I am writing an article on how to stop bitcoin. Can you guy help out?

[w0lverine]

Hi everyone I am writing a small article on how Bitcoin can be stopped. Mainly to serve my little community who keep asking me questions.
My main ideas for the moments are below, any input whatsoever, constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Wall Street hand to manipulate markets
JPMorgan talking bad now entering
Coinbase ipo
Etfs
Institutional long and short
Bitmex guy under investigation


Bcash and other forks as a political control of the comunity
Political attacks
Auditing the chain through forks
divide and conquer


Government bans
Push market underground
On off ramps
KYC to persecute
Executive Order 6102

Hacks
51% attacks
quantum computing
Mt Gox
Cryptsy

[crwth]

What do you mean STOP? That totally no nodes anywhere operating? Or just a specific thing that wouldn't let people use their BTC?

Almost everything in your list has been accused to BTC and has been expressed. Despite that, look at BTC now. It's more vital than ever, and I don't think it's stopping anytime soon. Especially not in our lifetime.

[sujon5]

Maybe I'm wrong or too optimistic about Bitcoin, but I believe the only thing that can physically stop Bitcoin is    a blackout electricity. If suddenly electricity goes away foever, we won't be able to mine/use Bitcoin.

[w0lverine]

The end goal of the article would be to show that there is now way to stop it. The nodes will be validating the rules, the miners mining and a block containing transactions will continue to be mined every 10 minutes.

So I am taking the ideas that people new to the system can have when it comes to their notions of stopping bitcoin. stuff like "what is government ban it", "what if they hack it"...

[Wind_FURY]

Hi everyone I am writing a small article on how Bitcoin can be stopped. Mainly to serve my little community who keep asking me questions.
My main ideas for the moments are below, any input whatsoever, constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Wall Street hand to manipulate markets
JPMorgan talking bad now entering
Coinbase ipo
Etfs
Institutional long and short
Bitmex guy under investigation

Bitcoin is not only a “currency”, or some consider a “commodity”, it’s a censorship resistant, multi-generational protocol too. The market can be stopped, but Bitcoin goes somewhere it can find efficiency and flourish.

Bcash and other forks as a political control of the comunity
Political attacks
Auditing the chain through forks
divide and conquer

Overestimated. Ignore.

Government bans
Push market underground
On off ramps
KYC to persecute

Isn’t the government trying/have tried/or failed?

Hacks
51% attacks
quantum computing
Mt Gox
Cryptsy

There’s no incentive to attack Bitcoin through 51% mining power. They will be more profitable by mining honestly.

Bitcoin hacks would be the tiniest of the world’s problems with Quantum Computing.

[w0lverine]

Bitcoin is not only a “currency”, or some consider a “commodity”, it’s a censorship resistant, multi-generational protocol too. The market can be stopped, but Bitcoin goes somewhere it can find efficiency and flourish.

Thanks, that is helpful!

Overestimated. Ignore.

I think this is an important part, no matter what we think about "The enemy chain" it did polarize the community and managed to gather a lot of hash power. And most important of all, it audited the blockchain. everyone moved their coins, Exchanges had to prove they held funds and Big stash such as Satoshi and early miners didn't move.

[hatshepsut93]

Depends on what you mean by "stop". Do you want Bitcoin to stop existing, i.e. no new blocks mined, or preventing 99.99% of population from using it would also count as successfully stopping Bitcoin?

In the first case, this can be achieved with 51% attack that mines empty blocks - no transactions will be possible. But it requires continuously consuming enormous amounts of electricity, and having the needed hardware. No government can afford this.

Banning Bitcoin by most governments in the world, especially those with big influence like US, China, EU would push Bitcoin underground and make it just a tool for darknet markets.

[Kittygalore]

I know one effective way to STOP bitcoin and that is through EMP or Solar flares or if we are unfortunate, a nuclear war too.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Hi everyone I am writing a small article on how Bitcoin can be stopped.

You've confused the ways Bitcoin can be stopped with its disadvantages. Everything you wrote about Wall street's manipulation, forks and government's bans already exists. But, Bitcoin is still here. How can this be possible?

Since constructive criticism is welcomed, let me respond you with counter-arguments. Here's why Bitcoin can't be stopped:

Decentralized.
Anyone is allowed to run their own node, with no permissions. The network works peer-to-peerly and thus, there's no border to "stop" it. There's nothing to be "stopped", only nodes communicating with each other through the TCP/IP protocol.

Censorship-resistant.
Since it's decentralized, there is no authority to freeze a transaction, which makes bitcoin censorship resistant to anyone who could govern the way money circulates. This frees people.

Anonymous.
Bitcoin is anonymous. Whether you want to call it pseudo-anonymous or not, it's anonymous if it's used properly. It doesn't require any IDs which makes it suitable for the unbanked.

Same rights.
It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what's your religion, your skin color or your country you're living. As long as you're internet connected you have the same rights as any other bitcoin user around the world. This globalizes a medium of exchange, which makes it very useful.

I'll be happy to get a response and continue this discussion argumentatively.

[w0lverine]

Decentralized.
Anyone is allowed to run their own node, with no permissions. The network works peer-to-peerly and thus, there's no border to "stop" it. There's nothing to be "stopped", only nodes communicating with each other through the TCP/IP protocol.

This brings in a new point. Can ISPs block or delay a node or miner traffic? Isn't the bitcoin related internet traffic hanging on the stratum protocol?
perhaps one can be tempted to say that if it does happen then we fork into using a new protocol. Then it will be a cat and mouse game.
Routing it over TOR would make the whole ecosystem quite slow, but is it still fast enough to keep the 10min block going?
Do I have it all wrong and the Bitcoin traffic is indistinguishable / piggybacking on the normal internet traffic?

Censorship-resistant.
Since it's decentralized, there is no authority to freeze a transaction, which makes bitcoin censorship resistant to anyone who could govern the way money circulates. This frees people.

Yes but government banning on/off ramps and illegalising the trade can and will affect the ecosystem. Pushing the whole system underground is the answer but at what cost? can it survive forever underground? will users still want to take a risk of using it? will the community still believe in Bitcoin at this point?
a lot of ifs... I know..

[Fuzzybean]

I doubt Bitcoin can be stopped for the simple reason that it is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful symbol of hope in the modern world. And everyone hopes, be it the poor or the rich. No one would actually benefit from Bitcoin disappearing. Even if the price were to suddenly drop to under $1, there would still be people hodling  
My guess is that it would take an extinction level event to stop Bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

This brings in a new point. Can ISPs block or delay a node or miner traffic?

ISPs can traffic non-Tor and non-VPN connected users who will run their own node. Not sure why should an ISP ban a node, since bitcoin is neither illegal or legal in most countries. Should I assume that you mean that governments will illegalize it? What government succeeded on stopping a p2p network? None. As for the mining traffic:  You just need to be internet connected in order to broadcast it. This can be done with a lot of ways such as with VPN and Tor if you don't want to be known to your ISP.

Yes but government banning on/off ramps and illegalising the trade can and will affect the ecosystem. Pushing the whole system underground is the answer but at what cost? can it survive forever underground?

Assuming that governments will make it illegal, because they've tried and failed several times, I'll respond you with a nice example that has been discussed a gazillion times: Did the BitTorrent survive? It's been accused by governments since the majority of its users, use it for illegal purposes. That's the same with Bitcoin, they won't ban the protocol, but its use. They will not succeed, because no one ever succeeded on banning a p2p network, especially that big.

I believe that they should start adapting with it, at least those that haven't done it yet.

[slaman29]

Wall Street hand to manipulate markets
JPMorgan talking bad now entering
Coinbase ipo
Etfs
Institutional long and short
Bitmex guy under investigation

Bitmex is not Wallstreet. Coinbase also is not Wall Street. ETFs mainly is not even real Bitcoin just cash settled mainly and majority of it will not even touch BTC markets, so I think a lot of these here aren't even related. Institutional long shorts maybe want to manipulate markets but this has nothing to do with STOPPING Bitcoin?

[joniboini]

Yes but government banning on/off ramps and illegalising the trade can and will affect the ecosystem. Pushing the whole system underground is the answer but at what cost? can it survive forever underground? will users still want to take a risk of using it? will the community still believe in Bitcoin at this point?
a lot of ifs... I know..

I think they want to control it instead, just take a look at the recent progress on KYC/AML policies and stuff like that. I bet the government will use this to eventually increase their income through taxes, which is way more profitable than banning crypto without any real result. The abuse of the network due to some bad actors will always exist, so trying to increase the control on how, who, where, and when they use it would be a better choice imo.

[agustafocena]

Maybe I'm wrong or too optimistic about Bitcoin, but I believe the only thing that can physically stop Bitcoin is    a blackout electricity. If suddenly electricity goes away foever, we won't be able to mine/use Bitcoin.

I agree with that, if totaly blackout the electricity in the world, so we didn't have access to use it anymore or maybe the world war. but why do we have to stop things that are already benefiting to us.

[Innerpumper]

Stop? very difficult, even if the internet is dead even with only bitcoin devices will still exist. Bitcoin is a code program with security and decentralization proven to be very secure since 2008 the bitcoin chain in wallet core is very secure, except for the carelessness of wallet owners. How do you think you can stop this?

[20kevin20]

Ehm.. quite weird how you've been in the space for 8 years yet you don't know much about how most Bitcoin attacks could be countered easily with just few lines of coding.

Government bans cannot do much to BTC - India and China attempted to ban it, but it ended up as a failure. 51% attack is a VERY resource-hungry task that is easily redeemed worthless by the community, KYC can be avoided, underground markets usually grow huge in prices and hoarding can't realistically be banned when you have DEXs in existence.

Quantum computing is something that threatens the entire internet infrastructure if such computers were made specifically for hacking purposes (guess this will become something realistic at some point in the near future). Mt. Gox is just an exchange hack that never "stopped" Bitcoin from existing. It was only the people's fault for holding their money on custodial services, or some people were just unfortunate enough to be caught with their money on there right before withdrawing.

I don't think Bitcoin could be stopped. It could have its adoption slowed down or its price dumped heavily to the ground, but other than that.. nothing much can be done to it.

[Wexnident]

Market manipulation, an idea but it isn't really going to happen. It could be effective for a short period of time but in the long run? Hardly doubt it. Plus, a lot of people can see what Bitcoin is, and its true worth, so I doubt that would happen, not to mention that some may just be fake join in on the manipulation, and use an anonymous account to actually profit off of it.

Forks, I mean, it's been done and has been tested, nothing really happened. It just became another shtcoin in the shtcoin universe that would probably never go past what it came from.  

Government bans, I'm pretty sure history could answer the effectiveness of that. Not to mention it not working on BTC's early days, much so today with it's influence being incomparable to what it was back then.

Hacks, I mean if it was possible, it would've already been done. The value of BTC is enormous now, and you'd have expected anyone that could attack it's network would've already done so. 51% is deemed worthless as others have said, quantum computing is still for the future, Mt Gox is just an exchange that got hacked, no where near close to actually touching what Bitcoin is. Looked up Cryptsy and it seemed like it's just an exchange as well?

Just kill the internet man, most effective way to do it imo.

[Renampun]

I know one effective way to STOP bitcoin and that is through EMP or Solar flares or if we are unfortunate, a nuclear war too.

*this is the most powerful way to 'stop' Bitcoin 'lol'...
since the beginning of Bitcoin was created, it is no longer possible for Bitcoin to 'stop' from circulating. Bitcoin owners and traders will continue to exist and this will make its circulation lasting as long as the internet and the world are safe.

[Leviathan.007]

Bitcoin is not something you can shut it down easily just like the a normal device by cutting the power. Due to decentralization of bitcoin, even if you shut down some node on a country other nodes will keep doing the job without of any problem. However since nothing is impossible, there are ways to damage bitcoin. For example, doing the 51% attack if 51 percent of nodes confirm an invalid block with false data or another example be forcing all people in the world doing kyc If all governments make the decision to do that they can probably damage bitcoin. But, even after doing all these you can not stop bitcoin and in the worst case the price of bitcoin will be decreased periodically and then recover.