Goverment can literally destroy bitcoin whenever they want

[thecodebear]

One of the points of Bitcoin is decentralization and the fact that a government or whatever entity CAN'T destroy it. Like literally can't destroy it. The biggest attack a government could do on Bitcoin would be to ban it in the country, which some countries have done. But there's like 200 countries so Bitcoin will continue around the rest of the world wherever it isn't banned. That would simply hurt adoption but not destroy it.

I suppose a government could try a 51% attack, which would actually require them to run 101% of the entire bitcoin network. I mean first off they would have to spend tax payer dollars on attacking the financial industry which would probably be illegal in most countries. Also they wouldn't be able to do that with cloud mining because there aren't enough ASIC miners floating out there in cloud mining services to double the size of the entire bitcoin mining network. So they would have to buy their own miners to double the size of the network, but if they tried to do that ASIC miner inventory would run very low like in 2017 and prices would skyrocket. So it would take a long time and it would cost much more money than you would think based on the current price of miners. And the bitcoin hashrate is increasing quickly most of the time so the longer it took for the government to get their hands on all those miners the harder it would become. Then they'd still need to pay for the many many millions of dollar a day of electricity required to run those miners to attack the network.

But let's say some oppressive gov't (which is needed to be able to legally spend money on attacking a finance sector) does spend all this money over all this time and actually were able to implement the attack. The network could just fork in that event, which I'm sure there would be a consensus about if there was a major concerted attack by a gov't actor to destroy bitcoin, and just like that all that money would have been wasted and Bitcoin would still be going strong.

At this point Bitcoin is by far the most secure network in human history and it would take a truly global scale (not national scale) attack to put it in jeopardy and even then it could be mitigated. Bitcoin was crushable in its early years but not anymore. It's like the end of Terminator 3 when John Conner realizes that skynet isn't running from some central location on hardware that can be destroyed, its just software running on computers all over the world, it can't be destroyed - that's Bitcoin.

The only way to actually "destroy" Bitcoin would be to convince people not to touch it. Which is why that has been the major strategy of people who feel threatened by Bitcoin. It's not a technical attack by a psychological attack. This is why you hear endlessly from certain people in governments or certain people in the financial sector who say its only for criminals and its rat poison or a fraud or a ponzi or whatever absurd lie they tell. And sure it works because you hear plenty of other people parrot what they say. But over time more and more people continue to join Bitcoin so this attack is so far a losing battle for them, but its the only option they have since they aren't smart enough to simply embrace Bitcoin.

[Casdinyard]

I know that sometimes it looks like the government is trying to suppress this or that or go against a certain group of people or a certain trend, but most politicians care only about their public image. Banning Bitcoin would show them as puppets to bankers or as people who are afraid of outflow of capital from their country. In other words, it would make them look weak. It's better to tax the shit out of Bitcoin than ban it, as it will automatically scare some people away from it and bring some money to the treasury.

Sadly this is what they are doing right now, instead of banning bitcoin they are putting a lot of taxes on it which will force out the people to use it due to extensive taxation. It is true that the government has the ability to manipulate the market in theory, they can just buy a huge amount in the market without us knowing but that would also affect their economy, and just a negation from the tax they have imposed. But from what I am seeing now, from the movement in the market I know anonymous people have already occupied the market and that means they are the ones who's owning it.

[online73]

Hello everybody. My opinion is that the majority of participants in all the governments of the world strive only for their own gain - this is very simply proved every year by the widening gap between the rich and the poor, Bitcoin is a tidbit to destroy it. As for if these people would like to destroy bitcoin, this is also a very simple answer, and here one does not need to have a better education in the world. Look at the countries that banned Bitcoin, - this is the same as I say early tomorrow morning - the sun, I forbid you to rise, let it always be night. This is nonsense - Bitcoin cannot be prohibited.