Governments attempt to destroy crypto

[dansmith_99]

I personally think that the idea that the world governments would attack cryptocurrencies is somewhat of a conspiracy theory but it seems that it is possible. Recently I read an article that was stating that bitcoin could be destroyed by governments who buy up a large amount of bitcoin over time and then sell all of the coins they own at the same time. This would cause a panic and even more people would sell their coins. The governments would then buy up these coins and do this over and over till they owned enough bitcoin to absolutely destroy its value.

While I think this is extremely unlikely I found it very interesting and would love to hear what others think.

What would stop governments from doing this?

Is crypto safe from governments who want to destroy it?

[stronghands4lyfe]

I think they could try but I think it would be an attempt that would fail because you see of all the BTC out there roughly two thirds of is held and never been sold. They could only accumulate the other one third and that is if they bought every single bitcoin! I think it is far fetched but a fun theory to discuss still.

[coolcountry]

According to this theory, governments will buy up bitcoins using their own money. In order to control the majority of the bitcoin market you have to spend a lot of money now. If governments then dump their coins to destroy it, then they are basically burning their own money. If they want to destroy crypto, they will try to do it via bans or restrictions, but not by buying the entire stock and then destroying it.

[Xavofat]

You're missing the incentive.  Governments have no decent incentive to attempt to "destroy" a cryptocurrency.

would love to hear what others think.

The only incentive which a government possibly could have to try and "destroy" a cryptocurrency would be to prevent its use on darknet markets, but a decrease in price would not prevent this use much at all, so they certainly would not do this.

What would stop governments from doing this?

That hypothesis is irrelevant, but if they wanted to attempt an actual attack (like a 51% attack for example), it would be extremely costly and time-consuming for something so trivial.  That's the purpose of the PoW system - to make it economically unfeasible for any single entity to attack the network.

[Emoclaw]

I personally think that the idea that the world governments would attack cryptocurrencies is somewhat of a conspiracy theory but it seems that it is possible. Recently I read an article that was stating that bitcoin could be destroyed by governments who buy up a large amount of bitcoin over time and then sell all of the coins they own at the same time. This would cause a panic and even more people would sell their coins. The governments would then buy up these coins and do this over and over till they owned enough bitcoin to absolutely destroy its value.

While I think this is extremely unlikely I found it very interesting and would love to hear what others think.

What would stop governments from doing this?

Is crypto safe from governments who want to destroy it?

That is so impossible to happen that it's actually very funny. Not only would it require an overwhelming about of money, it's also technically impossible to happen.
First of all what exactly would you define as a 'large amount'? The maximum supply of Bitcoins is 21 million, with some of them having been permanently lost and the majority of them being out of exchanges, where they cannot be bought or sold by anyone. How would the government buy these?

If I took all Bitcoin from trade listings in all exchanges and dumped it, the price would skyrocket and wouldn't go down very much.

[Shamie1002]

You're missing the incentive.  Governments have no decent incentive to attempt to "destroy" a cryptocurrency.

would love to hear what others think.

The only incentive which a government possibly could have to try and "destroy" a cryptocurrency would be to prevent its use on darknet markets, but a decrease in price would not prevent this use much at all, so they certainly would not do this.

What would stop governments from doing this?

That hypothesis is irrelevant, but if they wanted to attempt an actual attack (like a 51% attack for example), it would be extremely costly and time-consuming for something so trivial.  That's the purpose of the PoW system - to make it economically unfeasible for any single entity to attack the network.

Well op I agree with you. PoW system do prevents such events to happen. And even staying for months here in the forum you have enlightened me.
But what's bothering me was the big manipulation that just happened recently. Even though I have read about systems protecting Bitcoin it is still confusing. Leaving questions about what just happened. But grateful that I have strong hands.

[shursight]

But this will always happen, there is nothing new with saying that governments want to destroy cryto currencies.

They have been trying to do it until a few months, but now most of them are trying to develop their own crypto, they just discovered all the features that they could use to take advantage of their local economy.

A simple example is Russia, they were talking shit about cryptos and bitcoin by itself, they almost banned bitcoin in there, and now they want to develop a new (centralized) coin which is based on their own fiat money.

This whole thing is insane, i dont know why they are always trying to spread fud because it is always the same, the price will keep going up because they can not stop advertising bitcoin, doesnt matter if they spread fud, or if they said beatiful things about bitcoin.

[setifien19]

They won't reach that point since Bitcoin community members have considerably enough consciousness and while bitcoin is getting more popularity and support from people , governments can just stay far and look to this high powerful currency getting stronger and stronger . I think Bitcoin is so strong to be destroyed by governors

[Beatcoin.it]

government is waiting way too much, 312 bln of money cant disappear in nothing, 312 actually and government still waiting, maybe is just a natural progression of the currency.

[dansmith_99]

You're missing the incentive.  Governments have no decent incentive to attempt to "destroy" a cryptocurrency.

Governments do have incentive though. If Bitcoin became the currency of the future, governments would no longer have control over money like they always have. Cryptocurrencies are threatening governments power.

[dansmith_99]

government is waiting way too much, 312 bln of money cant disappear in nothing, 312 actually and government still waiting, maybe is just a natural progression of the currency.

I think many of you are not understanding my argument. I admit its probably my poor explanation of it.
The government would not try a 51% attack nor would they try to buy up ALL the bitcoins they could at one time. This could happen over years. They could mine bitcoin for years and accumulate that way. They could simply buy up available bitcoin on exchanges. NOT ALL AT ONE TIME. This could literally happen over years till the government would own a substantial amount of bitcoin. Then they could manipulate the prices and try to damage bitcoin.

[i287853]

It really depends. Some governments do not want multiple currencies that compete with the currency it controls. It threatens the governments financial control. On the other hand, some countries could care less, especially the ones that are not tecnologically advanced.

[ArnoldChippy]

They won't reach that point since Bitcoin community members have considerably enough consciousness and while bitcoin is getting more popularity and support from people , governments can just stay far and look to this high powerful currency getting stronger and stronger . I think Bitcoin is so strong to be destroyed by governors

The increasing mass support will definantly prevent bitcoin from such attacks, may be some government will be in favour of bitcoin and they will have such evil thinking about bitcoin, but i am sure that they will not be succeeded in such attempts, I think some countries are also giving support to bitcoin and their number is now increasing from time to time. In future i am hopeful that all the countries will accept bitcoin as legal currency.

[Bolt Brownie]

It all depends on the kind of community bitcoin has. Bitcoin has reached $10.000 and is hitting headlines on all finance media. It's not just YouTubers that talk about bitcoin, or specialized news sites like Coindesk or Cointelegraph, we have CNBC, we have Forbes, we have Financial Times, etc. This causes FOMO (fear of missing out), and a lot of shaky hands will now get into bitcoin. If the majority of the bitcoin community is build with panic buyers, then of course we can see panic sells. I love adoption, and I'm glad people are getting into bitcoin, but I hope they understand what bitcoin is. Otherwise what you said could be true, and it doesn't need to be governments doing it. Anyone who is rich, can try to influence the market and cause panic sells.

Of course that if our community is strong, and well informed, then that cannot happen. They buy and we appreciate, they sell and we just keep holding and don't really care, because we know the potencial of bitcoin, and we still want to use it.

[An0nyMoose]

You're missing the incentive.  Governments have no decent incentive to attempt to "destroy" a cryptocurrency.

would love to hear what others think.

The only incentive which a government possibly could have to try and "destroy" a cryptocurrency would be to prevent its use on darknet markets, but a decrease in price would not prevent this use much at all, so they certainly would not do this.

What would stop governments from doing this?

That hypothesis is irrelevant, but if they wanted to attempt an actual attack (like a 51% attack for example), it would be extremely costly and time-consuming for something so trivial.  That's the purpose of the PoW system - to make it economically unfeasible for any single entity to attack the network.

Well op I agree with you. PoW system do prevents such events to happen. And even staying for months here in the forum you have enlightened me.
But what's bothering me was the big manipulation that just happened recently. Even though I have read about systems protecting Bitcoin it is still confusing. Leaving questions about what just happened. But grateful that I have strong hands.

Governments can attempt to destroy crypto all they want, but they will never destroy them. Maybe they can take down the centralized ones, but it will be harder to take down Bitcoin because it is decentralized. Truly decentralized in every sense of the word. All other networks have a centralized aspect to it and this is always a point of failure in the long run.

[grermezter]

It really depends. Some governments do not want multiple currencies that compete with the currency it controls. It threatens the governments financial control. On the other hand, some countries could care less, especially the ones that are not tecnologically advanced.

That was the case with the Venezuelan government when they decided to crack down on those that were mining bitcoins in the country,  even with all their efforts,  people are still mining bitcoins, nothing can really bring down completely even in the case where they ban it and the value plummets,  it sure to rise up again.

[dansmith_99]

It all depends on the kind of community bitcoin has. Bitcoin has reached $10.000 and is hitting headlines on all finance media. It's not just YouTubers that talk about bitcoin, or specialized news sites like Coindesk or Cointelegraph, we have CNBC, we have Forbes, we have Financial Times, etc. This causes FOMO (fear of missing out), and a lot of shaky hands will now get into bitcoin. If the majority of the bitcoin community is build with panic buyers, then of course we can see panic sells. I love adoption, and I'm glad people are getting into bitcoin, but I hope they understand what bitcoin is. Otherwise what you said could be true, and it doesn't need to be governments doing it. Anyone who is rich, can try to influence the market and cause panic sells.

Of course that if our community is strong, and well informed, then that cannot happen. They buy and we appreciate, they sell and we just keep holding and don't really care, because we know the potencial of bitcoin, and we still want to use it.

Well said, if the bitcoin community is educated it would make price manipulation much more difficult/impossible.

[dansmith_99]

It really depends. Some governments do not want multiple currencies that compete with the currency it controls. It threatens the governments financial control. On the other hand, some countries could care less, especially the ones that are not tecnologically advanced.

That was the case with the Venezuelan government when they decided to crack down on those that were mining bitcoins in the country,  even with all their efforts,  people are still mining bitcoins, nothing can really bring down completely even in the case where they ban it and the value plummets,  it sure to rise up again.

Banning a currency and manipulating its price are two very different things. It is nearly impossible to successfully ban something that by nature is decentralized. But if they tried to actually destroy the currency then that is possible but like I said earlier, very very unlikely.

I only started this topic to see what others thought of this idea.

[HasHe]

The world governments have already tried their best to destroy bitcoin by other ways.But i think that no government would try to buy huge volume of bitcoins paying such a huge price.

Even if they suddenly dump those bitcoins after buying,there is no guarantee that the bitcoin price would crash since more people through out the world know about bitcoin's potential and there is a huge buy wall which stopped bitcoin's crash earlier.

So,that would be a stupid idea to implement.Instead,they could imply very strict regulations over the bitcoin exchanges which would slow down bitcoin progress.

[dansmith_99]

The world governments have already tried their best to destroy bitcoin

Really? Do you have an examples? I mean yes there have been some bumps along the road caused by governments (Such as China) but I haven't seen any governments set on destroying bitcoin. They simply disapprove.