Bitcoin Forum

Let's say bitcoin is going well and 20 years later (pseudo, it can be even 10 years) it's about to slap in the face of dollar and euro. Indirectly, the United States and European countries.

The goverments will just sit on their soft seats? No. What can they do to finish bitcoin?

They can't do anthing agains't a decentralized currency, I will be able to send coins to anybody if I want.

https://i.imgur.com/Uq1fPLL.gif
The same thing they can do to file sharing and torrenting.
Breaking their own laws, bribing foreign governments, legal suits, lobbying, passing laws, massive propaganda campaigns has been futile in combating file sharing,

https://i.imgur.com/cruVppn.gif

Bitcoin is alegal and sovereign and doesn't care what governments do. All they can do is drive it into the grey and darkmarkets where it will thrive. Most governments understand this and thus are trying to regulate it so they can control the fringes (onramps and offramps) instead of losing all control and driving it into the darkmarket completely which will encourage more people to participate in the largest economy worldwide.

Pandoras box has opened. You cannot kill the idea of blockchain technology and decentralized currencies. Governments will have to deal with this reality and will probably focus more on sales tax and VAT rather than income taxes in the future.

It depends how far a country is willing to go, you will be surprised what can be achieved if you have enough power.

thepiratebay isn't fully decentralized and it has sustained numerous attacks from the most powerful countries with the greatest of motivations.
2 days ago one of their datacenters were raided illegally by bribed and corrupt agents and a day later mirror sites and cached versions were online and business as ussual.
additionally, this attack has spurred this -
http://venturebeat.com/2014/12/10/bittorrent-announces-project-maelstrom-the-first-torrent-based-browser/

Decentralized torrent browser.  Any attacks on Bitcoin will simply make it stronger and more resilient.

Attacks can and will occur, although I believe Bitcoin will always continue to fight another day.

But in case of bitcoins, they have nothing to raid. They might already be too late to shut it down now.

Nothing really to do lol :o Unless they stop the internet which will definitly won't happen. even if they can do it by closing some ports or something ... I dought that It will stop on every country. some people just don't give a shit

20 years from now no one will be trying to shut down bitcoin and attempting it would be as unthinkable as shutting down the Internet is today (excepting a handful of marginalized violent 3rd world dictators). This technology is simply too useful.

In 20 years economic policy will be set by transparent blockchain consensus rather than by local governments. In 20 years all national governments will be thought of as localized, because they are.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WMQg546agpU

It's not like they're not doing that right now anyway, laws are intended for the people, not for who legislate. But you're right, pandora box has opened, once the markets realize this there's nothing they can do to stop it. Anyway banks and governments are a thing of the past, corporations are going to rule the world from the end of this decade, and they care about technological advancement because it makes their establishment more efficient and they continously have to grow.

P2P file sharing exist since 15 years.
It's the highest trusted system to exchange files freely.

And when you add money in this ... you obtain a think better than the 100 years of human declined economy.

the TRUST of the real process without flaw or manipulation.

http://www.lafkon.net/tc/

The attacks on TPB are nothing..  The gov will not lose it's power from TPB..  They will do everything and anything to keep their power.

I have warned you many times..  keep some bitcoin completely hidden from everyone.  Govs have many time in the past stolen the wealth of the public.  America has too, you are no different.  Be prepared.. war is on the horizen.. it could be avoided but it is doubtful.

Those in control would seem to follow the samson option before giving up their power... 

lol 20 years.

Just like Govt now control the banks through central bank, govt will control big bitcoin companies though some set up body and thereby controlling a big bitcoin stash.

I guess the government will go after users of bitcoins and not the Bitcoin network as such.
It is far easier to do that - shut down bank access to any bitcoin sites, prevent bitcoin companies from developing, etc.

Bitcoin will be the most important thing on the market... And government will still chase it...

They certainly can't shut it down completely but they certainly can by force put a stop to all the exchangers. That means make it illegal to trade btc to real money and vice versa. So if i want to buy food for example and i only have bitcoin, then i will ended up having problem. This reduces the appeal and demand. Like i said no way they can shut it down but just makes your life difficult until you give up.

It's also illegal to drive faster than the posted speed limit.

Plenty of people find ways to do it anyway while managing their risk of adverse consequences.

It will be easier to bypass laws that restrict Bitcoin usage than to bypass traffic laws - after all, censorship resistance is just a software problem.

Exactly and this is the reason I love so much bitcoin concept.
There is no centralization here, some central, main bitcoin office or CEO, so nobody really can stop us!
OK, government can make difficult for us use bitcoin in real, offline world, but online world they can't control, fully.

Bitcoin could still be 51% attacked by a government
who builds a mega mining farm.  What are the possible remedies to that? 

I think that if government declares it illegal to accept bitcoin, that is the end of bitcoin in that country.  No one is going to risk prison merely to accept bitcoin. The consensus will be unsustainably small, there will be no one to trade with except a few other extreme risk takers.  It'll be like 2010 except there's far more risk and far less benefit (the price will not increase again like it did back then).  End result is bitcoin dies in that country.

It still flourishes elsewhere of course, and the iron-fist country forfeits economic growth.  The more countries that ban it, the more a lax country can benefit by allowing it. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking bitcoin can locally withstand the iron fist.

Make their own, and then differentiate their product enough to attract people to use it over Bitcoin
That said they cannot finish Bitcoin off directly due to its nature.
(Oh less internet censorship/very very strict punishments for its use)

I understand that you're not willing to put in the work needed to make Bitcoin's resistance to local oppression more robust.

You're making an error when you assume that just because you're not willing to do it that nobody else is willing to do the work either.

They can't "shut it down". They would have to:

1) Raid every single person using Bitcoin (imposible)
2) Shut down the entire internet (stupid idea)

So yeah, they can't stop it same as they can't stop people sharing p2p and they've been trying for decades now.

Deep down the conspiracy theorist in me says they want this to happen.  The ability to track all value movements across the globe.

I don't think there's anything that can be done. What did you have in mind?

Let's say a dictator declares, "anyone who accepts any currency other than the state currency is subject to arrest and 10 years in prison".

It doesn't matter what awesome crypto tech we come up with. It will never see the light of day. Law enforcement shows up at the shop, if the merchant lets anyone walk out of there without having paid in the state currency, he goes to prison.  All merchants who are not otherwise breaking the law, being rational, will not risk 10 years in prison just to bypass chargebacks and 2% fees.

Maybe you have some creative solution for this.

Granted I think this is all hypothetical, I don't expect any first-world economy to actually pass such a law. I'm just saying the technique would be effective against bitcoin.

It's a very solid view. I think it could be like a an alpha version of a future digital currency (not bitcoin) like a test. It's a valid theory.
It's still better than fiat money tho lol.

I dunno, look at what happened in that film equilibrium, if people keep giving gov power we might all have to learn super kung fu to keep bitcoin alive ;D

Can I ask in which country you live, and which ones you've visited?

The reason I ask is because in my (admittedly limited) experience outside the G7, what I've observed is that as regimes become more dictatorial the willingness of the population to find creative solutions for bypassing the dictates increases along with the totalitarianism.

It's not a concept that people who have lived in relatively free countries would be familiar with, and it's something that it's easier to understand after having witnessed it.

I don't disagree with you here.

There probably aren't many places where the necessary conditions exist.  There has to be both a relatively good state-run system, and a government that can make quick and arbitrary threats of violence.

First world countries can't just arbitrarily declare 10 year prison sentences for anything (eg eating a banana).  And dictatorships usually have terrible state-run systems where the motive for people to risk prison is fairly high.