Bitcoin Forum

Governments can stop Bitcoin by shutting down mining, says Electric Capital exec
"If the U.S. stopped all the U.S. miners, Kazakstan stopped all the miners there — that kind of shuts down 80% to 90% of the hash rate pretty quickly," said Curtis Spencer.

Electric Capital co-founder and partner Curtis Spencer implied that the Bitcoin network may owe its continued existence to the grace of world governments.

In a panel at the Collision web summit on Tuesday, Spencer said lawmakers are the ones giving Bitcoin (BTC) a chance to grow by not imposing harsher restrictions on mining operations in their respective countries. The Electric Capital executive was speaking on the state of investing in cryptocurrency in 2021, alongside Michael Jordan of Galaxy Digital, Kartik Talwar of A Capital, Ash Egan of Accomplice, Tara Tan of IDEO CoLab Ventures and moderator Min Teo of Consensys.

“Could Bitcoin really be stopped by government?” asked Spencer. “I actually think maybe it could be. If you think about the cost of attacking the network, it’s not something that nation-states couldn’t do.”

He added:


Spencer was referring to recent events in the Xinjiang region of China, which represents roughly 25% of Bitcoin’s global hash rate. Crypto market analyst Willy Woo claimed that BTC’s crash to the $50,000s over the weekend was a result of a power outage in the area, subsequently dropping the hash rate from 172 terahashes per second to 154 million TH/s.

The power outages were reportedly initiated to facilitate safety inspections in the region, implying that there’s seemingly nothing stopping the Chinese government from intentionally dropping the hash rate. Though fellow panelist Jordan argued that lawmakers were starting to shift their positions on crypto, he was seemingly referring to authorities not trying to shut down the network on the internet rather than attacking miners.

“You hear regulators speaking with a newly sophisticated term, which is that ‘You can’t ban Bitcoin,’” said Jordan. “You can basically cut yourself out of innovation and participation and economic growth that these systems precipitate for other citizens, but you can’t actually ban it.”

At the moment, the regulatory environment in the United States seems to be favoring crypto miners rather than pulling the plug on them — though some farms in Texas did have to restrict operations during a massive winter storm this year. Kentucky lawmakers also recently passed two bills that would give tax breaks to crypto miners in an effort to attract new firms to the state.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/governments-can-stop-bitcoin-by-shutting-down-mining-says-electric-capital-exec

More crap from Cointelegraph...


Bitcoin can function without any problems if 80% - 90% of the hash rate is turned off. In 2018, the hash rate was 80% - 90% lower than it is now, and Bitcoin seemed to be doing well.

And so?  Blocks would be slow for a while and then retarget.  Other places would step in. Prices for mining equipment would spike, old equipment might get spun up (certainly not CPU or GPUs).

And if the US and Kazakstan "stopped all the miners", what would happen to the mining equipment?  Would they also seize (steal) the equipment? Would they destroy it?  In the US that would have big issues, most likely requiring payment.  If they didn't seize the equipment the miners would sell them to someone else, somewhere else (or move them themselves) and they'd be back online reasonably quickly.  If all those miners got paid by the US government, do you think they'd burn the money or go somewhere else and buy more equipment and start mining again?

Even if 99% of mining equipment worldwide was shut down, destroyed and had no payments made, at worst it would take quite a while to retarget.  More likely, there would be a quick update to Bitcoin Core to allow a faster retargeting period and after some short period of disruption, things would continue on as if nothing had happened. Perhaps even with CPUs or GPUs if 99.9999999999999999999% was shut down.  How would anyone stop that except by banning computers or networks?

This is a bunch of garbage from some newbie who hasn't thought through all the issues.  Or perhaps he has and just (a) doesn't understand them or (b) wants to cause angst.

years ago it was a theory that without China this market would not survive, now it comes with this "big news". whenever there is a problem people always get some solution, and all governments would not shutting down mining at the same time, there will always be some government that will support mining, moreover the technology does not stop to evolve, with time it will find a very solution better to save electricity consumption that mining consumes

Agreed. It will only slow down block confirmation until mining difficulty has lowered for miners and it will be back to 10 minutes per block again. This will certainly be a cause for fear and a big dump on the market, however.

Governments again why they just simple take the cryptocurrency  :'( china xinjiang only made 33% bitcoin hashrate down

but in my opinion Governments can stop the bitcoin because there still other coin and maybe the bitcoin core dev trying to figure it out before its happen 

They are wrong. There are more than 250 countries and autonomous territories in the world and there is zero chance that all of them would crackdown on Bitcoin mining simultaneously. OK.. let's take the unlikely scenario of that happening. But that doesn't mean that all of the miners would just shut down their shop and quit. There will be some who would continue mining cryptocurrency, albeit anonymously. I don't think that the governments have the resources to track down and prosecute small scale miners.

not only those things, but also:  transactions on off-chain networks would continue as if nothing had happened. Looking at the logs on my c-lightning node, it seems that's exactly what's been happening throughout this "shutdown" ::)

Excellent point.  This was just a non-issue that someone decided to publish and the author of the article didn't or couldn't ask penetrating questions about the obvious flaws in it.

Obviously, such a scenario looks too weird. What's the point in losing your market share? What is the point of giving other countries the advantages and privileges that you have? There are and will be restrictions - but a complete ban is a shot in the foot. I cannot think of a reason that would stimulate the governments of these countries to take such a step. If you can imagine such a thing - can you share what it could be?

Right, but also fiat converters and exchanges, wallet providers

Liberty Reserve was closed as well

Since when did the United States and Kazakhstan hold 90% of the total hash rate of Bitcoin mining? As far as I know they were even nowhere near what China is producing so this news is very misleading. However if you asked me if China will do this thing I believe that it still won't "stop" Bitcoin as basing it from the past news Chinese miners have their intentions to move out from China any time this happen to their country and I think other countries will welcome Chinese miners to their country. This will be a huge loss for the country who will be considering a ban as they will be losing a growing industry instead of taking advantage of it.

I'm curious about that too. Maybe it's some latest data we are not aware about?

According to statista.com, the situation looked like this one year ago:

https://i.imgur.com/4l54Lbv.png

They never reach a lowest point, never. These guys are always great at achieving the worst possible journalistic point of view.
Not only they clearly don't understand shit of what they are talking about but they also spread fud around.
God, I hate them

Only time that I think that bitcoin will be stopped by the government is if they disable electricity altogether which is impossible since a lot of people will die in the next 24 hours without electricity and we will basically go back to Stone age when that happens so I call BS on this claim because as long as there is electricity, miners will find a way to  do their thing albeit they have to be more crafty and careful.

The first thing that comes to mind in this scenario is madness. It's like slaughtering the goose that lays the golden eggs. And then - won't other countries take their place? Yes, of course, the market will be rebuilt in a month or even less with great pleasure, and even this will have serious consequences - the computing power will be redistributed to other players, but those who have given up such a privileged position will hardly ever be able to regain it for themselves.

So the governments all over the world is going to shutdown all electricity? WTF are these people smoking.....because that will never happen. Also, if say China stop all the mining being done in China... those miners will relocate to another country and the mining will continue. (Alternatively, they will sell their ASICs to people mining in other countries)

Let's say in theory that the governments manage to shutdown electricity.... what happens then? Well, most of these mining operations can run on Solar power and Wind power and Diesel generators... etc. etc... ( A massive difficulty adjustment, will even make GPU mining possible.. so you would need much less electricity to mine Bitcoin then)  ;)

This is more like the scenario of some Hollywood blockbuster))) I completely agree that this requires at least a flash in the sun that will cut out most of the existing global electrical system, and even in this case it will not completely stop mining. Will only slow down the computational aggregate power a lot. And as soon as everything is restored (which I have no doubt about), everything will be the same again.

Yes- some of the bigger ones will do the job, still US long arms can do big part - no way Turkey and Saudis can do much without

Pretty sure that government had already anticipated that and thats why they arent making those kind of steps which is totally dumb if i were to say where cutting down power lines or electricity just for the sole purpose
of stopping mining then its completely useless or would rather do harm than on benefit. Imagine on what other things being heavily dependent with electricity into their vicinity?

For sure they cant really afford to lose those just for the exchange on having the motive on shutting down bitcoin mining and just what mentioned when it comes to alternative energy then
it cant really be stopped no matter what angle they are trying to take.

Why wont they try it and prove out to their very own eyes that its not possible to stop it?

@ stomachgrowls. What the government might do is raise taxes on bitcoin miners and Asic manufacturers very high and make them unprofitable. Also, require them to comply with stricter rules and disapprove license applications that do not meet the criteria.

Let's hope they(the government) are not so stupid to be raising taxes to the point that mining becomes unprofitable. They would gain nothing this way, while they could tax the business reasonably and be getting money flowing to the national treasury. What's the point of killing a business which could bring you money?

I don't think  raising taxes (https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-taxes-affect-economy-long-run)(I just googled that) can help them either if they just want some specific business to shut down raising taxes is not the answer since it has some negative effects on the economy also. So the best way they could do is to put more stricter rules and regulations to about the mining in crypto currency and their power consumption of electricity.

While there are still a debates about how the government can shut down Bitcoin, shutting down mining may happen if it costs too much electricity or a power outage in a specific place. But that doesn't mean they couldn't switch places to find a mining ground that could open up their business again.

The deterioration of the tax climate in a particular country will change nothing with the market as a whole, since it has long become global. This will only create a situation where assets and their owners, when conditions and tax rates deteriorate, simply emigrate to another jurisdiction, as they have been doing for a long time. For example, if the USA introduces a new scale for rich Americans by increasing their (already high) tax, they will simply move to other countries and change their citizenship. Money loves quietness and low taxes.

I really don't know if there is an actual way to kill off Bitcoin, unless it simply becomes irrelevant and people stop paying it any attention. That's the only way that I can really think of to stop Bitcoin, is for it to become irrelevant. Also if the governments around the world really wanted to play ball, they could simply prohibit the exchange of cryptocurrency into fiat and pass a law for the banks ro stop dealing with customers who make cryptocurrency related transactions.
   This could really deflate the market something serious if people were forced to hold their bags and not be able to exchange their crypro into fiat.

Well said. It is not possible for the governments to shut down either electricity or the internet (if they are crazy enough to do that). Because nowadays portable solar panels can be sourced for as little as $25. And also, satellite phones are available at affordable rates, which will ensure that the internet connection is not cut. In short, there is not much the government can do against cryptocurrency. At the most they can arrest a few people and jail them. And then they can hope that it will frighten the remaining users and they will stay away from cryptocurrency.

Simply those miners would just simply flock off into another country with have less in tax percentage rather than staying into a place where you had been choked up in the neck in terms of reduction.
If they would intent to make things even more strict and hard then they are the ones who had just limiting out their source of revenue or could able to take benefit from it.

Shutting down, banning businesses, impose higher tax isnt really enough to take it down.Why cant they just accept it instead of banning or restricting it? They would definitely
benefit out but of course they cant really just support on things that opposes up centralization.

It's right. If at least some of the miners remain, they will still mine the same amount of bitcoins as before with a large number of miners. After all, one bitcoin is mined every ten minutes. And the number of miners is no longer important here. It's just that the remaining miners will mine them more often.
In addition, about 18 million bitcoins out of 21 million have already been mined. Even if bitcoin mining stops completely, then only those that have already been mined will go, without the remaining three million.

I personally think that stricter rules regarding power consumption can be worse for the mining business than higher taxes. Of course, taxes shouldn't be too high, because you can kill any business with unbearable taxes, but limiting the electric power consumption by a business is ridiculous. Tax them and build more power stations if you need them, invest in the renewable energy sources, utilize the business to everyone's benefit instead of killing it.

Yes, technically, Bitcoin may have a big problem if miners will stop doing business. But will they and can governments really - that is simultaneously doing it - shut down all mining activities for Bitcoin? Let me say it direct: if governments can never stop illegal trade of drugs, prostitution and human trafficking with billion-dollar budgets and with already concerted efforts done internationally, are we then SANE to think that governments can have the willpower to stop something that is making money for many people and contributing tax revenue?

REALLY? Maybe if governments have that kind of resolve we might not have the full-blown Covid-19 problems we have now. To sum it up: tell that to marines!

In my opinion, this is technically impossible to do today. Yes, there is an option to create a very unfavorable environment, create and sign laws that will prohibit any activity related to cryptocurrency, but you need to remember that we live in a world where there is no global government and there are still sovereign countries that independently decide how to live. Therefore, even if this can happen in a separate jurisdiction, capital and people associated with it simply emigrate to another more favorable country.

However, what is bitcoin doing to help the economy and how would taxing bitcoin miners affect it? It is arguable that the bitcoin and cryptospace markets are helping the real economy because these coins and tokens are used predominantly as speculative investments.

I think even if they, BTC and other cryptos, are purely speculative investments(I personally don't think so, but let's imagine this is the case), they are still helping the real economy because when people have more things to spend their money on, it's good for the economy in general. CMIIW.

People need to ignore all the false claimed from the Electricity sector, institutions, etc about the government having the capacity to shut down Bitcoin mining or Bitcoin cause they are doing this to cause fud. If it happens that the government shut down mining a lot of different ideas about Bitcoin mining have been put together to save Bitcoin from the rainy day which lightning is one of them.
Bitcoin has passed the verge where the government will decide to stop it not even this time that a lot of institutional investors and the government have even benefited from it through taxes.

I can agree with the technical possibility of individual governments, if they wish to limit the mining of bitcoins in those countries that occupy the highest specific shares in this process. However, if we correctly understand how this happens, it will immediately become clear that the load on the rest will increase, which in the end will simply lead to an increase in the time and complexity of production, but will not stop it in any way. So it's just a shot in the foot in terms of economics and loss of market share. That's all the government can achieve by taking such a step.

That is hardly a good argument because those more things being spent on are not producing any goods for society. It is also not used as a medium for payments. It is only commonly used as something similar to casino chips for gambling on other something similar to casino chips.

What I mean is it's always good for the economy when people have more things to spend their money on, regardless of the utility of those things. $600 tickets on the Rolling Stones and the likes are not producing any goods for society either, same goes for collectibles(just one example: more than 5 billion Hot Wheels models have been sold, making it a multibillion-dollar market). Although it's hard to imagine how to utilize those tickets, car models and whatnot, the fact that people are willing to spend money on them makes people to want to earn more money, meaning to work more, contributing to the development of the economy.

I'll say it again, rephrasing a bit my previous comment: imo, even if BTC and other cryptos are just collectibles,  it's good for the economy that they exist.

Why though? I mean if electricity grids really did shut down, it will pretty much shut down bitcoin and all the things that are depending on electricity, don't mistake FUD with reality because just because it says something negative about bitcoin.

If the electrical grids really did shut down, we'd have a lot more problems than bitcoin mining.  Air conditioners, doctor's office, hospitals, roadways (no lights), no pumps for gas stations, no pumps for water the internet, etc. would all cease to function.  (And bitcoin mining would just slow down or freeze or migrate somewhere else).   Sure a government could shut down an electrical grid, but the populace would shut down the government.  (Unless it was something like a "One Second After" scenario).

Shutting down the grid wouldn't be a viable way to stop mining.

I dont mistake FUD with reality and yes Bitcoin mining will shut down if the government shutdown the electric grid but no government will dare to do that because of Bitcoin. However, the question the OP was about government shutdown Bitcoin mining through  power outage to Bitcoin mining factory.

If it is producing the currency that powers our gambling habits, I would surrender to your argument and agree hehehe. In any case, yes if bitcoin mining produces jobs and creates new types of industries then you are correct.

Soon, in principle, this will be impossible. Since in some countries, large companies have invested large capitals both in mining and in the bitcoin itself. The shutdown and restrictions will cause the expected price drop and panic sell-off. Who will benefit from this? I think only speculators who will buy cheap bitcoin and other coins. They will wait until everything is normalized, since this will happen anyway, and they will receive their profit. In general, I think that the modern world will never get rid of the blockchain, with all the wishes of individual governments.

No government would shut down their electric grid to stop bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency--that's ludicrous.  What the US government certainly could do is outlaw mining or even the possession of bitcoin if they were so inclined.  But since they've done neither one of those things since bitcoin was rolled out in 2009, I don't think they plan on doing so.  If bitcoin were a threat to fiat, I think it would have shown itself to be such well before now--and there hasn't even been much opposition to crypto by the US government so far as I know.

And lets say a government could and did shut down mining in its country; mining is so profitable that I bet you that the affected miners would just move their operations to a neighboring country where mining was still legal.  So if the US government outlawed mining, my guess would be that there would be an exodus of miners to either Canada or Mexico, whichever has lower electricity costs/taxes.

Thank you. Yes, that's what I mean. And new jobs are produced not only by Bitcoin mining and gambling, but also by exchanging process. There are hundreds and hundreds of crypto exchanges around the world, and there  are around 14,000 Bitcoin ATMs all over the world, according to statista, so it means cryptocurrency ATM designers and operators are needed. Don't forget about cryptocurrency journalists and technical analysts, this army is growing too. In short, many jobs are being produced by Bitcoin, and a government, if it were any good, wouldn't deprive their citizens of those benefits.

That's the point and only an unreasonable or selfish person will believe crypto is a threat to fiat cause it has helped the country's economy in some aspect through the government tax on Bitcoin. I read an article that I don't remember the think again, that illustrates that the government and the law practitioner somehow support Bitcoin if not they can raise a legal law that could prevent people use using it or mining it which I think can happen rather than the shutdown of the electric grid which I believe is unaccommodating.

Is appears that this government to shutdown bitcoin mining will the the storyline for the fud of 2021 with the government’s new mascot Elon Musk hehehe.

I reckon Elon was certainly not careless when he decided for Tesla to stop accepting bitcoin. Everything was planned. Tesla has always needed government perks to keep the company running.

 

EXCLUSIVE Tesla seeks entry into U.S. renewable fuel credit market

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) is seeking to enter the multi-billion dollar U.S. renewable credit market, hoping to profit from the Biden administration’s march toward new zero-emission goals, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The electric car maker is one of at least eight companies with a pending application at the Environmental Protection Agency tied to power generation and renewable credits, the sources said. The EPA produces a list of pending applications with some details, but not companies' names.

Source https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/exclusive-tesla-seeks-entry-into-us-renewable-fuel-credit-market-sources-2021-05-12/

Things can go quick

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/lifestyle/article/bitcoin-ban

It has begun. News media will publish and spread fud anything about mining and proof of work, an important component of cryptocoins. Whatever the people clicks more, that will be their storyline. It depends on you because it is sustained by you. Do not click it or help spread it.

They can stop it but people are going to find a way to mine the coins even if there is a ban, there are mines in China that are illegal that has been working for years so shutting down mining isn't going to really affect heavily.

Proof of Social Media is strong - we ve seen that in the scaling debate... now it's up to bigger calibers like Elon. Seems he is a real big blocker :)

@hv_. Do you trust his tweets? Tesla is applying for entry on the renewable fuel credit market where they can receive more government subsidies. Tesla has been needing them to keep the company’s cashflow positive.

For how long they are going to sustain solely on government subsidies? Tesla was founded in 2003, and even after two decades they haven't been successful in attaining profit. And that is despite generous support from the federal government and the state governments. For me, it means only one thing - Tesla's business model is not sustainable. Perhaps they should exit the EV sector and leave it to more competent automobile makers. The only positive about Tesla is its hyperinflated market cap and unbelievably high P/E ratio.

Click it or not, Bitcoin mining can't be stopped by a government ban because, in spite of what conspiracy-theorists believe, our world doesn't have a centralized government. It can be banned in some countries, but others will keep doing it. For example, some major american films were banned in some countries, while other countries were screening the movies, generating millions of dollars in revenues. Same thing would happen to Bitcoin mining if it were banned somewhere.

Of course, there will always be states and various free zones that will allow cryptocurrency mining. However, even if the mining of bitcoin is completely banned everywhere and suppose that there is not even any other opportunity for its mining, it still cannot destroy bitcoin. More than 18 million bitcoins out of 21 million have already been mined. As a last resort, we can already do without mining the remaining three million bitcoins. However, people will always find a way to mine it. So I don't think this is a problem.

Very well said , there are many options to mine bitcoin and you right people are very smart to find another way. 18 million bitcoins is enough for bitcoins to spread all over the world. I think the one other reason why governments stop Bitcoin mining because they cant get any taxes about this. But if they want to accept minings im sure that government need put some taxes to gain also.