IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it?

[becoin]

 In other words, a central bank can corner any market of finite supply.

Bitcoin is of finite supply. Why banks can't corner bitcoin market yet?

Not banks.  Central banks.   Well, first of all they should have a motivation - I was just answering the OP.  But they also should be legally allowed to do so (that is, have bitcoin on the list of assets they can buy, like they can buy gold, and certain securities).  I don't think any big central bank is allowed to emit money against bitcoin yet.

You don't have any bank experience, do you?

Banks never do that directly. Instead they'll give credit line to a company that will do what they want be done.

[kelseydustin]

Do not ask that silly question, no one can take over control Bitcoin because it is based on the decentralized system. And as you know, the Chinese are trying to do that job but the results still remain zero. Bitcoin will still a symbol for freedom

[dinofelis]

 In other words, a central bank can corner any market of finite supply.

Bitcoin is of finite supply. Why banks can't corner bitcoin market yet?

Not banks.  Central banks.   Well, first of all they should have a motivation - I was just answering the OP.  But they also should be legally allowed to do so (that is, have bitcoin on the list of assets they can buy, like they can buy gold, and certain securities).  I don't think any big central bank is allowed to emit money against bitcoin yet.

You don't have any bank experience, do you?

Banks never do that directly. Instead they'll give credit line to a company that will do what they want be done.

I was talking the way central banks manipulate the gold market.  Bitcoin is similar.  It is a collectible.  Normal banks can't do that, because they would put themselves at risk with respect to other banks.  Only central banks can do so, if their rules allow it.

[classicsucks]

NSA wouldn't try to destroy/attack bitcoin overtly. As others have said, if bitcoin broke overnight, everyone would just move to altcoin X. The NSA's goal would likely be to subvert cryptocurrency as a whole and make it difficult/impractical/dangerous for people to use.

NSA would definitely implement systems that track and trace all transactions and associate them with real people, and they likely already have done this. "Full take" electronic surveillance would be mandatory on a couple of key players/investors in the space, and likely is in place. NSA would definitely place a few "assets" in the dev teams and mining community, and they likely already have done this. NSA could even have a few spokespeople advocating a wrong path forward (for example that Blockstream "Johnny" guy who came out of nowhere looks fishy to me...). I would be very surprised if NSA didn't have at least 4 assets at various levels inside Blockstream.

Often times, people don't even know that they are working for the NSA, because they have a "handler" who mediates between the agency and the employee. NSA is likely recruiting top CS grads and encryption experts from MIT, Stanford, and Caltech, and CMU - same as always.

Cornering the BTC market wouldn't be that tough - when big banks are buying up coin, they can prevent huge price spikes by naked shorting. Which is what they do with gold and silver.

[becoin]

Cornering the BTC market wouldn't be that tough - when big banks are buying up coin, they can prevent huge price spikes by naked shorting. Which is what they do with gold and silver.

You definitely don't know what're you talking about.

Cornering gold and silver market is possible because "rehypothecation" is used. One and the same physical metal is "re-pledged" as collateral. Thus, one and the same physical  gold or silver has many "owners" without those owners being aware that there are other owners as well. This is not possible with bitcoin! The owner is the one that has the privkey!

[ImHash]

Page 8 and no plausible method. 

Already done it while you were sleep, look how they got to BitMain which is a large miner manufacturer and till now they are pushing for a take over.

Only thing users can do is to hold their coins and don't sell so cheap and if they sell make sure they're selling to ordinary people like themselves.
When you tell people that bitcoin is the real deal and a game changer they just see what's in front of them which is the market and price fluctuations and greedy miners, they lack the ability to jump out of the orbit to see for themselves that sun light is not yellow and is white.
selling bitcoin is equal to giving away a diamond thinking it's only made from carbon and we have lots of carbon on earth.

[RodeoX]

Page 8 and no plausible method. 

Already done it while you were sleep, look how they got to BitMain which is a large miner manufacturer and till now they are pushing for a take over.

Only thing users can do is to hold their coins and don't sell so cheap and if they sell make sure they're selling to ordinary people like themselves.
When you tell people that bitcoin is the real deal and a game changer they just see what's in front of them which is the market and price fluctuations and greedy miners, they lack the ability to jump out of the orbit to see for themselves that sun light is not yellow and is white.
selling bitcoin is equal to giving away a diamond thinking it's only made from carbon and we have lots of carbon on earth.

When you say "they got to BitMain". Who do you mean? And how were they gotten? They seem to up and running. https://bitmain.com/
I know they have been involved in scandals, but that has no more to do with bitcoin than dollars have to do with a bank robbery. To defeat bitcoin one has to defeat the protocol. Going after people for cheating on taxes or scamming others is a different issue.

[keenme]

Impossible, they can't, BTC is not traceable, anonymous point to point transactions, they can not trace to the whereabouts of BTC

[iluvpie60]

Good point on the NSA infiltrating the dev team. That may be why we see so much nonsense from them lately. So much FUD being spouted by devs and longtime bitcoin industry people. Seems a lot have been compromised.

[BillyBobZorton]

Easy:

1) Start a plan to centralize nodes
2) Sell to people that it's better to sacrifice node decentralization in order to buy coffees on chain
3) Give 100% power to miners via BUcoin type clients that give them all the power over blocksize and get rid of any possibilities of user rebelion against miners via UASF
4) Bitcoin's most important property (bitcoin as decentralized gold) is now over
5) Governments now control transactions due having control over easily bribeable datacenters that run both nodes and miners.

[classicsucks]

Cornering the BTC market wouldn't be that tough - when big banks are buying up coin, they can prevent huge price spikes by naked shorting. Which is what they do with gold and silver.

You definitely don't know what're you talking about.

Cornering gold and silver market is possible because "rehypothecation" is used. One and the same physical metal is "re-pledged" as collateral. Thus, one and the same physical  gold or silver has many "owners" without those owners being aware that there are other owners as well. This is not possible with bitcoin! The owner is the one that has the privkey!

Uhh, have you ever heard of bitcoin EXCHANGES? As in, the places that produce 95% of crypto volume? What makes you think any privkeys are necessary on exchanges? Coins on an exchange are almost more abstract than an electronic balance statement at a bank, this has been proven each time another exchange vanishes into thin air with everyone's coin. In the case of Mt Gox, the coins people thought they held were probably never there... Mark was just shuffling around his little Excel spreadsheet and collecting bux.

[Joe_Bauers]

IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it?

I'm guessing they would publicly release their collision attack for SHA-2

[SwagGirl]

If it got out that the CIA is trying to undermine bitcoin, i think it would drive the price up. From free advertising to making more people curious it would definitely go up.

[Ucy]

It seems to be difficult for them to attack and control Bitcoin from the technical vector.Many nerds are in the crypto space who are also very cautious and paranoid.
The only real serious attack vector I see left is social engineering and infiltration.And I'm sure we already see this happening.Maybe not coming from the NSA but the once in power of the financial industry. Just have a look how many trolls and anti bitcoin shills are flooding in here, coordinated at certain events or times.FUD, divide and conquer and so on. This is no coincidence!
Bitcoin is a becoming a serious threat to so many industries that they will try everything they can do to stop it.
Killing is no option imo.Even if they try to make it look like an accident.This will make the ones who died become martyr.
The reaction to this is would be that coders continue working from underground and more and more supporting them.
An obvious open attack will not work.Therefore they will try it over the sneaky bastardized way (this for instance includes planting crimes on devs, threat, bribe, FUD, divide and conquer).

Love this!  OP definitely underrated human capacity to be resilient. Bitcoin would've being history if it were that easy to destroy. The hate toward Crypto by Politicians, Fascists & security agency is hugh but I guarantee  they wouldn't be able to match the intellectual capability of personalities that really like the crypto concept. Even if they successful hire nerds it will hard to convinced those nerds to destroy Bitcoin unless they're completely brainwashed or lied to

[SwagGirl]

It seems to be difficult for them to attack and control Bitcoin from the technical vector.Many nerds are in the crypto space who are also very cautious and paranoid.
The only real serious attack vector I see left is social engineering and infiltration.And I'm sure we already see this happening.Maybe not coming from the NSA but the once in power of the financial industry. Just have a look how many trolls and anti bitcoin shills are flooding in here, coordinated at certain events or times.FUD, divide and conquer and so on. This is no coincidence!
Bitcoin is a becoming a serious threat to so many industries that they will try everything they can do to stop it.
Killing is no option imo.Even if they try to make it look like an accident.This will make the ones who died become martyr.
The reaction to this is would be that coders continue working from underground and more and more supporting them.
An obvious open attack will not work.Therefore they will try it over the sneaky bastardized way (this for instance includes planting crimes on devs, threat, bribe, FUD, divide and conquer).

If you dont killing is an option, ask Hitler Clinton. Shes got 100's of dead bodies connected to her. That said, they still could not take bitcoin down.

[spoon-bender]

Any NSA takeover of bitcoin begins and ends with the plot of Superman III.  Q.E.D

[Sadlife]

If this is true then the whole conspiracy theories about the core group being owned by bankers is just an a delusion we are so afraid to implement segwit because we believe in the lie that blockstream is centralized.
NSA might need more hash power to implement 51% attack in the past BU had that power but they didn't do it i wonder why.

[RodeoX]

Easy:

1) Start a plan to centralize nodes
2) Sell to people that it's better to sacrifice node decentralization in order to buy coffees on chain
3) Give 100% power to miners via BUcoin type clients that give them all the power over blocksize and get rid of any possibilities of user rebelion against miners via UASF
4) Bitcoin's most important property (bitcoin as decentralized gold) is now over
5) Governments now control transactions due having control over easily bribeable datacenters that run both nodes and miners.

That's a lot of if

1) centralized node? On a decentralized network? Centralizing nodes would require a hard fork that must be agreed to by an overwhelming majority of nodes worldwide. Why would the entire world do that?

2) That may happen organically? Some think this now and have created thousands of alts to address it. The NSA would just be alt #7453. Good luck competing though. 

3) No one on Earth has the authority/ability to do that in the protocol. It would require a hard fork to a fundamentally different system that we would all have to adopt. Have you ever met a bitcoin user that would agree to that, much less a super-majority?

4) I don't know what that means? It's over because someone said it? well in that case, war poverty and death are now over! I command it!

5) wow, this is going to be expensive. The US government is going to spend billions bribing miners all over thee planet to... wait why are they doing this? Where is the money going to come from? It is illegal for the us to pay bribes, so this will require an entire secret bureaucracy willing to go to jail for no apparent gain. They will need to operate in almost every country on Earth and be 100% successful. How long do we do this, forever? What happens when I refuse to be bribed and set up a mine? 

It is just not feasible, practical, likely to succeed, cost effective, or lawful. 

[AGD]

Easy:

1) Start a plan to centralize nodes
2) Sell to people that it's better to sacrifice node decentralization in order to buy coffees on chain
3) Give 100% power to miners via BUcoin type clients that give them all the power over blocksize and get rid of any possibilities of user rebelion against miners via UASF
4) Bitcoin's most important property (bitcoin as decentralized gold) is now over
5) Governments now control transactions due having control over easily bribeable datacenters that run both nodes and miners.

That's a lot of if

1) centralized node? On a decentralized network? Centralizing nodes would require a hard fork that must be agreed to by an overwhelming majority of nodes worldwide. Why would the entire world do that?

2) That may happen organically? Some think this now and have created thousands of alts to address it. The NSA would just be alt #7453. Good luck competing though. 

3) No one on Earth has the authority/ability to do that in the protocol. It would require a hard fork to a fundamentally different system that we would all have to adopt. Have you ever met a bitcoin user that would agree to that, much less a super-majority?

4) I don't know what that means? It's over because someone said it? well in that case, war poverty and death are now over! I command it!

5) wow, this is going to be expensive. The US government is going to spend billions bribing miners all over thee planet to... wait why are they doing this? Where is the money going to come from? It is illegal for the us to pay bribes, so this will require an entire secret bureaucracy willing to go to jail for no apparent gain. They will need to operate in almost every country on Earth and be 100% successful. How long do we do this, forever? What happens when I refuse to be bribed and set up a mine? 

It is just not feasible, practical, likely to succeed, cost effective, or lawful. 

Hi RodeoX. The question is not, if it is possible to take control over Bitcoin, but what they would try to do to achieve this goal.
Judging from quotes I read from the IMF, they are pretty aware, that "Cryptocurrencies" (Ms Lagarte avoided spelling the evil name "Bitcoin") can lead to a loss of control over the international cash flow. From there it is just a small step to put up a meeting with some important guys with the topic "How can we stop this Bitcoin thing if it gets too big?"

What would be suggested on this table?

[RodeoX]

Easy:

1) Start a plan to centralize nodes
2) Sell to people that it's better to sacrifice node decentralization in order to buy coffees on chain
3) Give 100% power to miners via BUcoin type clients that give them all the power over blocksize and get rid of any possibilities of user rebelion against miners via UASF
4) Bitcoin's most important property (bitcoin as decentralized gold) is now over
5) Governments now control transactions due having control over easily bribeable datacenters that run both nodes and miners.

That's a lot of if

1) centralized node? On a decentralized network? Centralizing nodes would require a hard fork that must be agreed to by an overwhelming majority of nodes worldwide. Why would the entire world do that?

2) That may happen organically? Some think this now and have created thousands of alts to address it. The NSA would just be alt #7453. Good luck competing though. 

3) No one on Earth has the authority/ability to do that in the protocol. It would require a hard fork to a fundamentally different system that we would all have to adopt. Have you ever met a bitcoin user that would agree to that, much less a super-majority?

4) I don't know what that means? It's over because someone said it? well in that case, war poverty and death are now over! I command it!

5) wow, this is going to be expensive. The US government is going to spend billions bribing miners all over thee planet to... wait why are they doing this? Where is the money going to come from? It is illegal for the us to pay bribes, so this will require an entire secret bureaucracy willing to go to jail for no apparent gain. They will need to operate in almost every country on Earth and be 100% successful. How long do we do this, forever? What happens when I refuse to be bribed and set up a mine? 

It is just not feasible, practical, likely to succeed, cost effective, or lawful. 

Hi RodeoX. The question is not, if it is possible to take control over Bitcoin, but what they would try to do to achieve this goal.
Judging from quotes I read from the IMF, they are pretty aware, that "Cryptocurrencies" (Ms Lagarte avoided spelling the evil name "Bitcoin") can lead to a loss of control over the international cash flow. From there it is just a small step to put up a meeting with some important guys with the topic "How can we stop this Bitcoin thing if it gets too big?"

What would be suggested on this table?

Ah, well then I guess someone would suggest those things. But I see no path to a takeover yet. Although I would love to see banks lose a billion dollars trying.