How long till BitCoins become outlawed?

[BarefootJoe]

I was wondering what was your personal opinion on how long till bitcoins become outlawed? I read that a few governmental officials are trying to ban them do to being anonymous and being a competing currency with the USD.

[ShaggyB (BitCoinWorldMarket)]

I would think it would be as successful as trying to ban Euros or any other type of foreign currency. Maybe I'm being naive here but I don't see bitcoin as any different than any other currency except that its decentralized.

[gamer4156]

The more people try and get rid of it the larger it will get, especially with all the anti-gov't sentiment these days

[BarefootJoe]

The more people try and get rid of it the larger it will get, especially with all the anti-gov't sentiment these days

Good point, when they start going after it, people will take an interest to it and maybe pick it up (kinda like k2, synthetic coke, etc.).

[BitPay Business Solutions]

The more people try and get rid of it the larger it will get, especially with all the anti-gov't sentiment these days

Anyplace they get banned will drive business elsewhere.  I'm not sure this can be stopped.

[johnyj]

Actually I think some of the politicians might consider using this tool to attack the traditional banking system, which government have no control at all today.

Lincon was murdered just because he did not take loans from those bankers to support the war.

[cyklo]

It will be interesting to see how they try to do it. ISPs block certain ports? If you get caught with them on your harddrive, you face criminal charges? What form would that take?

[Gosroth]

The easiest method of attack would be shutting down the exchange of bitcoins with fiat currency.

Taking out the large exchanges would make finding the price of bitcoins at any given time more difficult.

It would be near impossible, however, to stop local bitcoin trading.

Price befuddlement in addition to illegality would prevent adoption by any meaningful scale of retailers (legitimate ones anyway).

So, worst case scenario is a very distributed network of exchangers and merchants. Not too bad, but more difficult certainly.

[Stephen Gornick]

There was a ruling by FinCEN recently that is likely to be interesting to Bitcoiners:
 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=30152.0

Also, this issue isn't specific to Bitcoin.  Facebook is getting closer to letting users redeem Facebook Credits for real-world goods and services.  Here's an interesting article that is related to this discussion:
 - http://seekingalpha.com/article/281501-i-want-my-virtual-currency

[Krang25]

I would like to agree with what others have said already. Trying to ban bit-coins will only attract more adopters.
And besides, if they do try and ban it, it's just gonna result in something similar to what is happening with torrents.
Shut one site down, 10 more will pop up.
And there are too many people using these for them to go after everyone, so they will most likely just make "examples" out of the biggest users.

[ptfff]

They can try and ban it, but it wont work.

That said, they could try to kill the markets... and other things without directly affecting bitcoin itself.

It'll probably become a black market though because they pop up everywhere.

[Jaime Frontero]

got a VPN provider?

[wumpus]

To be honest I don't think they will ever be outlawed, either that or all other virtual and in-game currencies need to be disallowed too... it's just not practical. There needs to be some form of cash in the digital age and cryptocurrency is the way to do it.

[Bert]

If they can't raise taxes at the points of sales/services, that is where the real problem is to any government. In some ways it is like a cash in hand business, but on the bright side for taxmen/IRS it is traceable in ways that cash is not.

[Ente]

Indeed, a networkprotocol cant seriously be banned (in the way that it doesnt exist any more afterwards). But even if its illegal and perfectly useable, it will deter 99% of all possible users and all legal merchants. Without that as a backup, it would even get uninteresting for blackmarket use. So, ban the trading (which is somewhat easy to do), bring the BTC system to a halt.

That said, I highly doubt it will ever get banned in european countries. Which might be enough for a stable system..

On a sidenote: In Germany they try to pass a law to outlaw any anonymous purchase of money, currency, vouchers, no matter how small the amount..

Ente

[allten]

My opinion:

Before they can outlaw BitCoin in supposedly a free country like USSA, the Main Stream Media will need to mold a decent portion of public opinion to be in favor of its destruction. I don't think it will be easy for them to make it illegal, but you'll know they are pushing for it when there are big stories on national TV demonizing the currency.

I believe they are still banking that it will fail on its own or it will never achieve the potential that many of us see in it.

[Mousepotato]

I hear the govt is going to ban Bitcoins right after they shut down ThePirateBay.

[Dextro]

I don't think it's possible for them to take out Bitcoin fully, and people have invested a lot of money in Bitcoin, I think it would just be too controversial for them to shut it down. It's not like it's causing anyone harm [yet].

[TKHatch]

I don't think it could be made illegal in the UK.

Well if it did the law would also apply to the Brixton Pound and many other regional currencies in the UK.

[indio007]

Bitcoin can never be outlawed in the US.

They can refuse to enforce bitcoin contracts in their court's but that is it.

Bitcoin would have to be inherently unlawful, which of course it isn't.