Bitcoin Forum

I'm absoluttely not a troll but there is one thought I would like to share...

It's obvious we won't see soon any government jumping into the bitcoin era. But let's suppose they do have some interest and they could pretend to do so... they would never be sure that 51% of the bitcoin community's hasshing power won't change the rules if they dissagree with them.

That is something that gold can't change... GOLD WILL ALWAYS BE GOLD, LOVED OR NOT, HIGLY PRICED OR NOT, BUT Bitcoin CAN CHANGE on a 51% stronger will...

Your thoughts?...

Government jumping in?  Like trying to require social security numbers?  What would be the purpose?  Why waste the effort in convincing 51% when you only have to convince ~275 "representatives" to make it illegal?

Assuming it survives making it illegal, the government would then be pointless & powerless.

Although majority rule allows changes, they will most likely be minor.  Think DDOS vulnerability fixes & multisig features.  Major changes will most likely be easier by forking & starting your own currency instead.

My thoughts:

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/gold-consfication-15-sep-2010.jpg

How well can you hide your gold if the image I posted happens again? And how well can you fool a metal detector in an airport trying to run taking all your wealth with you?

Now ask the questions with bitcoins

Are you serious?

Please don't tell me you meant this as you wrote it.

Having >50% hashing power doesn't let someone change the rules; that requires >50% of all nodes to agree.

How did you discover that surprising 'fact'?

Nope, only miners get a vote.

If someone had >50% hashing power, they couldn't just start rewarding themselves more than 50 BTC, as those blocks would be rejected by honest nodes. No?

All you can do is rewrite the last x blocks. ie. edit and reverse transactions. If you reverse your own recent payments you can double spend and if you reverse other peoples it will obviously cause mayhem and totally undermine the whole bitcoin system. You cannot change the block rewards, give yourself free coins, or steal anyone elses money as you will never have their private keys to sign transactions.

There are some truth to this, there was an incident early in development it was discovered that some hackers had 20 something billion Bitcoins in their wallet, the system back then didn't account for more than 21 Million coins in existence, so couldn't do anything.

The developers re-wrote the client and asked all miners to upgrade, the 20 billions coins the hackers had became obsolete.

Oh?

It depends on the type of governments you are talking about....
The banker sockpuppets ruling over nation states... nfw.

But regional goverments apart from big city ones might do it if bitcoin gets huge. If bitcoin were to play a major role in the transition to distributed republics that would be it. But it is still questionable if bitcoin were to be replaced till then.

The cancer is the possibility to use coercion to obtain something. And this possibility lies in political power.

How do banks create this boom and bust cycle: by manipulating currencies to their interests. How can they do that: because we the people are forced to use one national currency. And who forces us to use one currency? .... there're you go.

But don't take my word for it, look at history. Have a look at the Roman empire and its fall, for example.

Governments are nothing more than human organisations, like any corporation. They thus have the same incentives. But not the same means. They can use force, we let them use force by believing in the false dichotomy public-private, and in the lies according to which corporations are only motivateed by evil greed while governments serve a "greater good". These lies are pushed by people who do not want you to understand the real source of our problems, and continue to grant them power over our lives for our own good.

But yeah, bitcoin pretty much take a great deal of power away from governments, so we're good. :)

Yeah, local democracy (size of a city) are a good alternative to the current big nations-big governments :)

Once bitcoin value doesn't plummet after the government makes it illegal, then it will prove how powerless the government today is.  Without control of the currency, it will be difficult to collect taxes, keep fiat from inflating, and fund itself.  I'm sure it will re-emerge, but it will be a lot, lot smaller.

You are correct.  The only way 50+% of miners can override non mining nodes is if there aren't any miners left on the original ruleset to process transactions.  However, they could drastically slow things down until the difficulty readjusted with 50% leaving.  If enough miners remained with the original ruleset, we would then have two blockchains and everybody with coins before the fork could use those coins twice: once on each new chain.

Edit:
Although if you received the coins on one chain, you could rebroadcast the transaction on the other chain and take those coins too since you have the private key for the destination addres and the transaction is properly signed.

Well we are avoiding my point... Perhaps this quote is the most relevant to my initial thought... If government cant control what the currency is, and the power is in the hand of people, they will never be able to trust that Bitcoin will always be what Bitcoin should always be. Gold will always be gold. Useless as it is, but gold. All I mean is that even if they would love the whole bitcoin idea they would be suspicious of a possible INMENSLY HUGE scam made by 51% of nodes... And given whats in stake, this could happen...

Unless a United Nations Hashing Power (UNHP), controled the 51% ;-)

Without knowing any facts, I confidently state that the U.S. government could easily spin up 51% of the hashing power and node number should they choose to.

You sound just like most modern economists  ;D

The futurist in me wants to remind everyone that goverment is a pre-internet civilisation tool.
Kind of like pottery.

Or like any priest! God can stop the genocide, he just doesnt wanna...

they are rich and resourceul enough, certainly, to churn out a ton of asics.. the design is not too complicated

They probaby already have them running simulations to attack the network.  :o

You guys give the government way too much credit...

I agree.

They are always 10 years about simple things they are AWARE of.

By the time they muster any kind reasonable policy towards BTC their fiat currencies will be crumbling. They think they can ignore the financial crisis both (EU and US), print money and shift the burden to the regular folks - this time it's different; with a click of the mouse people can flee inflation.

BTC is a time bomb, a delayed, but certain death sentence to today's corrupt governments.

And then they push the Internet Kill Switch™. Still not bothered? How about the power grid?

It won't make any difference as long as there isn't worldwide infrastructure in place. We need community networks and decentralized power generation in conjuncture with decentralized manufacturing. Anything above the physical layer is meaningless as they are ultimately just as much in control.

If you wanna play with the big boys you better be bold enough to go all the way and participate in an effort to replace the entire civilization. I'm sick of people thinking that BTC is their messiahs or something. It won't mean anything as long it isn't done all the way through. Only a small minority even on this forums does comprehend that.

Bitcoin can play a role in this paradigm shift. But it isn't even essential.

Don't forget emp nukes in the stratosphere. Then there is always all out nuclear warfare. Where are your precious bitcoins now?  ;D

I have silver, too. ;)

Well, I hope you can eat it, because everything and everyone else will be dead.  ;)

If I'm actually the last person on the planet, I'll be sure to turn out the lights.  That's not too likely, though. Especially in an EMP-only attack, and even all out nuclear warfare won't kill everyone. Silver has been selected as the medium of exchange repeatedly, over the course of human history, and it would again. In the meantime, knowledge is much more valuable, and I've been sure to cultivate that as well.

I have bullets.  </argument>

Heh... Precious metals: Silver, gold, brass and lead.

See you on "The Road."

I hope you're not offended if I say "I hope I don't." ;)

If you don't have electricity and internet, then all your gold is likely going to be counterfeit anyway. Seriously though, to get back on topic, I'm not worried about any of these scenarios, at least globally speaking. The extinction level event is for the way banking has been done. Precious metals will also be worthless compared to Bitcoin. I see the future to be not so much governments jumping into Bitcoin, but Bitcoin jumping into governments. They won't have a choice but to use Bitcoin if they want to stay relevant.

Electric apocaliptic events wouls afect the whole economy which oviously relays on pcs so the impact on BTC is unrelevant. But what do you mean by jump into the governments? (get the irony but not sure  you say so)

I just mean that governments don't need to officially adopt Bitcoin to use it. Bitcoin will find its way into government use simply by its utility starting with campaign funding, espionage and diplomacy and eventually into mainstream uses like "entertainment" expenses. Eventually, our vices become our bread and butter.

I did not mention apocalyptic evens.

My point is: If bitcoin were to become a threat to governmental power structure and the economy is crumbling already why should they hesitate to take it down with em if all it takes is the push of a button?
People in here like to talk about revolutionary acts and dilute themselves by thinking they could accomplish something without owning infrastructure.

There are numerous ways for a government to bring down an established bitcoin economy if it is not well protected. No way to list them all.
But there are almost no ways if it is.

Because an EMP would be an apocalyptic event. The entire country is too dependent on our electronic network to just bring it down like that. When have you known a government to willfully commit suicide like that?

You do realize that shutting down the internet would anhilate the US economy.  We are talking mass riots in every major city, disruption of commerce on the scale of trillions.  When some of those riots turn  bad it is going to be city wide looting.  What is the govt going to do then start executing people in the street?  All this because of Bitcoin.

The sheer lunacy of it is there are nodes outside the US, so what is next the US govt launches ICBM on every country who has internet connectivity.  The end of civilization as we know it, deaths of billions, and in the counter attack the destruction of the very government who acted to stop the threat that Bitcoin is to the government.

Probably not.  Bitcoin may be marginalized, it may be routinely attacked but it will continue to exist.  Just like any other technology that has gone global and is in the hands of the people you can't put the genie back in the bottle.  Note: this doesn't mean the price of Bitcoin will go up.   Its usage could shrink massively but it isn't going away.

I definitely wouldn't say obsolete. There is always going to be a demand for an entity that safehouses peoples wealth. Whether that is in the form of cash money or a bitcoin file, they will always serve a purpose.

Even the Third Reich didn't intend to destroy themselves.

Well, pissing in the face of the biggest guy in the prison yard will get you killed, but it's a little bit of a stretch to call it suicide. ;)

Just for clarification: I wasn't speaking about TPTB using an EMP to kill of BTC, not necessarily.

Depending on the kind and magnitude some of these might apply:
Propaganda, getting the ISPs to block the protocol, making it "illegal", cutting off private internet users, hired thugs searching for "illicit" software, cutting of the power to certain communities should they exist, etc...

It is impossible to list them all and the more severe the situation the more severe a crackdown can be, while at the same time the easier is it for bitcoiners to defend against the crackdown. My statement is just that should there be a severe economic crisis it is very likely that measures would be taken which would require the bitcoin community to own it's on network and power infrastructure. (That would be the classical great depression style and social riots scenario)

I'm actually 100% behind you on this. For a network designed to be decentralized, the internet still is frighteningly centralized. We need to finish the job.

I agree. I think it will evolve in waves with the network technologists always striving for more freedom (decentralisation) and the "others" striving for more oppression (centralisation).

These two forces influencing internet evolution (undercurrents) could be with us for a long time, and have been already in other fields. Every time the oppressive Centralisers (I do not think there is a benign kind) bring in regulated 'solutions' the Networkers evolve technology to a higher level that is resistant and essentially wait for the next move. CJDNS, mesh-networking, Freenet I2P and etc, there are lots of projects and ideas out there that will blossom into any new niches once the next clamp-down arrives.

Networkers versus Centralisers.

However, I think that ultimately the centralisers are doomed now since they have chosen to take the battle onto the Networkers turf, the Network. Take a look at Argentina for the future, Neal Stephenson's Hollow State concept is shaping into a palpable reality there. It is great to see impotent rage expressed by the technological ignorami of the extreme statist bent when their little Hitler fantasies cannot be fulfilled.

Well DHS did just buy 1 billion hollow point bullets :D

I beg to differ. Banks came into existance based on cash fiat money.

Why would banks not come into existance based on bitcoins?

I can see plenty of use for a decent bank, doing business in bitcoins, can't you? (Interests, security)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38544.0

Ahh. The "Pirateat40" model.

Such actions would lead to massive popular unrest, not even China dares turn off the internet completely and Bitcoin can use TOR and other stuff to pass as anything.

As for the grid; a nation without electricity will be raped economically and militarily within a year.


Bitcoin could survive even EMP on a few shielded hard drives and be rebooted later.

As has been said here: Bitcoin will jump onto governments.