Can the US Govt buy bitcoin and mothball it ?

[gunzeon]

title says it all - you know, with the US Government "printing" $89b every month, they could buy every bitcoin on the market and quietly kill it off like Standard Oil did with the LA Tramway say ...

They already got a grubstake from SR ...

[Akka]

I hope they try  

After that the community could band together and spend a few billions for the development of another currency  

Also, this wold end up in a nice wealth transfer from the US to other countrys 

[rograz]

The first BTC they buy will be at current market price, the last one however might be a bit more expensive 

[Kaiji]

Somebody mentioned this before on bitcointalk.
1) They just push prices to $1000 making everyone rich and we all just go on to LTC and wait for it to happen again.

2) No one in the government will agree to wasting billions of dollars to destroy a cryptocoin that isn't harming anyone.

[TheButterZone]

Somebody mentioned this before on bitcointalk.
1) They just push prices to $1000 making everyone rich and we all just go on to LTC and wait for it to happen again.

2) No one in the government will agree to wasting billions of dollars to destroy a cryptocoin that isn't harming anyone.

It's because it's not harming innocents that the totalitarians want it destroyed.

[vpitcher07]

I posted a similar question a few weeks back. The quick answer is it's not worth it for them.

[hulk]

title says it all - you know, with the US Government "printing" $89b every month, they could buy every bitcoin on the market and quietly kill it off like Standard Oil did with the LA Tramway say ...

They already got a grubstake from SR ...

Well, the price would be $10000 by then, I would be happy to sell it to them

[Twilight_Sparkle]

It would be cheaper to buy billions worth of hardware and do a 51%+ attack. Then just use the purchased hardware to do the same thing to the most likely cryptocurrency to become the new bitcoin. Rinse and repeat.

[theonewhowaskazu]

If they tried buying all the BTC and scrapping it, miners would just keep mining and create some more, only with a ton less supply and a fan-fucking-tastic pricetag. All it'd do is make everybody and their stepsister's great aunt mine as fast as possible. Not to mention making all the early adopters really rich. Also, there'd likely be people who wouldn't  sell, or people who forgot, and coins that just got thrown away that nobody will ever know who owns.

All this talk of moving to an altcoin is weird and random. There is a reason why Bitcoin is produced over time and its not just to reward miners. Its because it makes logical sense for a number of reasons, this being one of them.

If you want to take down BTC, you're going to have to try and 51% it. Otherwise, its infallible.

[hulk]

If they tried buying all the BTC and scrapping it, miners would just keep mining and create some more, only with a ton less supply and a fan-fucking-tastic pricetag. All it'd do is make everybody and their stepsister's great aunt mine as fast as possible. Not to mention making all the early adopters really rich. Also, there'd likely be people who wouldn't  sell, or people who forgot, and coins that just got thrown away that nobody will ever know who owns.

All this talk of moving to an altcoin is weird and random. There is a reason why Bitcoin is produced over time and its not just to reward miners. Its because it makes logical sense for a number of reasons, this being one of them.

If you want to take down BTC, you're going to have to try and 51% it. Otherwise, its infallible.

Should be easy for them to 51%, first they need to shut down those ASIC producing company and confiscate all their machines. Then use their machines to produce lots of ASIC and bam!!!

[atlosas]

That would seem very desperate and would only weaken the dollar even more.

[theonewhowaskazu]

If they tried buying all the BTC and scrapping it, miners would just keep mining and create some more, only with a ton less supply and a fan-fucking-tastic pricetag. All it'd do is make everybody and their stepsister's great aunt mine as fast as possible. Not to mention making all the early adopters really rich. Also, there'd likely be people who wouldn't  sell, or people who forgot, and coins that just got thrown away that nobody will ever know who owns.

All this talk of moving to an altcoin is weird and random. There is a reason why Bitcoin is produced over time and its not just to reward miners. Its because it makes logical sense for a number of reasons, this being one of them.

If you want to take down BTC, you're going to have to try and 51% it. Otherwise, its infallible.

Should be easy for them to 51%, first they need to shut down those ASIC producing company and confiscate all their machines. Then use their machines to produce lots of ASIC and bam!!!

That would certainly be a lot easier than trying to mothball BTC, although I suspect their plans would get leaked about 15 times, and their plans stalled by various court proceedings. If you knew that in 2 years from now the US Gov was going to try to 51  percent attack Bitcoin, wouldn't you spend some of your coins on miners to try and back it up? I suspect almost half the world, even those that haven't even heard of Bitcoin until that point, would try to protect Bitcoin at that moment. Especially since people like Anonymous would, if something like that were actually leaked, try to hijack other people's/companies/groups computers to help Bitcoin out a bit.

[allthingsluxury]

I don't believe it is worth their time at the moment.

[Ekaros]

I don't believe it is worth their time at the moment.

If things go really bad they always have option of alt coin and mandating it's use.

Gain the majority of regular folks by taxes, benefits, large institutions etc. and you are done...

[erk]

It would be great for the Bitcoin price if the US Gov bought more of it an mothballed it. Bring it on!

[peonminer]

If they buy it ALL then I would LOL at their ignorance. EVERYTHING that runs with BTC would fall, but all of the holders (who must've been 'forced' to sell, theoretically) would make their $ from selling.... unless we are looking at "The Great BTC Confiscation of 2014". I would be amazed if someone could develop a code to 'confiscate' the majority of BTC.

Thoughts?

[theonewhowaskazu]

If they buy it ALL then I would LOL at their ignorance. EVERYTHING that runs with BTC would fall, but all of the holders (who must've been 'forced' to sell, theoretically) would make their $ from selling.... unless we are looking at "The Great BTC Confiscation of 2014". I would be amazed if someone could develop a code to 'confiscate' the majority of BTC.

Thoughts?

Why would everything running with BTC fall? They'd just end up with a lot less BTC, but with BTC worth a whole lot more. Think of something along the lines of a reverse-split. Why is that bad?

[torrentheaven]

If they tried buying all the BTC and scrapping it, miners would just keep mining and create some more, only with a ton less supply and a fan-fucking-tastic pricetag. All it'd do is make everybody and their stepsister's great aunt mine as fast as possible. Not to mention making all the early adopters really rich. Also, there'd likely be people who wouldn't  sell, or people who forgot, and coins that just got thrown away that nobody will ever know who owns.

All this talk of moving to an altcoin is weird and random. There is a reason why Bitcoin is produced over time and its not just to reward miners. Its because it makes logical sense for a number of reasons, this being one of them.

If you want to take down BTC, you're going to have to try and 51% it. Otherwise, its infallible.

Should be easy for them to 51%, first they need to shut down those ASIC producing company and confiscate all their machines. Then use their machines to produce lots of ASIC and bam!!!

Good plan, but ASIC producing companies are china based, out of US Govt reach

[erk]

If they buy it ALL then I would LOL at their ignorance. EVERYTHING that runs with BTC would fall, but all of the holders (who must've been 'forced' to sell, theoretically) would make their $ from selling.... unless we are looking at "The Great BTC Confiscation of 2014". I would be amazed if someone could develop a code to 'confiscate' the majority of BTC.

Thoughts?

They obviously can't buy it all, they can only buy what people put up for sale.

[peonminer]

If they buy it ALL then I would LOL at their ignorance. EVERYTHING that runs with BTC would fall, but all of the holders (who must've been 'forced' to sell, theoretically) would make their $ from selling.... unless we are looking at "The Great BTC Confiscation of 2014". I would be amazed if someone could develop a code to 'confiscate' the majority of BTC.

Thoughts?

Why would everything running with BTC fall? They'd just end up with a lot less BTC, but with BTC worth a whole lot more. Think of something along the lines of a reverse-split. Why is that bad?

I am theorizing that they would control 99%+ of the BTC in existance. This would inevitably leave 118,540.75 BTC in the economy.

Since today:

Bitcoins sent
last 24h
1,033,351.18 BTC
Bitcoins sent
avg. per hour
43,056.30 BTC

This would leave very little room for BTC to continue existing as it does now.