How easy is it to shut down Bitcoin?

[rimbit]

As Bitcoin needs the mining farms to maintain transactions, how easy is it to shutdown?

Lets take China as an example, since they are the major farms...

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?
Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

or

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

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[c789]

If China all of sudden stopped mining, the difficulty of the network would go down, making it more profitable for people elsewhere to mine. So no, Bitcoin wouldn't go down. The difficulty might go down, but that wouldn't be a problem.

...although, my Jalepenos would love to be hashing again...

[groll]

As Bitcoin needs the mining farms to maintain transactions, how easy is it to shutdown?

Lets take China as an example, since they are the major farms...

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?
Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

or

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

Shutting down bitcoin is not as easy as you think since even China will not mine there are new and large mining factories cosntructed in different parts of the world such as the new one in Canada. As long as there is monetary value and demand in bitcoin there will be miners if not a factory individual miners will pop out. It is not easy to increase the supply of bitcoin but it is still not a problem which cannot be solved.

[Bit_Happy]

How easy is it to shut down Bitcoin?
Assuming the Internet is functioning, then Bitcoin cannot easily be shut down.
If all major ISP's were pressured to block BTC's port # we would have temporary chaos and many fun challenges.

[hexafraction]

How easy is it to shut down Bitcoin?
Assuming the Internet is functioning, then Bitcoin cannot easily be shut down.
If all major ISP's were pressured to block BTC's port # we would have temporary chaos and many fun challenges.

Bitcoin could easily change port number or potentially piggyback on a different protocol that is opaque to content (such as HTTPS).

[chineseprancing]

As Bitcoin needs the mining farms to maintain transactions, how easy is it to shutdown?

Lets take China as an example, since they are the major farms...

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?
Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

or

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

It is not easy to shutdown bitcoins, You need to cut first the internet, Cause if there is no internet there will be no bitcoins. and if the miners stop the mining , but i think they wont stop mining cause they are gaining profits from it

[tiffyroman]

It's nearly impossible to shut down bitcoin.

Even if those chinese miners go down, it would be a feast to many other miners because the competition is less and the difficulty of mining will dramatically drop.

One possibility of bitcoin shutting down is within the internet shutting down itself for good. But that's nearly impossible.

[Alley]

It would be easy.  Just shut down the internet.  You could go with the escape from LA scenario.

[Lauda]

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?

No, the network would most certainly not go down. Do you even know how a P2P network works?

Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

Yes.

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

Why would they do that? Mining is a 'self-regulated' cycle. If it becomes unprofitable, some are going to stop mining -> difficulty will reduce -> mining is profitable again.

One possibility of bitcoin shutting down is within the internet shutting down itself for good. But that's nearly impossible.

If that were the case, Bitcoin would be the least of 'our' problems.

It would be easy.  Just shut down the internet.

That's anything but easy.

[Cryptonitex]

If China stops, I'll probably will start myself. More profitable if they all stop.

[nanonymousx]

All cold places has Bitcoin mining operation. North China, north Canada, Swedish, Denmark ...
Most places are very keeping it to themselves, except some niners in China.

[pandalion98]

As Bitcoin needs the mining farms to maintain transactions, how easy is it to shutdown?

Lets take China as an example, since they are the major farms...

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?
Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

or

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

No, the network won't go down. The difficulty will be the one going down since there are miners all around the world, not just China.

So it's almost impossible to shut down bitcoin even in a zombie apocalypse. I could set up a PC to mine bitcoins and power it with solar panels. Then, I can just abandon it, knowing that I'll have a sh*t ton of bitcoins once all the zombies have been eradicated. My chain would be the longest one in that case, and everyone else can use my chain unless a general consensus says that we should use the chain from June 29, 2016. I imagine there would be a lot of forks from people that thought of the same setup.

[Yakamoto]

As Bitcoin needs the mining farms to maintain transactions, how easy is it to shutdown?

Lets take China as an example, since they are the major farms...

If the Government decides or is pressured to shut down the mining farms, which are just a few in number, wouldnt the network go down?
Is there enough miners to continue verification's?

or

Will miners voluntarily shut down at the halving and if the value of Bitcoin went back to $300ish?

Government shuts down the mining farms, hashing power decreases, mining difficulty decreases, remaining hashing power takes over the job of the lost power, the market continues as normal. Nothing changes, everything goes on as normal.

Miners voluntarily shut down? Same thing happens. Hashing power total goes down, mining difficulty goes down, current hashing power continues to solved blocks, no change.

[pooya87]

shutting down bitcoin is not equal to shutting down miners. the network needs to go away (shut down) if you want to shut down bitcoin which can't happen. miners shutting down their equipment only leads to change in hashrate.

[ObscureBean]

If China all of sudden stopped mining, the difficulty of the network would go down, making it more profitable for people elsewhere to mine. So no, Bitcoin wouldn't go down. The difficulty might go down, but that wouldn't be a problem.

...although, my Jalepenos would love to be hashing again...

The network itself would not go down but if a big enough number of miners were shut down it would definitely make the network a lot more sluggish. Transactions would likely take forever to confirm which would affect everyone everywhere. So while China suddenly going dark might not mean the end of Bitcoin, it most likely will be a struggle for everyone else at least for a while.

[Quartx]

The same reason that an attacker with enough hash power will never try a 51 percent attack, the system pays you better if you play by the rules everyone else is following, huge decrease in hashrate in one place, diff drops for others, others profit, your loss, thus no one will do it

[Enotche]

There is no easy way to destroy Bitcoin. There is only a complex and difficult.
State pressure. Changes in legislation and a few show trials are capable of inflicting a serious blow to the idea.
Bottleneck "problem cryptocurrency" not in the technical aspects, and in their heads. This is where being and will be conducted major war. The idea can not be destroyed, but it is possible to influence the media ideas, you can reduce their numbers, we can prevent the spread of information to inspire the masses misconceptions fueled hostility toward the idea. Those in power is not a novelty.

[kryptqnick]

I think it's really hard. What can be done with all those mining farms?

[thejaytiesto]

None of those proposed scenarios annihilate Bitcoin.. they can only try to weaken it, but it will survive and rise again and again. The only way to totally ruin it would be to go on a global internet shutdown which is totally retarded and unrealistic so it's not a real problem.

[isvicre]

The network wouldn't go down as others have mentioned, but I have to wonder why so many people use China as an example so often for these hypothetical situations. What event is related to this that creates some plausible situation were China wants to seize all the mining farms and why would that event go down with no resistance?