What if Putin / Obama says no ?

[Gator-hex]

If the gov't finds some issue with Paypal and takes action to shut down the business.  (I know this is an extreme example but let's just take that as an assumption.)

Don't you think there will be another corporation that will pop up that does the same thing except adjusting their policies to follow the gov't?  I am assuming we are talking about US here.

No, because who wants to start a corporation in a country where the money is worthless, and the government can take your assets?

When it gets bad, the corporations just shut down and leave, until the population screams blue murder and revolts.

[bitchess]

It will possibly happen, one day.

Bitcoin is for now under no administration by its nature, this would cause many legitimate issue like money laundering.

The legal implications of bitcoin are interesting, governments can get a handle on it through 2 mechanisms (that I have read about, maybe more)

1. regulating the exchanges which convert bitcoins into their currency
2. regulating the bitcoin miners (this one is harder to do for mining pools since it's so vastly distributed.)

1. You can already purchase directly with bitcoin now. Image what would happen in years.
2. Mining makes less and less sense since more and more people are joining.

1. yes but how much regulation is there on mtgox transactions?  how much reporting do they do.  This will increase as bitcoin volume increases.
2. but the big players will start to get regulated.

The point is with time as bitcoin matures, regulators will follow and gain more control over the situation.

[Trighost]

It will happen... in another realities

[bitchess]

If the gov't finds some issue with Paypal and takes action to shut down the business.  (I know this is an extreme example but let's just take that as an assumption.)

Don't you think there will be another corporation that will pop up that does the same thing except adjusting their policies to follow the gov't?  I am assuming we are talking about US here.

No, because who wants to start a corporation in a country where the money is worthless, and the government can take your assets?

That is a fair point.  Zimbabwe is a good example.  But that being said, USD is far more stable than that.  I assume you are talking about inflation and lack of trust for central banks.  In my humble opinion, for the US case, the central bank is doing the right think in quantitative easing.  They will print money until the economy comes back and stop very quickly.  They are not going to print forever, so the end result is that they are maintaining stability.  Trying to call US, Zimbabwe is incorrect here.