Bitcoin Forum

Blockchain is the most disruptive technology since the Internet, and its arrival raises hard questions about how — or if — judges and governments can control it. Should federal agencies, for instance, seek to impose “net neutrality” style rules to promote fairness on blockchain networks? Should treasury departments run mining operations to influence digital currencies like bitcoin?

Read more: http://fortune.com/2018/05/10/blockchain-law/

You have raised a very interesting topic here. The answer is no for bitcoin or for any other similar currency. I am not considering centralized currencies like smart contract tokens or Tether. If we consider currencies like bitcoin and litecoin, trying to get control over it will remain as a big joke for the government watchdogs because it is not possible technically due to the pseudo anonymous nature of blockchain. Without any central location to track, the governments will end up chasing a non existent oasis in the dessert.

However, if you maintain an account with an online wallet provider, then there is a chance of being caught if the company agrees to hand over the user's data to a particular government.

The government can even try to restrict access to the internet within their boundaries the way India tried to ban porn sites. But using tor or vpn, this restriction can be easily bypassed. So it is indeed beyond control of the governments and that's the only bottleneck we are facing towards the adoption.

In general means, they would like to completely shutdown on the things that they arent able to control which blockchain technology or on decentralized coins in the market will really be their priority and figuring it out on how manage it but same as you said this would really like finding an non-existent oasis on a big dessert. There are ways but not totally a big blockage on such increasing adoption of crypto.

I think bitcoin and blockchains are born against all the centralized systems. Lots of depravity that there is a centralized system, either from the economic system or some things that concern the lives of the people. Everything that has a centralized system will always have pros and cons because it is always not balanced with the desired.

For the government they can do is watch slowly people will choose to use blockchain and bitcoin. Because even the decentralized government system will not be able to manage it. And the regulation of bans on bitcoin for a country is only a temporary effect.

Probably few governments would try to completely shut it down, but the question is, would they be able to do it? I believe no! Complete blockage can't be achieved by any means. Yes, if the government starts ruling like North Korea, that every crypto users will be facing firing squad, then probably it will be achieved through fear. But technically it is not possible. There are ways to bypass government security protocol. People will start using those if a government tries to block the crypto currency by force.

What is the possibility of then blocking what they don't have control over. This seem very impossible. Bitcoin is decentralized and very difficult to control.

Yes it can be crippled with fear but same as you said it wouldnt able to completely stop when it comes to technical means where there would be always a transaction which government cant able to monitor on. The thing ive been saying which if they would decide for close exchangers or impose not to have a complete exchange with fiat directly with crypto then this would really be a great problem but it seems this thing is nearly impossible to happen as long government can able to see benefits with crypto they will always consider it to work in other way.

It's true that until now the bitcoin is out of control, and yet I should have the government take advantage of this Blockchain technology, and do not have to try to destroy bitcoin.

Yes, that's another way how government can try to achieve their ban on cryptocurrency. This is how India is planning to implement a complete ban. The central bank has ordered all banks and any regulated financial entities to wind up their positions from crypto market. That includes winding up from providing services to any crypto exchanges. But that's for regulated b2p or b2b entities which government can control. But what they can't control is the p2p exchanges like localbitcoins or paxful. These are not very easy to track if a person keeps the transaction volume within a certain low limit. Huge volume transfers are easy to track, but for low and minimal volume, it is not very easy to track. I believe news ways to exchange will be evolved as per the market dynamics when a government will try to forcefully impose a ban.

Net neutrality is possible to happen by bitcoin but if they control bitcoin that is impossible happen, yes as what have avikz said there are many ways to bypass the net by the government if they want. Until now many countries trying to control bitcoin but they can't, no who one who could blame them due to decentralized technology.
Mining operations have a big influence in bitcoin, it gives a good profit on it.

you can not put a conclusion to it, you/we have to know that without satellite in the outerspace that is being controlled by the government that connects us through different protocols, means that the network can't be control by nobody it is specifically controlled by the government they just don't want to get involved with the blockchain net right now since it is really not a big deal because it is decentralized. there is a big project about trying to make other planets habitual to human beings, so time will come blockchain will be controlled by government whether you like it or not.

It's beyond control like Bitcoin is beyond control. Its protocol and network, along with any future changes, are essentially government-proof because of its decentralized nature. Its use, however, could be regulated, and it would be the same for any blockchain applications that require government intervention.

I don't think the concern with ICOs is deserved, as the SEC has proven that it could stop major operations, with some foreign ICOs even refusing to serve American customers. Smart contracts are meant to make payouts convenient, but whatever it can do can also be done manually, so it doesn't necessarily encourage criminal activities.

It would seem the possibilities are endless and that the blockchain technology could revolutionize a lot of fields, but I don't think it will upend the current legal and social order at all.

What I care about more is how they will established the laws related to the technology and you must be tackling two kinds of law here namely international and domestic laws and the former is the important one if you really want to set some kind of standard for the Blockhchain technology.  Right now we are only seeing individual countries creating some laws to affect only their country if the U.N. formed some kind of treaty on setting up some kind of standard when it comes to Blockchain and a lot of countries are involve then this countries can individually create a framework based on their signed treaty. With these standards taken place this countries will now know what to do.

Compared to other investment alternatives in the market, they are supported and regulated by their respective government departments and agencies. Due to the control and intervention, those investment methods are far secured, reliable, and controlled at some level but the downside can be seen on the price yield. Most of the investment alternatives that are being utilized to date are relatively for long-term perspective. The reason on why individuals tend to shift from the traditional way of investing to the cryptocurrency world is its volatility and decentralized nature. They are able to yield large amounts of income in a shorter amount of time.

Blockchain is a digitized and decentralized public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Stripping away the financial application, blockchain is essentially a bookkeeping platform that can be accessed by anybody on the internet but is owned by nobody. Decentralized nature of blockchain is the main reason its completely beyond government to control blockchain sector. Blockchain technology is very promising and in india several state governments are planning to adopt blockchain technology to make control over property documentation and land registries. Unfortunately there is no effective law is introduced by the government, also in one side of coin they are praising blockchain technology and in other side they are announcing to ban or regulate cryptocurrency which is beyond their control with incomplete information or some lag in their decision.

I doubt most governments are even dumb enough to try to block, ban, or censor crypto. They know better. There's literally no way to stop such an efficient decentralised system that spans across the globe.

Banning and refusing bitcoin in a country is will depend on their perspective, each country and government has their own perspective on bitcoin the others are good while on other hands they think it is giving bad influence to the people that's why they having a protocol which is trying to control bitcoin but they can't.
I really appreciated those countries have just been neutrality by not giving any law about in bitcoin, and luckily I belong in that country so we are lucky enough and we enjoy using it.

Yes it's true! Government cannot control blockchain for nothing computer government in it to arrest block chain as it is computer base system.
Thanks for the links.

Miners have limited ability to destroy Bitcoin or even influence the direction Bitcoin takes. We saw that in the small block and big block debate. The threat of 51% attack is overrated-  even if a country takes over mining capacity and tries to block transactions, I doubt if they will be able to do it indefinitely

All the countries so far are still groping the most elementary forms of anticipation. The ability to see far ahead and the intelligence of specific thinking is the prerequisite. The road to cashless society is long and winding. digital currency issuance will increase efficiency and effectiveness, because it does not need to keep printing physical money, but can circulate money in digital form.

Not only that, but there isn't really a reason for them to do so. Bitcoin isn't a threat but will turn out to function as solid cross-border tool allowing them to conduct all types of transactions in a safe and impossible to alter manner.

Bitcoin's advantage is that it is open of nature, and its ecosystem is easy to control. In the end I think the conspiracy theories are quite exaggerated and we'll see a more overall friendly Bitcoin regulatory framework.

People keep blaming Bitcoin for not being anonymous and whatnot, but this is actually one of the main reasons it won't be facing harsh restrictions in the coming years. In other words, it's what makes Bitcoin only stronger.

In the same way people should be happy that Bitcoin isn't being used much as a currency. It makes sure governments don't feel threatened by Bitcoin, and that also leads to less hostility in the end.

One of the most interesting paragraphs on the article: "Drawing on the model described by Lessig in Code, the authors point out law is not the only tool to regulate blockchains. Governments can also employ more subtle tools, like market operations or social norms, to shape the direction of the technology. For instance, they could participate in mining operations on blockchain networks, like bitcoin, in order to control prices and vote on coding decisions."

I think they are already taking this path, in order to have enough crypto coins to maintain some control over the market. Besides, mining or acquiring coins is not the only way. For instance, in Russia, there's a new law regarding exchanges so all of them must ask for personal data to their users and provide the data to the government if asked.
There are many ways to control the blockchain-based "money" from governments. Maybe it is quite difficult to control the bitcoin technology, but they can control all the other necessary tech to have and use this coin, as exchanges or wallets. If you don't have a decentralized exchanger, then you are not using a decentralized coin in a decentralized way. That's the hand they're playing, I'm afraid.
Even so, new exchanges will be appearing, but they will be probably considered illegal, so the risk of having your coins in there is going to begin to be too high, due to the possibility of them being closed or banned. Nevertheless, this is going to take time for the governments to agree in one action.

Good debate, people. I think this is a book we should read...

What makes bitcoin unique is its decentralized nature being uncontrolled by one sole authority. Though there are certain situations wherein the use of bitcoin can be regulated, like when there is a company that is between you and your use of bitcoin. But it can only be regulated at a certain limit. They cannot totally take control of the inner workings of bitcon with its blockchain technology.

Government cannot restrict the access. Reason why porn websites were ban were because there IP addresses were ban. When the DNS of any system tried to look up for such websites notice would go to the government which sent an error message or whatever message. Same thing cannot happen for bitcoin because it does not uses any IP addresses. We have our bitcoin clients which use to create P2P network with every person. There is no IP address at all existing in the crypto world as far as I know so how could they ban this?

Yes, now the blockchain technology is compared to the revolutionary technology. As one of the leading enthusiasts ( how much the Internet has made it convenient and fast to exchange information, as well as the blockchain technology has done for trust), this is the Foundation of this technology.

Government is already aware on that stuff where they do figure out that they cant really completely ban bitcoin when it comes to network restriction. They cant control anything that goes thru the network and thats the benefit of blockchain technology which is commonly used by cryptocurrencies. It way out of control when it comes to technical aspect but in some areas government could make an involvement when we do talk about exchangers.

Such an interesting topic is discussed right here.