Bitcoin Forum

The EU and some government believe that cryptocurrency have no Intrinsic value and that you should be prepared to lose all your money if you buy cryptos. The head of the bank of England have taken this stance some months ago. In-fact, Bit Coin is highly restricted if not ban in Russia, China, Algeria, Bolivia, Nigeria, Bangladesh and many countries that are left wing. Whether directly or indirectly these countries have stood as Anti-Crypto.

My question is are they trying to protect their citizens or what?

Personally, I believe competition is good for the consumer but when government officials make this comment, I try to see things from their perspective and analyze them. So, what are government officials saying that they are not actually telling the people in reality.

Cryptocurrency are the largest treat to national security: The most powerful weapons that countries has is the ability to change interest rate and what they do is to buy and sell bonds to increase money supply or decrease money supply which changes interest rate. Hypothetically speaking, if every citizen in a country no longer use fiat or paper currency and they only use cryptocurrency then government can’t raise money by issue bonds and changing interest rate. What will happen is that government will go bankrupt.

Note: No Government makes a lot of money collecting only taxes. They issue bonds etc.
If there is no demand for government currency then they will go bankrupt. Do well to contribute your knowledge on this subject.

Of course, they are trying to protect their citizens from many scams, like occurred in NFTs, Metaverse, ALTs, etc. But of course, the more benefit of avoiding the use of crypto will be for governments. They are the ones with more benefits, because, not every cryptocurrency is centralized, like BTC, etc. Which are not in the control of these governments. So, they are afraid of it because they cannot control it and some think it's just a bubble that will pop up anytime.

You pointed out a good point and there is no doubt about it, because taxes are not the only way of making money, they definitely use bonds but keep in mind that bonds are also not the only alternative option to taxes to make governments money. There are numerous ways, in which a government can make money, and that varies from state to state. Like in our country, they are selling the schools now (hehe) making money a huge amount of money. And the rumors are they are selling the government school for around 1,787,269 dollars. (in local currency, 50 crores).

Well, the point is, there are many other ways of making money, but yeah for this particular issue of bonds, they are bringing the CBDC system, which can solve this problem for the governments. Overall, I don't think that a country that has not yet accepted the BTC as its legal tender, can go bankrupt just because the value of there local currency is decreasing, I am not saying that it is not possible but all I am saying is, the probability is very less.

Most governments don't support Bitcoin since they don't want to lose the power to control the financial ecosystem. And the majority of the country's leaders don't actually understand Bitcoin. So they directly ban crypto. A government won't allow them to rule their financial system through Bitcoin since they can't control it due to decentralisation. They consider Bitcoin their fiat's enemy. But it won't prevent us from using Bitcoin. We don't need government help to accumulate and hold Bitcoin. It's called financial freedom, and it goes against government policy. The government never wants to give us financial freedom.

Bitcoin is invented so that we can gain financial freedom from the government, and now that it's already becoming a threat to the government issued fiat, then for obvious reason, the government is also doing its job to protect their fiat currency and the best action for it is to ban crypto in their own country, if putting restrictions to crypto users won't work.

It's clear that they are doing that not because they don't understand bitcoin, but because they have seen the high potentials of bitcoin that once if left uncontrolled, it will definitely ruin the reputation of fiat and worst is it will replace fiat from its position. But we all know the government has always the highest power over everything, that is the reason they will do everything in their power to restrict users from using bitcoin, and if it won't work, complete banning will be applied.

We don't know the actual reason why they're stopping citizens into this. If they've got something that they know and we don't know, it's like a crowd control that they're trying to do. It is a matter of their personal choice so they are making policies that are in favor of them.
What we know about them is if they don't like something, they don't like it and they can make policies that will stop that from being liked by people. If we're going to think of them really concerned about people because they've seen victims of scams that used Bitcoin before. Maybe that's a genuine care to their people but even with that, it shouldn't be like what they think of and should have been focus tearing down the scams.

Have you ever seen any government anywhere in the world ever caring about their citizens ever? :D The reality is that its something decentralized and out of their power and they can't do anything about it so they hate it. Obviously its not going to be all that easy to get us off it, so the yare not going to try to go with "oh its illegal now" route because that would lose them votes, they can't really do that, so what can they do? They could issue warnings like these a lot so that the would instill fear into people and the could try to secretly manipulate the price for a drop so that people would see it and then make a huge deal out of it, bonus points if the stock market is up that day. Thats their oldest trick, and I do not believe it.

They should still have control over any platform even if it is Bitcoin.
Although Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that no one can fully regulate, the government is trying to regulate the pace of its development with some regulations.

Every government has different regulations.
For governments that are still pro-Bitcoin or crypto like El Salvador have fully adopted it as a legal payment, but for governments that only provide regulations that still look gray, it can only be used as a commodity asset.

That's still pretty good rather than being banned completely by the government, as happened to China.
But there will be ways for users to buy bitcoin or access crypto and that cannot be restricted.

Government currency used to be backed by gold, and further back it used to be made of gold and other precious metals. And governments functioned just well in those times.

And let's be realistic, massive switch to Bitcoin will not happen. People don't want to do this, because they don't care about inflation, bad government, financial freedom and so on. And even if they tried to switch to Bitcoin, the government would intervene and ban all large entities that can easily be controlled from dealing with Bitcoin.

I think one reason why the Algerian government is against crypto is because of the claim that crypto is not backed by any physical asset. In some other countries, they believe that the cryptocurrency is contributing to fraudulent activities and money laundering. For that reason, they feel they are trying to prevent the rate of money laundering and also to help citizens from being defrauded. Another thing that I read about is that the governments of some countries that are not crypto-friendly believe that because of the volatility of cryptocurrency. IMO, all of the reasons are not very valid because, if you give an opportunity to people, you should also give them the right knowledge to guide them through so as to prevent mistakes. So what I am saying in essence is that if the government chooses to allow Bitcoin, they can still educate their citizens not to invest wrongly, but instead they choose to ban it. Talking about money laundering, has it stopped even while cryptocurrency is banned? Nope.

So, @OP, in your opinion if for example people in my country start using only crypto, the government goes bankrupt? Then I can no longer buy coffee or people will continue their routines and trade as usual only by exchanging crypto?

You think a government will allow you to print money? A decentralized crypto like Bitcoin is the same as printing money, world "elites" are just too "stupid" to realize that.

All government officials worldwide, should go through a walk of shame and put behind bars for life. That's what they deserve.

As long as the government is entitled to control everything even those users that are bitcoin enthusiasts, then let's accept the reality that bitcoin adoption will never happen easily because it's clear the government won't allow it to happen. So bitcoin will always remain as a threat to the government and its fiat currency, and for me this is not something bad because it only proves that bitcoin has really the capacity to break the government so that financial freedom will definitely be achieved in the long run.

What we need to do at the moment is to continue accessing bitcoin despite of the regulations imposed by the government. Financial freedom with bitcoin will only be achieved if we consistently do it for purpose, and that is to prove to the government that even if they put restrictions or ban its usage, people will always find ways on how to access it ands use it based on its real purpose.

Hi, RioBlemz

If crypto were not relevant, surely the topic would not be discussed as they do, understand that different economic elements continually arise that seek to supplant the way of making payments, Art is one of them, but being so elite, they become invisible, unlike crypto that is open to everyone.

On the other hand, there are countries where taxes are the first income for their economies. If such income did not exist, their economies would be affected. Not to mention that first world countries consider tax collection as essential, hence the issue of crypto or any currency is punishable even with prison if it does not comply with your tax return payments.


Governments have very varied interests, and of course one of them must by law be the well-being of their citizens.

Ask this question again and the government or rather politicians will play the caring card and say they can’t be able to tame crime and so on, see the government just don’t like the citizens to have freedom and wants them under control every time. If you look at the government they print fiat money or inject more into the market whenever they feel they want to manipulate the market. This are things that keep the citizens at their mercy but with bitcoin the citizens wouldn’t worry about this.

OP, the cryptocurrency or rather bitcoin isn’t here to make people ditch fiat but as an alternative to it and if you look at countries that uses both is there any way it is standing in there way. The government to me have just found out that people have found a way to beat inflation that they intentionally created and they don’t like it.

I don’t believe the government has our best interest at heart. Their reason for fighting bitcoin is political, the government use  money as a tool to control the people. Right now, Bitcoin is the only opposition to the agenda, that’s why the government is anti bitcoin. I don’t know why you listed Nigeria as one of the countries where Bitcoin is banned. Despite what you may have read in the news, Bitcoin isn’t considered illegal in Nigeria. Business are even free to accept bitcoin as a means of payment.

First most countries are now turning a positive view towards the use and acceptance of Bitcoin and most of these never actually put a ban on crypto in the first in their region and I like to think that NIGERIA is one of those countries because the ban on crypto as of then was actually a restraining order place on all commercial banks to stop any transaction that has to deal with crypto and any fiat bank account that was found transacting or relating with Bitcoin was actually ban.

The reason for all this that the government do, is basically because they can't track and control the transaction that has to deal with Bitcoin and if their is one the government really like, it's actually the thought on knowing that they can actually control everything including the financial life of their citizens and Bitcoin as a decentralized currency doesn't support this so they alternative to the best possible option which is actually to ban or restrict it .

They are trying to protect the government interest.  If they are too concern about their citizen then they can just lower the taxes being implemented but that is not the case yes?  They even planned to increase the taxes because the government only see its citizen as a milking cow.


The government can still tax centralized exchanges and can implement taxation directly using these exchanges. I do not think cryptocurrency is the largest treat to national security at this level of adoption.

It will be when cryptocurrency holders do not use centralized exchanges and do P2P instead.

They support what they control and can benefit their governance and their political career. Bitcoin is uncontrollable because only people who have private keys can control those bitcoins.

It's hard to convince some people who don't want to learn, to start learning about Bitcoin. It's not hard to learn basic but it's just there are their own barriers prevent them to start.

They ban Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in some nations not because they don't understand about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It is only because they want to create regulatory shill to protect their fiat currencies and CBDCs.

I agree.

We can create a wallet offline, store our bitcoin offline, air gapped and we don't need governments to approve our Bitcoin transactions so they can not control us.

First of all there is a huge difference between bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In fact as one of the biggest bitcoin believers I have made similar statements before. 99% of cryptocurrencies are pure garbage so they have no value whatsoever which means you should be prepared to lose all your money when you buy them!
This is not some super secret that nobody knows!

Not to mention that every single country (their government or baking system) has already issued a similar warning specially after 2017 when the shitcoin market grew a lot.

It's hard to say. On paper issues like this (as I explained above) are rational. But you should try to find their motivation for issuing these statements.
We know governments seek full control and surveillance. Something as decentralized as bitcoin takes both of that away. So they seek to regain some of that control. This is why they insist on talking about bitcoin and altcoins at the same time and regulate them together whereas they should be completely separate.

For example ICOs (and all the alternatives all the way to NFTs) are banned in a lot of countries but bitcoin is accepted as a legal currency.

Well different facts are being mixed here. Bitcoin was never supposed to replace fiat. It is the alternative option and we already know altcoins are jokes.
This means this concern has no grounds.

Besides, the financial system has to change. It is not a good thing that governments keep playing with fiat supply (print money out of thin air) increase interest rates (screw up the economy by causing recession) etc. just because they are incompetent to keep the economy stable.

Scams and hacks, we have heard a lot of people losing their hard earned money from scammers and cyber criminals. And then there are those who hide behind crypto, from drug dealers to even terrorists. Although this has been debunk by some data already that they are not using crypto or at least it was just a small percentage as it is cumbersome for them. They still prefer the old method of having cash and fiat.

And with that, there are governments though, afraid to give freedom to get people. This is some of the most authoritative government around the world, because they are afraid that it's very difficult to control them once they earn profits from crypto. And then also capital plight, they want to have their money to flow in their economy inside their country.

Centralised governments often gain power from monetary control. Decentralised power is what cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin, is about. You're right that countries' most powerful tool is interest rate control, which is almost useless in a crypto economy. The crucial, sometimes ignored issue is sovereignty. State sovereignty is guaranteed by currency and interest rate regulation.

Why do some nations strongly oppose crypto? Your claim that they may be protecting their fellow citizens is reasonable but incomplete. A deeper fear exists. Governments may lose financial power by fully embracing cryptocurrency. If crypto becomes the main form of payment, countries cant use monetary policy to encourage or slow economic growth. This has major implications. Imagine the state losing power because they cant control currency. Interesting yet terrifying for power, no?

Crypto is no more banned in Nigeria, remove that from your list as I am very certain that this isn't happening in the country anymore, I am not sure about the rest on your list but I am hundred percent sure about Nigeria.

These countries are trying to protect their citizens from something they don't understand, it's like aliens visiting the mother earth and they never meant no harm but humans sees them as threat and they start attacking them.

It's only a matter of time for people to realize that they are been protect from crypto not because it's a threat to them but because it's a way to break the chains from government control and also their money slavery system.

They claimed that crypto is a threat to national security but not casinos? There are programs for the governments that have ruined peoples lives and these governments still allow these programs to run, they also certified them, nonsense, if people are financially free how will the government wrapped their hands around their necks? They are not going to like it anyway.

The Bank of England has been saying this for years, as have many other central banks that are not so interesting to the media and pass under the radar - but why does that surprise you at all? Banks defend the existing financial system and it is logical that they say what they say, in addition to what some others have already mentioned, which is an attempt to protect all those naive people who invest their money in shitcoins.


How much money is a lot to you? Data for the EU say that the EU has collected just under $4.5 billion based on taxes for 2022 (https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/european-union/tax-revenue), and that doesn't seem like a small amount to me. Do you think that according to your thinking, the world could function normally if there were no taxes?

These governments that are not friendly to Bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency industry lacks full understanding of the trend that is going to stay into the future. And sometimes you could not fully blame them because first and foremost this is something that is really new to them...or should I say unprecedented. Remember that in the past, many known personalities that were then working with the banking and financial sectors also called Bitcoin as just another scam...but many of them are now supporters of Bitcoin and even also holding some BTCs in their portfolios.

Cryptocurrency is not illegal in Nigeria since the government has not issued any kind of law making it unlawful or criminalising the usage of the digital money. Nigeria has lately adopted blockchain technology and is working to regulate digital currency in the country. Nigerian policymakers are only concerned with limiting its use in the traditional banking sector due to the risks they believe it poses to traditional fiat money.


They don’t need to say more than this, their stance on the use of it has already illustrated what they meant. If they can’t regulate the use and have total control and power on this digital currency, they will keep giving excuses and more excuses on why they won’t accept this digital currency to be used in addition to the traditional fiat in use now. The reality is that bitcoin will reduce their power in the financial realm and the power of money cannot be overemphasized. This has nothing to do with protecting their citizens but rather exposing them to embrace the transitional change in the financial sector of the world which the world is already evolving to.

Bitcoin, in my opinion, was created to defend people from the government. They can't simply regulate or track down a wealthy individual who uses Bitcoin. People have lost their lives as because of money. We'll never know if any authorities were involved. Decentralization is the key to feeling free and uncontrolled by the government, as well as making individuals feel safe because they don't know who is behind that large sum of money.

Don't know why I'm just coming  across this post and I've always thought that my country had a very serious ban on cryptocurrency bjt further investigation showed that, they only had some restrictions on the banks involvement with cryptocurrencies in bid to protect it's citizens from the untraceable transactions made through bitcoin and if this truly is the only motive behind the motive of the government in my country then, I must say  that I support them because we've heard about alot of transactions  carried  out by this scammers and criminals online and you'll agree with me that the transactions are untraceable.

But just as alot of people have already proposed that government  is afraid of bitcoin  and cryptocurrency simply  because they might not have absolute power over it and I think there are also some facts in this talk.

The op says that the EU believe that cryptos have no intrinsic value, but there are, unfortunately, no links in the post to back that up. I've tried searching for it myself, but did not find relevant examples coming from the EU authorities.
That being said, it's normal to believe that, as Bitcoin isn't backed up by anything else, and many people lose money when making investments.
Returning to EU, I've found out that the EU Parliament  (https://www.investopedia.com/eu-mica-study-crypto-assets-securities-7507003)suggests treating cryptos as securities by default, which doesn't resonate with the op's claim, in my opinion.
As for reasons for restrictions, they can be different. Protection of citizens in often cited, and so is fraud prevention. But of course there can be lobbying from traditional institutions (in case of Western countries), and the desire to exercise more control over citizens (in non-democratic countries).

The government has several things to think about, they don't encourage people to use bitcoin because if people start using bitcoin then the use of paper money in a particular country will decrease and very few people will deposit money in the bank. People not keeping money in banks means that economic control is largely out of government's reach. As a result of depositing money in the bank, the bank lends that money in various ways and as a result of the loan, the banks receive interest at a fixed rate. But it doesn't matter whether the government approves Bitcoin or not because Bitcoin will become one of the most popular currencies at some point.

Cryptocurrencies have not reached the extent of being competitive with paper money and the economies of countries. All fears come from investors losing their money due to the bankruptcy of platforms or purchasing altcoins of low value, and from here some countries are tightening regulatory restrictions.
Imposing taxes is beneficial to governments, not individuals, and regulatory cover will not benefit you except that your money will be more money in platforms after they are licensed, but in any case, withdraw your profits from exchanges as soon as they occur.

Uncontrollable third-party transaction mechanisms or even a currency surely twist out what governments could do to control their economy. A country is still able to control its fiscal policy, but not so much when it comes to cryptocurrency.

I do agree with your analysis. If it gains enormous and widespread adoption certainly governments would feel their sovereignty threatened. Cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin is beyond their control, so the least they can do is to enforce the policy to limit or monitor the usage. Some countries affirm Bitcoin as a commodity, some restrict it for payment mechanisms. That is their defense mechanism, to prevent further obstruction of what cryptocurrency can do.

Centralized exchanges, lending and earning platforms and shitcoins have screwed up a lot of people, either through fractional reserve scam, unrealistic APY and scam coins or those that have no usefulness at all. So if the government is trying to regulate services like these and protect their citizens from them, it is worth doing. Anyway, BTC is different from all of these, it is decentralized and censorship resistant, so it gives you self custody of your funds and you would only screw up if you don't know what you are doing.
This cannot happen in the first place, as long as there is a government in control, fiat money would still be in use. Take note that BTC is not going to replace fiat, and it was not created for that. It is worth mentioning that cryptocurrencies stands for both BTC and Altcoins, and too many altcoins are useless, so next time it is good to specify if you are talking about BTC or the many scam alts in the market.

Using Bitcoin isn't make you to stay private, if you're using Bitcoin to pay everything, the government notice it and they will try to regulate Bitcoin. So if you think Bitcoin can ruin fiat and banks, I don't think it's possible since the government will take any action when they don't get a lot money.

We as an individuals might able to use Bitcoin to pay everything (as long as the seller accept it) but it a minority, not vast majority.

Maybe the right reason why the government considers cryptocurrency a threat is because if many people use cryptocurrency or Bitcoin, then the government cannot control the movement of crypto or Bitcoin and also cannot be regulated by them.
And perhaps banks are at the forefront of rejecting cryptocurrencies, and I don't believe that governments, banks, or other parties don't understand Bitcoin and its developments, especially blockchain technology. But I am very sure, sooner or later they will use blockchain in their banking system and it is only a matter of time.

Fiat or crypto, they are all the same. The only only difference is fiat can be controlled or manipulate by the government and crypto can't be. Meaning it is decentralized. My perspective is crypto won't destroy fiat. Crypto is only a upgraded form of traditional currency system. Another thing you mentioned, crypto is harming fiat, making government go bancropt, which I think is wrong. Thousands of people uses crypto everyday. It is not only helping to provide for his family but also making the economy strong. People daily covert crypto to fiat to cash out their money and spend accordingly. And bonds are not the only way for the government to generate income. You should know that well.

Give me one country where the government went bancropt because of crypto. I don't know if there are any. If the government is corrupted, the country go bancrupt anyway. You won't have to involve fiat or crypto in this.

You've made such a potpourri of these countries that to consider them all left-wing is too simplistic. But well, seeing in that mix countries that still retain characteristics of communism of the twentieth century, others that would be left-wing and others that I am not clear, it is more logical for a left-wing government to put barriers to bitcoin than a right-wing one.

It is also too simplistic to lump Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies together, as you have already been told.

In the end, what happens is that governments implement regulations on Bitcoin claiming it is to protect their citizens when it is mostly to defend their interests.

This is not true, it is important to note that crypto refers to both Altcoins and BTC, and there are a lot of centralized altcoins that can be controlled and manipulated by their owners and the government too, these coins have a single point of failure and they are not decentralized. If you meant BTC only, then it is truly decentralized and doesn't have a single point of failure.

When I said crypto, I was referring to BTC. Although altcoins are also part of crypto, they don't hold as much potential as BTC. Not saying they are totally useless; they can be useful, but only for a short period of time. It's my personal opinion. On the other hand, I consider BTC as the one true coin. That's what I meant.

I don't think it is a threat but a strong influence over the global finance. Bitcoin, being the flagship of the technology has always taken the lead in the market capitalization of the crypto space therefore its taking the lead. Its most adopted and also most secure, in terms of security.

Bitcoin has left the global financial systems asking questions and looking out for ways to even emulate but still with control measure (CBDC) but it's still not enough competition.

"Left" as in china? Russia? Bangladesh??? These are not leftist, where did you learn that dictatorships are leftist? The whole point of socialism and leftist political behavior is to give the power to people, equality, if there is a dude at the top that makes you do whatever he wants, how could you consider that equality? Just because they call themselves left, you believe them? By that logic I would say North Korea calls themselves fair and USA bad too, so we should believe what they say too? That makes no sense.

In any case, I do not think that bitcoin is banned in any of the free nations, and you could just keep on using it the way you want to use it, I am free to buy and sell and use it however I want for example and I am quite happy about it. There is no need for my government to try to save me, it is not going to end up with anything good and we should try to avoid angering our governments with bitcoin by doing anything silly with it in our nation.

In my opinion they are doing that so they can push what they really want, and their reason for saying this is to teach people that we need cbdc or it will be the only key to help us, and of course when it happens they will have control over everything that buys or uses money under cbdc.

Right now, because they can't do 100% of what they want because Bitcoin or cryptocurrency is alive and well among people all over the world, it's actually in the early age of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency right now and because of decentralization they can't control them.

They refuse to understand bitcoin because they don't want to. That is the reality. They never see bitcoin as a real currency but they prefer to believe the wrong assumption that bitcoin is designed to back up the fraudsters and scammers, the reason why they need to protect their citizens from using it. But we all know that is not the main reason why they are against bitcoin. The reality is they were triggered by the potentials of bitcoin because they know for sure that once bitcoin will continue to exist and might promote adoption, their fiat currency will lost its power and when that happens, its value will certainly depreciate in value when no longer in use.

Its clearly an indication that the government do not want any asset that they cannot be controlled. And if bitcoin will never be centralized, then they will never come to control it and monitor all its transactions. If they can't benefit it, then they should put an end to it and banning could only be their best option.

I have always considered or imagined that for these countries where crypto currency is banned, the users who know its worth and can invest in it, should be meant to live in their own community. It should bear a semblance to China Town in New York or any where in the world where the Chinese are being recognized.

The government no matter how much it may try, will only do much to restrict its use or users, but with the way the future of tech, that's in regards to AI innovation and the web3 that has been developed on the Blockchain technology, it is only a matter of time before crypto enthusiasts and investors are allowed to enjoy the decentralized money, because like it or not, crypto transactions can be tracked and monitored these days under the watchful eyes of the SEC regulatory agencies.

BTC sure leads as the most trusted coin till date and may not be as much a threat to fiat no matter how much it cost currently or how many users have adopted it for use or investment purposes.
When an idea reeks of excellence, a time will come for it to claim dominance and then the issue of supply and demand will tremendously increase.

All about control, right? Bitcoin's transformational power is overlooked by many because they're purposefully blind. Preconceived assumptions prevent them from seeing decentralized currency's revolutionary potential. And why? Due to threat. Bitcoin defies fiat currency domination. Its obvious that worries powerful people.

When power dynamics are threatened, leaders frequently dread. This goes beyond not understanding bitcoin to not wanting to. Bitcoin's power and decentralization threaten fiat currencies' dominance. Their objectives are so obvious when you delve deep. They prefer throwing away the whole pie if they cant take a slice. Its classic fear of the unknown and control obsession

When citizen decides to take their own fate by their hands I don't know why the elites are afraid. Bit coin gives the opportunity to the citizen to determine the trajectory of his/her own finance without super interference. Well I think people always try to keep others in check so that they may not rise to a height that they assumes too many power. Mind you Finance is power.