Can the government hijack Bitcoin?

[Mauser]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

I don't think they can hijack your bitcoins. What they can do is prohibit bitcoins in a country and make all trading illegal. But even then they are still your coins and you might just need to sell them ASAP. For the government to take over the coins they would need to take over the ownership of all wallets, which seems impossible. Another way could be to make very high crypto taxes to take away your profits. But then you could just hold and not sell.

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[Snappycoco]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

Hijack in other words steal? I don't think so. Unless government could access your hard earned private keys then nobody can ever access your cold wallets besides it is a crime. Furthermore, governments would probably be implementing regulations to cryptocurrencies and that would probably be worth something to them.

[peterpanda]

It is impossible to hijack bitcoin for government but why government will hijack it? Bitcoin isn't centralized coin that government will handle it with sweet well. It is a decentralized crypto currency and not possible to hijack without private information/wallet seed.

[rosebrand]

I don't think the government can hijack bitcoin, there can only manipulate the price of bitcoin and by doing this there need a lot of money to buy as much bitcoin to become a bitcoin whale that if there dump might possibly affect the market, in other terms where government can become more effective on bitcoin is when a particular country citizens hold a large amount of bitcoin and its government  place restrictions or ban on bitcoin and its citizens start dumping suddenly bitcoin price starts deeping, in such Case we can say that particular country can manipulate the price of bitcoin but cannot hijack bitcoin.

[bitgolden]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

Technically governments cannot do anything about bitcoins as long as INTERNET stays decentralized. But, governments may impose all kind of regulations on all types of crypto related entities. But, when people get into P2P level of transactions alone then government restrictions will become void. So, there are less possibilities for governments to hijack bitcoins in any means.

[teosanru]

By Hijacking. I am assuming you mean shutting down the whole system and making bitcoin useless. I don't think it's possible. It's almost impossible for every country to come into one unanimous consent. There are several major issues that are much larger than cryptocurrencies, for eg, Cyber Crime, Data Privacy, Terrorism. When the countries haven't been able to come on a unanimous consent for these issues what makes you think they would stop bitcoin? Talking about beating it using the 51% computing power. That also seems very unlikely because the super computing power of the world is pretty split amongst different parts of world no one country has all the super computers today so it's impossible to hijack bitcoin for sure.

[just_Alice]

Do you mean by "hijack" taking control of? There's no way any government could do that. They can enforce a ban, but even that can't stop people from carrying out transactions, the ban will have consequences only if you connect your wallet to a card, otherwise, they can't track you.
There could be, in theory, a 51% attack, but the Bitcoin hash rate is too big, so I hardly think that's a possibility.

[rollingdice]

What do you mean by hijacking Bitcoin? And why would the government do it?

[iv4n]

What do you mean by hijacking Bitcoin? And why would the government do it?

For one big reason, control! And all other reasons that come after that...

In theory, it's possible, in practice it's near to impossible!

It's like you are asking can someone conquer the US?! The answer is the same, can you imagine all countries to attack at the same time on all sides? But when we will see that kind of organization? Can we see so many people uniting, with enormous computing power, and trying to hijack the Bitcoin network?

In theory, things are possible because you can always find some ways that "maybe" can work, but practice and life are so different! In theory, any country can be conquered, any system can be hijacked/destroyed... I can become the president of the galaxy and League of Legends pro players... but I guess only in theory!

[Gaaara]

I don't see it happening though it is possible, the reason why I don't see it happening is that government is structured to be a majority wins in making a decision, so if any of the government officials ever wanted to hijack bitcoin then it will go through a bunch of discussion and as long as there are some that is opposed to it, it won't be possible unless the people that wants to hijack it gone rogue and ignores governments policy but if that happens then they're basically fighting against the government.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

Government can commit some unseen crime that civilians doesn't understand much but if we're talking about "if bitcoin comes to number one currency in the world" then that's a large scale crime to hijack it and UN and other countries will be involved if the government in one country decided to hijack it.

[bittick]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

Technically governments cannot do anything about bitcoins as long as INTERNET stays decentralized. But, governments may impose all kind of regulations on all types of crypto related entities. But, when people get into P2P level of transactions alone then government restrictions will become void. So, there are less possibilities for governments to hijack bitcoins in any means.

They could probably intervene with the ISP and tell them to block any bitcoin websites but honestly most of governments aren't that competent and usually it's also hit and miss since it could create another problem in the future as well and when it comes to P2P as you mentioned just try to look at torrent out there, despite all the effort being spent to keep people from torrenting illegal file they still can't do anything, the only thing they can do is just to find one by one who's accessing what and bitcoin p2p gonna be a lot more complicated than torrent.
They just not gonna able to contain crypto and block it because it's basically out of their abilites.

[YOSHIE]

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

How many times has a member here had to: say that Bitcoin cannot be made the number one currency in the world, Bitcoin, which is known today as a digital or electronic currency that is traded on the crypto market with the currencies in their respective countries, Not real money like what you spend in traditional markets.

OP, it needs to be noted: that something that can be hijacked by both the government and pirates / robbers is physical.
Example: cars, ships, etc.

Whereas Bitcoin is intangible and invisible, how do you want to hijack internet signals, that's for example Bitcoin, so don't dream about bitcoin being hijacked. Ok.

[RealMalatesta]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

How exactly are they going to hijack it and which government exactly? And moreover you have to understand that bitcoin becoming a ‘number one currency’ as you have said here doesn’t make it a real currency , it is still an asset that will mainly be used for investment, no country owns it, because it is decentralized.

Moreover, by being decentralized that means that no government has the power to hijack it, and I am saying this because I can’t think of any possible means that they are going to be doing such a thing. The only thing I know that the government will be able to do is to place a ban on bitcoin which doesn’t limit people from still sending and receiving the cryptocurrency.

[kpierce77]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

Technically governments cannot do anything about bitcoins as long as INTERNET stays decentralized. But, governments may impose all kind of regulations on all types of crypto related entities. But, when people get into P2P level of transactions alone then government restrictions will become void. So, there are less possibilities for governments to hijack bitcoins in any means.

The essence of bitcoin itself is a decentralized system. So the point is how a system is able to run on its own without interference from other parties, and that also includes the government. The government may be able to enforce a fairly stringent regulation like in India, but a decentralized system still allows bitcoin to run even without support from other parties

[Rehan Zakir]

Yes!. I have read an article about this topic that quantum computing can break the algorithms of Bitcoin. There are huge number of Bitcoin miner's that is why it is difficult to break but i think it is possible.
Bitcoin is a decentralized technology so there is no government that controls the Bitcoin.

[DrBeer]

Bitcoin is known as to be the biggest cryptocurrency. in some countries it can be used to purchase goods and services and some see cryptocurrency as a threat.

if Bitcoin comes to be number one currency in the world today, can it  be hijack by the government?

The answer is simple - no, technically there is no such possibility. Neither the state nor the "superman" have anyone.
The only way is to limit as much as possible the opportunity to receive income from it or to make some kind of transactions. This can be blocking of exchanges, transfers of funds from their accounts, etc.

[isaac_clarke22]

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You mean regulate it?
Usage of it, yes they can be regulated. They put taxes to it. They can ban it whenever they want.
However if you're pointing out that hijacking like controlling the technology itself, it is a meh for me.
We already have one trying to claim himself as Satoshi. What more can we ask for?

[Leviathan.007]

I'm not sure what do you mean by hijacking bitcoin. If you mean stealing bitcoins from the wallets of users and investors the short answer is no and none can hijack your bitcoins if you do save your recovery seeds and private keys in a safe place none can hijack it not even the government and any organization related to government. That's all because of the decentralization of bitcoin.

[nakamura12]

Government cannot hijack bitcoin. It's a decentralized cryptocurrency and they can only ban or accept bitcoin. In my country, bitcoin is not banned and they did not waste the opportunity to earn some money from people who have bitcoins. There is an app that the people can use but the price of selling their bitcoin is much lower than the current price so it's a good opportunity for the governmen when they accepted bitcoin.

[CryptoYar]

If bitcoin could be hijacked, many countries would have already hijacked it. The truth is that this is not possible at all, since there are still many countries that still hate Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, so they would attack Bitcoin to prove that it is a weak currency.

Also, I don't think you know much about blockchain technology. You better learn how blockchain technology works then you will realize why everyone is saying bitcoin can't be hijacked.