Governments will never jump in...

[Narydu]

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?...

[nevafuse]

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.

[Polvos]

Your thoughts?...

My thoughts:



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

[unclescrooge]

Governments LOVE Bitcoin. For decades (if not centuries) they've been impotent against the banks' enormous power. Now all that can change

Are you serious?

[Matthew N. Wright]

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

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

[kinghajj]

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

[FreeMoney]

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'?

[notme]

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

Nope, only miners get a vote.

[kinghajj]

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?

[BlackBison]

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.

[ice_chill]

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

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.

[memvola]

A government's role is to represent their people and help keep society somewhat organised.

Oh?

[ElectricMucus]

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.

[unclescrooge]

Governments LOVE Bitcoin. For decades (if not centuries) they've been impotent against the banks' enormous power. Now all that can change

Are you serious?

And why not? A government's role is to represent their people and help keep society somewhat organised. The legacy banking system has become a cancer that undermines civilisation. Wealth gets transferred from productive honest people to the clever but lazy and amoral bankers via deliberate boom-bust cycles. Bitcoin provides a unique opportunity for a major upset in the status quo, and the status quo is quite frankly bullshit. Let's just hope nobody gets killed in the process.

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.

[unclescrooge]

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.

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

[nevafuse]

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

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

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.

[notme]

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?

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.

[Narydu]

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

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.

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% ;-)

[axus]

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.

[BlackBison]

Without knowing any facts, I confidently state...

You sound just like most modern economists