Only way bitcoin will collapse is if they become illegal. what are the chances?

[Johnny Bitcoinseed]

You can bet the big credit card companies, Paypal, and others will attempt to bribe public office holders to make bitcoin illegal or put controls on it.

That is the American way, after all is it not?  To purchase the force of government to do your dirty deeds.

It will not work in the long run.

If Amazon and others do not accept bitcoin, that is fine.  The market will simply go around them and create a plethora of businesses that do accept bitcoin.  So there are absolutely zero worries on that score.

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[superresistant]

On the other hand, making it illegal may increase it value (like drugs).

[NewLiberty]

You can bet the big credit card companies, Paypal, and others will attempt to bribe public office holders to make bitcoin illegal or put controls on it.

That is the American way, after all is it not?  To purchase the force of government to do your dirty deeds.

It will not work in the long run.

If Amazon and others do not accept bitcoin, that is fine.  The market will simply go around them and create a plethora of businesses that do accept bitcoin.  So there are absolutely zero worries on that score.

Amazon takes bitcoin even if they don't want to.
Gyft cards take bitcoin, Amazon takes gyft cards.
So its only Amazon's loss that they don't take it direct.

[BitchicksHusband]

Hello,
I have though of the main possibility of bitcoin collapsing and the only way i saw it happening is if people stop using it as exchange (never gonna happen)
or if all the goverments will start making bitcoin illegal.
what are the chances for that to happen 
from the articles i'v read for now only Thailand made it illegal.

or anyone got other ideas how it can collapse. (the 51% attack is temporary and specific attack so.. dont think it can do much)

But once the ultra-rich in the Second Market fund start using Bitcoin, the US won't dare make it illegal, because they would really hear about it from their corporate masters.  Since this is already happening, it's just about too late for that right now.

[seafarer124]

from the articles i'v read for now only Thailand made it illegal.

They aren't illegal in Thailand, the articles are just repeating this false statement over and over again.

Have a read of this link.

http://www.coindesk.com/information/is-bitcoin-legal/

[Phinnaeus Gage]

only way for bitcoin to collapse is if someone kills the internet.

can happen, forgot about that 

If a raisin cookie wants to look like a chocolate cookie, and versa visa, who are we to judge?

[LiteCoinGuy]

until today it looks like the major countries try to regulate bitcoin and not forbid it. so it would be stupid to regulate it first and after some years of growth, forbid it. when you dont like it or its a danger to the countries, they should forbid bitcoin now!

[maz]

Big corporations can cause a lot of hassle when they have politicians in their pockets. Take piracy for instance, which is a bad example as it is naturally considered theft where as Bitcoin is completely innocent, but the point is these big corporations can have websites blocked by ISP's through Government legislations, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24726078 Although this is no obstacle to the technically literate, it would completely remove any ability for the average Joe to get involved in Bitcoin if all the worlds exchanges where blocked by all ISP's in a certain country. Remember the banks own the Government, they could have Bitcoin legislated against in a heartbeat if they really wanted.

It wouldn't be good for Bitcoin, and it wouldn't raise the price IMO. These big corps and the Government could do damage to Bitcoin if they really put their mind to it, but they cant make it disappear!

[hayek]

Go ahead, make it illegal. Bitcoin don't care.

[tvbcof]

For a long time I had theorized that Bitcoin's best hope would be that it was indeed 'made illegal'.  This would provoke development of more robust defenses against they kinds of attacks that could be employed if/when the needs outweighed the collateral damage that would occur.

Now it is kind of looking to me as though the ecosystem is developing the 'second tier' 'off-chain' types of solutions which will be necessary for safely scaling while (critically to me), not boxing us out of the potential for the 'first tier' to be widely distributed and P2P if it becomes necessary.  Put another way, it is not required to construct and maintain a 'supernode' in order to be a full peer at this point, and various 2nd tier providers are capable of supporting a fairly broad userbase.

I still believe that more blatant harassment on the part of the U.S. government specifically would actually have a healthy and productive impact on Bitcoin, but that Bitcoin could succeed without such an input.  My philosophical shift here is probably in part due to the surprising and welcome news out of China.

[StarfishPrime]

Eventually bitcoin will regulate government, not the other way around. It is inevitable.

[iCEBREAKER]

if all the goverments will start making bitcoin illegal.

Yeah, because that worked so well with illegal drugs.

IKR?  The price of cocaine has totally collapse since they stopped selling legally it in Coke-Cola and started selling it through the CIA's illegal distribution networks.

[Johnny Bitcoinseed]

It's just like drugs.  Governments often make them illegal but does that stop drug use?  LOL.  They find a way.  The market finds a way.  In fact, that only makes the illegal item worth even more!

No matter what happens it will be easy to use bitcoin, just as it is easy for anyone to go downtown and obtain all the drugs they want.

Everybody knows there are plenty of people in government who are in on the drug trade and profiting handsomely.  The big banks too are always being caught laundering drug money.  Look it up - these are facts and reported even by the mainstream media.

There is no stopping freedom.  People find a way.

So go ahead and ban bitcoin - that will only serve to indicate even more that we are onto something.

[davout]

In this thread : people confusing price and value.

[tvbcof]

...
There is no stopping freedom.  People find a way.

A glance through history indicates to me that 'freedom' tends to be, if anything, rare and fleeting.  I'd say it's more accurate to say that 'There is no stopping totalitarianism.  Despots find a way.'

That said, there do tend to be pockets of freedom at a local level in all scenarios.  With the appropriate tools these pockets can bubble up.  Distributed crypto-currencies are, to me, something with the potential to serve as such a tool.

[Bullionado]

Hello,
I have though of the main possibility of bitcoin collapsing and the only way i saw it happening is if people stop using it as exchange (never gonna happen)
or if all the goverments will start making bitcoin illegal.
what are the chances for that to happen  
from the articles i'v read for now only Thailand made it illegal.

or anyone got other ideas how it can collapse. (the 51% attack is temporary and specific attack so.. dont think it can do much)

The biggest threat to bitcoin in my opinion is a rival crypto currency with a big enough userbase to become the de facto standard crypto currency, with bitcoin lagging behind as a tiny geek crypto currency.

E.g. a crypto currency developed by Visa, Mastercard or Facebook.
Companies with either a huge existing userbase or an existing payment infrastructure, preferably both.

This is an excellent observation. 

[DAN444]

In this thread : people confusing price and value.

Are you thinking of what professor Antal Fekete has said?

[davout]

In this thread : people confusing price and value.

Are you quoting Antal Fekete?

Nope, quoting my thoughts.

[WinVery.com]

They would love to make it illegal if it was unpopular.

[tvbcof]

The biggest threat to bitcoin in my opinion is a rival crypto currency with a big enough userbase to become the de facto standard crypto currency, with bitcoin lagging behind as a tiny geek crypto currency.

E.g. a crypto currency developed by Visa, Mastercard or Facebook.
Companies with either a huge existing userbase or an existing payment infrastructure, preferably both.

This is an excellent observation. 

It truely is.  I've said many times that I don't see Bitcoin as having a very high potential for competativness as an exchage currency for buying trinkets due to latency, privacy, security of secret keys, etc.  Many solutions could come out of the woodwork that handle these better, and it is entirely possible that the more successfull of them could come from an organization with significant resources and a head-start in terms of userbase.

Bitcoin's only long term potential seems to me to be in providing a truly decentralized and extensively hardened solution for higher value transactions and wealth storage.  I doubt that any of the large established players could or would match Bitcoin in this market segment.  There would be legal, operational, and business challenges to them doing so.