What would happen if BTC was Banned?

[nichu]

you cant ban bitcoin period. it can be made illegal by legislation , but it depends upon the jurisdictions. so its not going to happen .

[Hannu]

Hello,

Hope not becourse bitcoin is future! "Terrorism" is not good enough of explain to ban bitcoins. -Theres lot of money in it.
In Finland banks try to put they own qr-code system on markets

[HarHarHar9965]

Absolutely I still use Bitcoin, who cares? As far as there are any people still accept it then if bitcoin got banned is nonsense at all..
Many things got banned and they are still in uses..

Even I don't think it will get banned. Already many european countries tried to take out Bitcoin usage. But they were failed in that.Now all companies accepting bitcoin Even they passing a salary also through bitcoin. In these cases  I don;t think Bitcoin will banned and all.

[n2004al]

What do you guys think it would happen if all the governments in the world declared bitcoin to be illegal?
How do you think the community would react? What could be the possible solutions?

This matter is treated even in other threads and there had to many thoughts about the possible reaction in this (very improbable) situation. I think that a first very possible scenario will be the development very much of the bitcoin black market. As it is verified for example in Russia. The Russian Government has banned bitcoin and one member of Government has make even an extreme proposal regarding those who use bitcoin: to put in jail. But nothing has changed. This market exist again and increases every day more. It will be less or more the same situation like it was before bitcoin become known from the normal people. Before this situation there were time that was the official currency in Dark Web. As it is again even in these days.

Practically, I think, it will be a lost war from the those who has fight bitcoin. Like it was the alcohol in the '30 years when the USA Government prohibited the use (drink) of alcohol in order to impede various social an personal (not few) problems connected with it. The result was the same like the above in Russia. The increase of the amount of alcohol used. This gave a good lesson to the USA Government and later them has revoked this impediment.

The same policy is in discussion in our days about the drugs (the ones who are considered as easy ones).

Then could be verified a second one but with very few probability scenario. Continues war for all, with all the possible tools, in all the possible ways and very severe penalization. I don't think that this scenario could be possible to be verified in reality even if can exist theoretically. To many obstacles to be verified and first of all very doubtful in its possible results.

[Betwrong]

What do you guys think it would happen if all the governments in the world declared bitcoin to be illegal?
How do you think the community would react? What could be the possible solutions?

Firstly I don't think Western governments are so stupid to ban entirely such thing as Bitcoin. Actually to ban anything in the world of free choice is ridiculous. But if it will happen then the community will react adequately - it will just ignore the ban.

[HostSurf]

I would probably hold the ones I already own and when it's comes to a point where Bitcoin is so much worth, that I don't have to work for the rest of my life, I would move to a country where it hasn't been made illegal and sell my bitcoins. At least some part of it and I would just live in that country.

[btckold24]

If they didnt ban it when all the silk road crap went down then there is no way they would
ban it. I dont know why some countries even bother trying to ban it now.

[Snorek]

Is there a realistic reason why bitcoin could be banned? Because for now it is more like  governments are inventing excuses to put bitcoin in bad light and then ban it; for example:
it was used to pay ransom (once or twice) in Thailand and voila - bitcoin is banned there. I wonder how many times FIAT was used to pay ransom and nobody ever thought of banning it.

[1Referee]

Is there a realistic reason why bitcoin could be banned? Because for now it is more like  governments are inventing excuses to put bitcoin in bad light and then ban it; for example:
it was used to pay ransom (once or twice) in Thailand and voila - bitcoin is banned there. I wonder how many times FIAT was used to pay ransom and nobody ever thought of banning it.

Governments can't do anything beside comming up with nonsense sanctions to push Bitcoin back. If they want to ban Bitcoin because Bitcoin was demanded as ransom by some criminals, then why don't governments ban Diamonds that are used to finance war in certain countries, why is the trade in physical gold not sanctioned because you can get cash money nearly everywhere for it within 5 minutes.

The main thing is that these shitty governments see Bitcoin as a threat. And yes, Bitcoin can be a threat for them. But the advantage is much greater than the disadvantage if the governments were really caring about their people and their economy. They want to rule everything with iron fist, and don't want a "small" and fairly new digital currency to mess with that

[xuan87]

I think the community will be angry, its like the government rob the money from us

but i think government will have difficulty to banned bitcoin, if the government banned it, it will cause a lot of problems especially the economic and stock will drop down

[johnyj]

I believe there is such kind of possibility, since fiat money is taxation. If bitcoin is widely used, it will reduce the ability of taxation of the government, this is hurting them big and they will find a way to stop it

However if some small country accepted it as official currency, then the situation will be totally different. First this small country will immediately become an economy of 6.6 billion USD, which is much larger than many small countries. Second there will be international law protecting bitcoin from being abused by other governments

So let's wait for the 1st official currency moment, Atlantis is the first one but still lack of formal acknowledgement from UN

[BTCdoctor]

I wouldnt mind and still use it.

[elizabethqueen]

It has banned in several countries like russia and china.
And you know until right now they are still using bitcoin. So do if bitcoin banned universally, it will be the same. We will use bitcoin until whenever.

[Etoiliste]

if bitcoin gets banned dogcoin will rise to take his place

[erikalui]

It would be another case of Liberty Reserve where the owner was arrested and the online wallet was banned from the internet resulting in lacs of users losing about thousands of their dollars due to this. The Government here again would try to auction those bitcoins and consider all the money as theirs. Since I lost in LR, I don't want to again lose with BTC.

[spooderman]

miners would face a lot of difficulty.

[Daniel91]

It would be another case of Liberty Reserve where the owner was arrested and the online wallet was banned from the internet resulting in lacs of users losing about thousands of their dollars due to this. The Government here again would try to auction those bitcoins and consider all the money as theirs. Since I lost in LR, I don't want to again lose with BTC.

I don't see how you can compare Liberte reserve and Bitcoin?
Liberte reserve was Internet company, registered under the law, with owners, workers, office etc.
Bitcoin is not company, have no owner, workers, office, only unknown founder and many very happy anonymous users.
What any government can do in such case?
Block Internet?
I don't think so.

[Slark]

It would be another case of Liberty Reserve where the owner was arrested and the online wallet was banned from the internet resulting in lacs of users losing about thousands of their dollars due to this. The Government here again would try to auction those bitcoins and consider all the money as theirs. Since I lost in LR, I don't want to again lose with BTC.

Entirely different case. Liberty dollar was commercial project to establish an alternative US currency. They were prosecuted under counterfeiting laws because the silver coins allegedly resembled US currency.
Bitcoin is not trying to replace or resemble any existing currency, there are not physical banknotes or coins. It is just another 'foreign currency' for US government.

[erikalui]

It would be another case of Liberty Reserve where the owner was arrested and the online wallet was banned from the internet resulting in lacs of users losing about thousands of their dollars due to this. The Government here again would try to auction those bitcoins and consider all the money as theirs. Since I lost in LR, I don't want to again lose with BTC.

I don't see how you can compare Liberte reserve and Bitcoin?
Liberte reserve was Internet company, registered under the law, with owners, workers, office etc.
Bitcoin is not company, have no owner, workers, office, only unknown founder and many very happy anonymous users.
What any government can do in such case?
Block Internet?
I don't think so.

The owner was arrested for money laundering as LR did not have any ID proof required to open a wallet. Similar case is with bitcoins which support money laundering as people who own wallets don't need to provide any proof except for an email address.

I know that one is a company and bitcoin is a currency but the purpose of both was the same. Anything that is not government regulated or recognized can shut down without notice. Correct me if I am wrong but bitcoins were recently banned in Russia.

It would be another case of Liberty Reserve where the owner was arrested and the online wallet was banned from the internet resulting in lacs of users losing about thousands of their dollars due to this. The Government here again would try to auction those bitcoins and consider all the money as theirs. Since I lost in LR, I don't want to again lose with BTC.

Entirely different case. Liberty dollar was commercial project to establish an alternative US currency. They were prosecuted under counterfeiting laws because the silver coins allegedly resembled US currency.
Bitcoin is not trying to replace or resemble any existing currency, there are not physical banknotes or coins. It is just another 'foreign currency' for US government.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/10085600/Liberty-Reserve-shut-down-in-6bn-money-laundering-case.html

[dothebeats]

Nothing, nothing will happen to the world if in case bitcoin was banned (which is highly improbable to say the least.) Let's face it, bitcoin hasn't made a significant impact to the industry and global economy but rather changed some POV on how people look at money. It may be on the headlines for a while but after quite some time, it would somehow be forgotten and another tech will come along and further what bitcoin already started.