Will Bitcoin be centralized and be regulated by the Government if...?

[skorupi17]

We all know that Bitcoin was designed decentralized in order for a powerful entity would not be able to control Bitcoin as a whole. Thank Satoshi for that. However, since Bitcoin has become very hot in the eyes of the public as well as governments around the globe, is it possible that they, the government, will be able to regulate Bitcoin? Let us say that an international body or a union of governments across the globe decided to takeover all Bitcoin mining facilities especially the ones that functions in full node. If that happens, can we consider Bitcoin as centralized and it is now regulated by the government?

[TryNinja]

They can try but they won't succeed simple because the way Bitcoin works, no one can fully control the technology ever. What they may end up doing is creating taxes and laws on the sale and exchange of cryptocurrencies, making the technology more complicated for the average user.

Nothing so serious since we always have P2P as an alternative.

But If they somehow took full control over the whole majority of the hash power, I think people would just quit and the coin would die as it would lose all its purpose of being free of full control of one individual.

[AgentofCoin]

We all know that Bitcoin was designed decentralized in order for a powerful entity would not be able to control Bitcoin as a whole. Thank Satoshi for that. However, since Bitcoin has become very hot in the eyes of the public as well as governments around the globe, is it possible that they, the government, will be able to regulate Bitcoin? Let us say that an international body or a union of governments across the globe decided to takeover all Bitcoin mining facilities especially the ones that functions in full node. If that happens, can we consider Bitcoin as centralized and it is now regulated by the government?

There are two forms of governmental regulation that can be applied to Bitcoin.
(1) Are regulations applied to the on/off ramps of licensed monetary exchanges.
(2) Are regulations applied directly to and within the Bitcoin protocol.

The simple answer is that if governments throughout the world collectively took
control of all bitcoin mining facilities it would allow for "(2) regulations applied
directly within the Bitcoin protocol". In this event, that Bitcoin experiment would
fail since it was not able to resist this governmental attack type (Satoshi's original
decentralized mining theory was thought to minimize this type of attack vector).

If your scenario did occur, it no longer matters if Bitcoin is then "centralized" since
the proper viewpoint is that Bitcoin has been "infiltrated and neutered". It then
becomes an arm of those world governments, and if allowed to live, begins to be
used as a means to oppress the people.

Either way, it is not a total failure since with how Bitcoin actually functions, if
your scenario did occur, the Bitcoin community could emergency hardfork and
change the PoW/difficultly to bring back home mining, leaving behind those
attacking entities and their new infrastructure, and we would continue on without
them. It is a nuisance and would hurt Bitcoin/bitcoin temporarily, but Bitcoin in
this way would never be fully captured.

The real problem is not governments attacking Bitcoin as you described, what the
real problem is certain governments already controlling certain mining facilities in
the world and attempting to convince you to willingly want to go in their direction.
If that occurs, even the emergency hardfork mechanism is worthless since the
masses would be so ignorant at that point, they would desire slavery more than
freedom.

[Andre_Goldman]

The debate reminds me web-of-trust ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust ) Vs X.509 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509 ) ...

and Werner Koch's keynote: We want more centralization, do we?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB3V1YP8cKw

 

[jak3]

firstly they can not takeover the full market anymore because already some people around the globe are running the nodes in their houses. even if government decided to use bitcoin as a part of their regulation then also they can only control a very small part because they have to use APIs or new wallet because nobody has access to control or modify the network directly and even if they do I guess the whole network have to mine all the blocks again.

[Hydrogen]

Venezuela attempting to nationalize toyota while waging a war against capitalism in their decades of socialist policy is one of the key reasons for many private sector businesses abandoning the country. Its one primary reason for venezuela's economy being in dire straits.

If the united states tried to nationalize bitcoin, similar to venezuela pushing anti-capitalist policies in their attempt to have the government control everything, it is likely that many private sector businesses would abandon america the same way many have abandoned venezuela.

That may be one main reason the government would not attempt to nationalize or *takeover* bitcoin operations.

Google, microsoft, amazon and many large private sector entities would likely abandon the united states if the government began to nationalize private sector portions of the economy. Economic ruin would follow.

[hatshepsut93]

We all know that Bitcoin was designed decentralized in order for a powerful entity would not be able to control Bitcoin as a whole. Thank Satoshi for that. However, since Bitcoin has become very hot in the eyes of the public as well as governments around the globe, is it possible that they, the government, will be able to regulate Bitcoin? Let us say that an international body or a union of governments across the globe decided to takeover all Bitcoin mining facilities especially the ones that functions in full node. If that happens, can we consider Bitcoin as centralized and it is now regulated by the government?

Bitcoin is a software and a blockchain file. So, governments can only really control Bitcoin if they control literally all internet. It's pointless to try to overtake Bitcoin via achieving overwhelming mining power and controlling nodes, because people can just fork. Blockchain protects Bitcoin from any interruptions, because thousands of people own a copy of it, so it's impossible to kill or seize Bitcoin.

[shinratensei_]

is it possible that they, the government, will be able to regulate Bitcoin?

Yes.
But most of the country just need the crypto business service to implement KYC and AML for their public users.

Let us say that an international body or a union of governments across the globe decided to takeover all Bitcoin mining facilities especially the ones that functions in full node. If that happens, can we consider Bitcoin as centralized and it is now regulated by the government?

Because the purpose of spreading the bitcoin nodes to keep the decentralized aspect of bitcoin. At least if there are some nodes still running around the world and that still made the bitcoin is decentralized.

This based on my knowledge.

[raymond541]

If government want Bitcoin be centralized and be regulated government can but this will ruin bitcoin creation.bitcoin is created for decentralized and anonymous payment system.If government centralized and regulated all power have to government nothing will have anonymous.

[Yakamoto]

We all know that Bitcoin was designed decentralized in order for a powerful entity would not be able to control Bitcoin as a whole. Thank Satoshi for that. However, since Bitcoin has become very hot in the eyes of the public as well as governments around the globe, is it possible that they, the government, will be able to regulate Bitcoin? Let us say that an international body or a union of governments across the globe decided to takeover all Bitcoin mining facilities especially the ones that functions in full node. If that happens, can we consider Bitcoin as centralized and it is now regulated by the government?

If something like that happens, there can be an effort made by the community to fork out such facilities and effectively neutralize the capacity for the government coalition to control the network, however that comes with its own issues and there's no guarantee that something like that would work for very long, if at all.

If they tried to do something like that, there would be a relatively large outcry, along with a fair amount of bad PR so I would find it unlikely for them to be able to perform such a feat without a fair amount of repercussions.

[Omega Weapon]

We all know that Bitcoin was designed decentralized in order for a powerful entity would not be able to control Bitcoin as a whole. Thank Satoshi for that. However, since Bitcoin has become very hot in the eyes of the public as well as governments around the globe, is it possible that they, the government, will be able to regulate Bitcoin? Let us say that an international body or a union of governments across the globe decided to takeover all Bitcoin mining facilities especially the ones that functions in full node. If that happens, can we consider Bitcoin as centralized and it is now regulated by the government?

There are only two ways in which the governments may try to regulate a bitcoin, with laws or by trying to infiltrate bitcoin, if they choose to use laws then that will be an indirect way to try to control the network but by the nature of bitcoin that is bound to fail, if they try to infiltrate the network even if they are successful, then everyone will realize what is up, and we could jump to another coin, or someone else could just copy and paste the code and create another bitcoin.

[Sir Legend]

Because the Government could not make a unilateral decision then need approval of the Senate, then the Government will have a legal standing to legalize bitcoin, before legalized by the government, of course the senate must see the facts user of the bitcoin in the country, if more than 50% of course bitcoin will legal.