Bitcoin Forum

Serious discussion

What would happen if a Small country did officially adopt BTC as legal tender, or a large country make a special economic zone where BTC is legal tender

Would this give said small country a massive advantage being a nationally early adopter, essentially validating bitcoin/LTC/TRC, have bought a lot up and then see it rocket, so they will massively gain by their decision.

Will they attract many talented people, who want to be paid in, and pay with BTC or LTC, and want minimal govt interference?

I think if a small country was smart, it would buy a lot of BTC and LTC and maybe even TRC and then declare them legal tender, in their geographic area/sphere of sovereignty,

They would probably make a 10 -1000 fold return on the influx of capital to LTC/TRC and BTC by doing this!!!!!

I think they would want to buy a lot first, and have a pretty good mining operation as a way to collect tax, and get an exchange ready and then let it be a co- currency with what ever they are using now and let the citizens decide.

Sure taxation may suffer (but their mining which is now much more valuable with subside), and they just have to hold the LTC/BTC/TRC, and there would be imho a lot of crowd sourced services appearing in said country, as well as diminished fees and bank operation costs

The more I think about this some country should/will try this.

My opinion is that a country could and probably should create its own blockchain :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=156329.msg1657420#msg1657420

No country can adopt Bitcoin as a replacement for fiat because Bitcoins cannot be controlled or inflated by government as way of monetary regulation.

It might be possible in far future, when socialistic government is capable of supporting himself by owning nations resources and factories. The government must be businessman himself, both to better serve social justice causes and to support military.

No country could adopt it, but possibly the population of country could.   They could buy sell and accept payments from their cell phones, locking out the government.

I think you misunderstand the problem. Democracies crash because voters determine policy. And voters always eventually demand that their government shovel more and more free money at them. Governments that resist are voted out. Governments that try to comply have only two ways of shoveling money at the voters: (1) confiscate the savings of the "evil rich" (the Cyprus approach) or (2) run the printing presses 24/7, thus devaluing everybody's savings through inflation (the U.S. approach). Bitcoins stifle both solutions, so any government adopting bitcoins would be unable to shovel more and more money at the voters, so it would dissatisfy the voters, so it would be voted out.

As Pogo once famously said, "We have met the enemy and they are us."

I think it would make the most sense for a country to start its own blockchain, setup each independent unit (tribe, state, city, county, etc.) as a miner, and spend those coins into existence from the bottom up.

What a government can do is 'accept & recognize' bitcoin. Working it into it's taxes (anyone who gets paid/trades full/partially in bitcoin), wages (civil jobs), etc, etc

Once that's done then more and more people will accept btc as wages (see how it compares with rise/fall vs fiat), and then private companies will start following, moving their trade into btc and offering wages as btc.

Though tbh, I imagine it will go the other way around - private companies moving into trading with btc, and people asking for btc as wages, then eventually the government would catch on.

And yes, I think it's fair to say that any government adopting bitcoin would be at a huge advantage over other countries until a majority of countries used it.

Especially the first country that jumps onto it.

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Example, in the UK, if I 'as the government', for an experiment, told 10,000 civil staff that they can opt in to get their wages in bitcoin. That their wages would in fact be going up in value, and all the other tasty benefits. The rise in value is the 'carrot' for the early adopters.

For the late country adopters, the fact that so many other countries and corporations would be now be using bitcoin (and all the other tasty benefits) would be the main benefit (in that trade can be done MUCH faster and is much safer with bitcoin).

A 'late adopter' would be classed as joining when the value was level'd or level'ing out properly.

It is all about control. Governments cannot efficiently control Bitcoin because it is designed against such control. They could not see and control citizens bank accounts and money by taking the taxes from bank accounts or freezing accounts of whistleblowers like Wikileaks. Current governments will not make Bitcoin as a parallel or sole currency to fiat or electronic money.