.
Bitcoin cannot be stopped as its nature is already decentralized.
It could be like how the "usage of it" would be stopped by or slowed down various factors.

Are you trying to gain momentum or publicity with this post because I really didn't get the point why you will post to stop bitcoin in this forum or maybe I am not getting it from your point of view though

OP, for you article, I believe it would be fair to say that the window to “kill” Bitcoin in all the methods you gave, was during 2010 - 2011, maybe 2012 too. I hope an OG can post in the topic and share his own thoughts, and opinions.

Another method might be finding the real identity of Satoshi, expose him, or maybe killing him could stop Bitcoin during 2010 - 2011. Doing that today would do nothing, Bitcoin has moved on from his influence.

I think what OP is trying to ask in this thread is if we could add something to OP's list of things that can stop bitcoin, I get that it looks like it is pointless but for me this could be helpful because if we know the ways then we might be able to create or design a solution.

If you want to totally stop Bitcoin you must stop the internet first,
They couldn't stop it even if the government ban it there would still be people who would continue to use it,
So in order to stop Bitcoin you must stop the internet that is the only way I see it.

Nothing can stop Bitcoin, so all the points written in the opening post will not stop Bitcoin. Only one thing I can think of can stop Bitcoin
if the entire internet in the world dies. And this is impossible, therefore it is impossible to stop Bitcoin. And I'm sure the government knows that,
therefore some countries have finally chosen to accept Bitcoin. Actually, several countries have banned Bitcoin, but the reality always fails
to stop its citizens from using Bitcoin.

No, I couldn't be more for it. But I want to play the devil's advocate and try to argue different way to stop it.
If we are to make this space advance we need to see where our weaknesses lie.


The article will have a sarcastic tone. I want to address the common things people say that can stop Bitcoin. I should have been more clear in the OP.

Cosmic
1. Solar Flare causes an EMP that destroys the world's computers.
2. Gamma Burst that kills the human race, bitcoin will die soon after.

Government
1. All world governments institute the death penalty for mining bitcoins
2. World Law banning excessive energy use for crypto miners.

Tech
1. Quantum computer creates a fast & easy way to decipher anyone private keys from their public address.
2. All ISP ban blockchain nodes as a waste of internet bandwidth, therefore blocking all blockchain updates.

The above would stop bitcoin, although are very unlikely.

Maybe a more realistic question: what would stop average people from using bitcoin.

Corporate
1.  Banks and Corporations buy up the majority of bitcoins driving the price higher that the majority can afford.
2.  The Bitcoin devs limit the onchain transaction capacity causing the transaction fees to be unaffordable compared to all alternatives such as offchain networks and altcoins or even the normal fiat banking system. Making sure only the elite rich transact in bitcoin.

I really like this point. Thanks.
although I am not sure a high price is a thing that would destroy Bitcoin, it does raise the point that supply may just be held in a few "poles" and not released to the public.

You mean you want to stop using bitcoin or you want to stop bitcoin from operation?, well, the last task is un-executable becasue the said technology is a decentralized one and not centralize which anyone can tamper with. How do you intend to switch-off all nodes collected to bitcoin?, you can join hands to to build the technology than to plan it destruction mate.