Do you really think governments will allow a 500 billion dollar crypto-economy?

[Honeypot]

The more cryptocurrencies grow, the more difficult it will be for governments to stop it, why, because maintaining the illusion of a democracy (at least in the west) will become harder and harder if they start to ban it.

However, before bitcoin can reach a 500 Billion market cap is has some current limitations to overcome. Pruning will have to be implemented and block sizes have to be changed to handle more transactions per second.

Right. Give me somewhere that actually upholds democracy with out holes hundred times bigger than the west, only the curtains are thicker and they hide it better from gullible 'progressive revolutionaries' and 'civil rights leaders' of the west.

Jesus the naivte.....


What steps do you recommend to overcome the 'hurdles'?

[jubalix]

500 Billion is not much.

try 21T

thats more of a figure you should think about

Govt's have no choice in this

to much money on the table

[jubalix]

Well governments around the world allow Google which has near 350 billion market cap so yes, why not?

Except that crypto doesn't want such government interference as those imposed on transnational companies such as google.

Main conflict here is that governments are only willing allow things to grow if they get a slice of the action and is ultimately in control. What, does crypto have a standing army?

no crypto has your countries standing army, see when you can't pay your standing army any more or buy provisions due to people wanting crypto not paper/fiat, how exactly are you going to get your army to work?

[undeadbitcoiner]

500 Billion is not much.

try 21T

thats more of a figure you should think about

Govt's have no choice in this

to much money on the table

+1
Governments could controll only there money not a global currency

[jubalix]

Governments are generally able to attack centralized institutions (like other governments, companies, singular leaders, etc) rather well but they tend to be rather inept at killing decentralized global networks even when they waste forty years and a trillion dollars trying to do it.

They don't need to spend any money to stop bitcoin replacing fiat in the long-run. They just make a new law saying any ISP suspected of allowing Bitcoin related traffic will be shut down. Bitcoin would then truly only be a currency for 'criminals', the price would crash and mass adoption would be almost impossible.

The one world government?  A government may do that and innovation and technology will simply flow to where governments are more realistic in their regulation.   I don't think cryptocurrencies will replace national fiat but they will coexist.  The genie can't be put back into the bottle.  Stilll the global money supply is on the order of $75T (M2) so even if Bitcoin grew to support a $500B money supply (the number from the OP), it is a rounding error and thus hardly is a danger that it will replace all national currencies.

I always thought CC's /Bitcoin~PeerCoin were going after a much larger cap/target that the global monetary supply rather many of the other asset classes as well. now where's that picture gone

[Peter R]

We're closer to 100 pixels now. 

[woutersteven]

What steps do you recommend to overcome the 'hurdles'?

In order for bitcoin to scale up, SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) has to be implemented, this makes light-weight clients possible so that not all clients have to download the entire public ledger. For more information: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability and https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Simplified_payment_verification in particular.

[lorix]

To put this all into context - big government has been burnt before with the evolution of the Internet itself.

I (para)quote William Gibson of Cyberpunk fame:

"If the government had known what the internet would become, it wouldn't have allowed it to."

Reference: http://williamgibsonboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2866012481/m/1156066104

What I take away from that quote is that had the governments of the day known in advance what a major impact the Internet was going to have on privacy, security, equality and leveling the playing field then they would have taken early control of it and shaped it according to their own image. Yes, we would still have had an Internet but one I believe would have been tightly controlled with an artificial high cost of entry limiting benefits to all but a select few. They would still have us still using Fidonet style messaging systems that were slow and could be easily intercepted and controlled.

Once bitten, twice shy.

The Internet wasn't originally designed with civil liberty protections in mind - that was an unexpected side-effect of the connectivity the Internet gave us and it didn't happen overnight but rather evolved over time. Cryptocurrency on the other hand is an immediate and direct competitor to the current financial system, designed from the ground up to be an open and free alternative.

People often compare the current stage of cryptocurrency development with that of the Internet circa early 1990's. Big government would be well aware of what developed when they previously chose to be ignorant. It would be folly to think they are going to let history repeat itself, and so close to home.

Still... I'm an optimist, and while I can't predict the future I do have faith that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general has the potential to overcome whatever obstacles are thrown in it's way.

It's still going to be an uphill battle, enjoy the ride!

[bovcan]

Well governments around the world allow Google which has near 350 billion market cap so yes, why not?

Google pays taxes and also bends over and gives the gov't whatever personal data about us that they want. 

[stompix]

Can the bitcoin protocol create and sustain a 500 billion dollar economy?
The way it is right now , certainly not.

[monsterer]

The one world government?  A government may do that and innovation and technology will simply flow to where governments are more realistic in their regulation.  

You only need the US and EURO to ban crypto setting the president to make other countries follow suit - they all share the same fear that they'll lose control over their own money supply and with it the ability to regulate their economies.

Enjoy the ride now while you can; there is a lot of money to be made but the clock is ticking.

[johnyj]

The governments around the world are all heavily debt laden. They used housing bubble to save the IT bubble from crashing, now when housing bubble crashed, they need another bubble that is magnitudes higher than previous housing bubble (e.g. at least one million dollars investment/consumption from every person) to restart the economy, and the best choice is bitcoin, since it has the ability to grow to whatever size when needed

The first government who mass invest in bitcoin will first get their economy back on track, because the extremely high return of bitcoin investment would help them to get rid of their debt quickly

I've thought about this too, johnyj.  What if we intentionally blow bitcoin into the biggest bubble yet?  Maybe the bubble that never pops?  A lot of people here say that governments would never want to allow bitcoin to thrive, but, like you point it, it would solve a lot of the problems with government debt and entitlement funding.  

Yes, the most important part is that this bubble will never pop

A traditional bubble always pop after central bank raised the rate and tightened the money supply, together with the added production of the speculative target, many sellers could not find enough buyers with enough money, so they panic sell and the price crashed hard

But in bitcoin's case, there will never be added production no matter how high the demand is, and when central bank tightened the money supply, the bitcoin holder do not need to sell the coins for fiat money, they can simply spend it to buy goods/services, so there will not be a total panic sell caused by central banks' monetary policy. When there are enough merchants accepting bitcoin payment, the sell pressure on exchanges will get less and less each passing day

[nodroids]

It is whether the banking cartels which largely control governments will allow bitcoin. Clearly they are already scared as you see US bank accounts shut down for depositing and withdrawing from exchanges.

But Governments aren't just run by bankers, there are other interests involved, like Silicon Valley in the US which now holds a lot of sway in Washington D.C. and is all for BTC. We in the Bitcoin community have to get organized. We have to support those with counter interests to the banks and the Basel based Western powers, so they can support us. We need to set up a rock and a hard place for the banking cartels of Basel, New York, London etc.

The banking cartels will not allow themselves to be relegated to an obsolete middle-man of history pushed aside by an emergent technology. I'm not saying that their victory is assured, but they will have no choice but to take a swipe at us, as they are already doing.  Right now without any real organization we look like easy prey. We must tip the balance and quickly.

I am considering how good strategy might play out, both from the bankers' perspective and ours, but it is clear to me at least that we must become organized if we are even to have viable discussions of successful strategies. I don't know that being nebulous and distributed/decentralized is enough. Although certainly educating every user back to annonymity is important.

[stompix]

It is whether the banking cartels which largely control governments will allow bitcoin. Clearly they are already scared as you see US bank accounts shut down for depositing and withdrawing from exchanges.

But Governments aren't just run by bankers, there are other interests involved, like Silicon Valley in the US which now holds a lot of sway in Washington D.C. and is all for BTC. We in the Bitcoin community have to get organized. We have to support those with counter interests to the banks and the Basel based Western powers, so they can support us. We need to set up a rock and a hard place for the banking cartels of Basel, New York, London etc.

The banking cartels will not allow themselves to be relegated to an obsolete middle-man of history pushed aside by an emergent technology. I'm not saying that their victory is assured, but they will have no choice but to take a swipe at us, as they are already doing.  Right now without any real organization we look like easy prey. We must tip the balance and quickly.

I am considering how good strategy might play out, both from the bankers' perspective and ours, but it is clear to me at least that we must become organized if we are even to have viable discussions of successful strategies. I don't know that being nebulous and distributed/decentralized is enough. Although certainly educating every user back to annonymity is important.

No crypto can make all the banks close down.
You have to understand that banks don't just issue credit cards or allow you to deposit your money with interest.

Banks also lend money!
How will bitcoin lend money? Stop with the transpiration and FUD theory.
Banks and bitcoins can go along very well.

[rat]

The question is not whether governments will allow a $X bitcoin economy, the question is whether Bitcoin will allow oversized governments to exist and retain the kind of power they currently do.

....and we have the first jap-anime inclined fool chiming in with deluded sense of 'power' they hold.

Why don't you go hang in chinese and russian government custody with the weaboo kiddy snowden and find out life doesn't work out like a shounen manga/comic?


REALISTIC discussions.

that comment made my day. thank you for that.

i finally found another person on this forum with some clarity - and fucking sense and reason.


on to my opinion: in short, i don't think it really can be stopped. various government agencies have studied Bitcoin long before most people here even heard of it. they are very curious as to what this could lead to. and, how they might benefit from it.

[granathus]

If governments keep losing their legitimacy at the current pace, we will probably reach some kind of critical mass soon, where the population no longer believes the best advice is coming from their governments. In such a world Bitcoin can survive even in the face of a massive government effort to ban or destroy it. It might even become the vehicle for a new way of organizing our societies. The current paradigm is coming to an end. National states as we know them is not necessarily something we will have in 10-20 years.

[Doublelucky]

if no normal bussines (grocery, electronic, housing, energy, transport etc. etc. etc.) accept it, the price CRASHES= bitcoin is dead. (using it only in the black market wont save it). Decentralization is worthless argument here.

Not everybody is as deficient in imagination as you.

Soon enough we'll be able to use Bitcoins to obtain products and services from virtually all normal businesses whether or not they accept it.

True that, didn't even think about that possibility

[evoked22]

The question is not whether governments will allow a $X bitcoin economy, the question is whether Bitcoin will allow oversized governments to exist and retain the kind of power they currently do.

agreed 

[DeathAndTaxes]

I always thought CC's /Bitcoin~PeerCoin were going after a much larger cap/target that the global monetary supply rather many of the other asset classes as well. now where's that picture gone

I think you are conflating two values.   There is the money supply and then there is GDP.  Unless velocity is 1 the money supply will be smaller than GDP.  For example globally the M0 is ~$10T however GDP is $75T that implies a velocity of 7.5.  It is unknown what the velocity of Bitcoin will be but given the low transaction cost it could be very high.   Thus a money supply (I hate the term market cap) of $500B could support many trillions of dollars in annual economic activity.

[Doublelucky]