If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

[Tina H]

In Bitcoin-based transactions, about 76 billion US dollars of transactions are involved in illegal activities each year, accounting for about 46% of the total Bitcoin transactions. Almost a quarter of bitcoin users, and nearly half of bitcoin transactions, are illegal. Therefore, from a quantitative point of view, the use of Bitcoin is enough to become the target of attention of governments and international criminal police. If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

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[pooya87]

You can't just use random numbers here, where is your proof of any of your claims for the percentages and amounts used in your claims?

And what's up with all these "what if" topics today from newbie accounts?

[GoodLuckToken]

I would agree about wanting to see some proof of those numbers. No references at all? I find it a little hard to believe that 46% of all BTC transactions these days are by illegal activities. I don't know if I agree with those numbers, but Bitcoin will always have value because I don't see every government blocking it. Personally, I don't see the US blocking Bitcoin.. El Salvador just made it a legal tender.. I don't see other free countries like Canada, United Kingdom, Australia..etc blocking it either. BTC won't be blocked in all countries so it will always have value.

[YOSHIE]

If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

I'm not sure the government does that and the government can't block Bitcoin, the government can only block bank transactions related to crypto, but that never happened.

Basically Bitcoin is not only traded in one country, Bitcoin can be accessed in all countries, not all government officials agree with the idea of ​​blocking Bitcoin, the proof: many officials/governments consider Bitcoin as a promising investment asset, not least the government secretly invests in Bitcoin, meaning: one or two countries completely block Bitcoin and another country legalize Bitcoin as a digital currency for exchange.

Conclusion: the value has no effect at all in this case, on the contrary the value of Bitcoin is getting higher.

Note: unless the government can do the blocking, if the internet and technology are destroyed on this earth.

[ranochigo]

IIRC the volume of Bitcoin that is known to be involved in illicit transaction is fairly small, I think less than 0.5%.

The value of Bitcoin partially comes from the fact that governments cannot block Bitcoin. You might be able to hinder your own citizens using Bitcoin by draconian laws. It'll be quite a difficult task to block it completely. Even if the exchanges were to be shut down, the decentralized exchanges would likely still operate as well.

[target]

You can't just use random numbers here, where is your proof of any of your claims for the percentages and amounts used in your claims?

And what's up with all these "what if" topics today from newbie accounts?

I think this is where he got these numbers https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/17706/what-is-the-actual-use-of-cryptocurrencies

The authorities can actually track down these transactions if they really wanted to arrest someone behind these illegal activities. Bitcoin is traceable and with the help of chainalysis, I'm sure they could get bad actors.

Blocking Bitcoin is not possible. It's worth fighting against BTC when gradually the world is adopting it, the country that will block or illegalize BTC will just be left. China will not be able to stop it too.

[Tristan Bieber]

With Bitcoin's nature, it's not going to be easy to block, unless everyone goes back to the last century and stops using the Internet. Therefore, various blockchain coins are not so easy to be blocked, and the actual transaction value is also real. But Bitcoin's value is likely to be infinitely close to zero, since there are countless XX coins that are its enemies, and there is no essential difference between them. When there are countless kinds of XX coins on the market, as long as the time is long enough, the value will be infinite points.

[pooya87]

I think this is where he got these numbers https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/17706/what-is-the-actual-use-of-cryptocurrencies

That is essentially the same random baseless numbers but with more words. The main reference of the wall of text is an article from 2012 which was the year when things such as Silkroad were popular. The other reference it uses is even worse. It is from 2018 and claims that the volume is $76 billion annually but their data is from 2009 until 2017! This is a ridiculous range which goes from $0 or $19.7k annually in 2009 to $3654 billion in 2017. I have no idea how they concluded that 76 is 45% of 3654!
The calculation is also seriously flawed because they are basically creating what they call "clusters" of users based on addresses and what they think is a link between them. They also don't stop at a certain tx that could possibly be an illegal transaction, they count all its descendants as illegal too.
It is interesting that on page 15 they claim to know how many bitcoin users there are in total without explaining how they come up with that number.

Basically their methodology is that they find some known illegal activities (such as coins seized by the government) then they move back from those transaction by making a wrong assumption that a lot of the parent transactions were also illegal then compute the sum total of those outputs and report it as all being illegal!

[Wind_FURY]

If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

IF it was possible for the government, or any establishment entitiy to censor Bitcoin, then yes, Bitcoin would lose its main value proposition. Censorship-resistance. BUT, show me how Bitcoin users could be censored from using Bitcoin to buy Heroine from the dark markets, or censor users from HODLing Bitcoin to hide wealth from their wives, or censor users from depositing Bitcoin to an online casino to gamble.

[BlackHatCoiner]

If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

You probably mean if they illegalized it, because blocking/banning a peer-to-peer network seems unreal if you don't cut your country's internet connection. They've tried banning it, but failed.

The answer is no, Bitcoin has value as long as people believe it should. If I want to transact with someone oversea instantly, Bitcoin satisfies me a lot and thus, I evaluate it.

In Bitcoin-based transactions, about 76 billion US dollars of transactions are involved in illegal activities each year, accounting for about 46% of the total Bitcoin transactions.

I've tired on reading US dollars in Bitcoin transactions... There are no dollars! Only bitcoins! Also, can you provide us your proof of these statements? Not an article that says exactly what you came up with.

IIRC the volume of Bitcoin that is known to be involved in illicit transaction is fairly small, I think less than 0.5%.

That seems small to me. It could be true for drugs and guns, but an illicit activity is to evade taxes as well. I'd guess that lots of people evade their bank with Bitcoin.

[OcTradism]

In Bitcoin-based transactions, about 76 billion US dollars of transactions are involved in illegal activities each year, accounting for about 46% of the total Bitcoin transactions.

There are multiple usages of Bitcoin and people are free to use it. They have rights to be their own banks with Bitcoin, so as you. It is the initiative that Satoshi Nakamoto brought to us.

Almost a quarter of bitcoin users, and nearly half of bitcoin transactions, are illegal.

Source of those figures you used, please.

Therefore, from a quantitative point of view, the use of Bitcoin is enough to become the target of attention of governments and international criminal police. If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

Governments can not block Bitcoin, can not destroy Bitcoin network that is globally decentralized.

Governments can not steal your bitcoin if you don't give them your private keys. The discussion ends. 

[Woodie]

Blocking bitcoin, no ways guys and girls!

For starters how do you block something you don't control? But there is an indirect way that could have a negative impact on crypto like electricity and internet regulation, as these two are at the core of it and could have a temporal impact. But crypto (bitcoin) being decentralized counters these effects and prevents the network from breaking down.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

I don't think so because I am pretty sure that not every government is going to block bitcoin and even if they do so, people will find a way, in my opinion, it will rather have an adverse effect because it becomes illegal but the demand is still there so the prices are going to go up.

[KaliLinux]

In Bitcoin-based transactions, about 76 billion US dollars of transactions are involved in illegal activities each year, accounting for about 46% of the total Bitcoin transactions. Almost a quarter of bitcoin users, and nearly half of bitcoin transactions, are illegal. Therefore, from a quantitative point of view, the use of Bitcoin is enough to become the target of attention of governments and international criminal police. If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

What I believe is, If you have these numbers or whoever is coming up with these numbers if actually are true, should also be able to identify whoever is involved in these illegal Bitcoin transactions. How do you know if or which Bitcoin transactions are Illegal if you don't know who is transacting the transaction? I believe all these are always in a bid to portray Bitcoin Bad and besides, Not all Governments will Block Bitcoin cos we are even beginning to see Bitcoin adoption By Countries.

[Tumanggor]

In Bitcoin-based transactions, about 76 billion US dollars of transactions are involved in illegal activities each year, accounting for about 46% of the total Bitcoin transactions. Almost a quarter of bitcoin users, and nearly half of bitcoin transactions, are illegal. Therefore, from a quantitative point of view, the use of Bitcoin is enough to become the target of attention of governments and international criminal police. If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

46% Bitcoin transactions for criminals! where do you get this data from?
and one more thing you should know that the government has no power to block Bitcoin

you can still use the tor network or VPN when the government in your country does stupid things like blocking all crypto exchange sites in your country
Bitcoin will continue to have "value" even when governments around the world reject it

[DapanasFruit]

If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

China has already banned Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, as the government prefers Chinese to only deal with the digital yuan. However, there are still so many Chinese who are holding and trading Bitcoin. Yes, it can be difficult to be involved with Bitcoin when your government is a control freak like China, but they know they can never implement the ban unless they will be assigning one police to each person 24/7.

Now, talking about your main point. I think this has been discussed in this forum so many times. And I don't think the figures you are bringing here is still true, as illegal transactions involving Bitcoin dropped dramatically when criminals realized that all transactions are actually recorded in the blockchain and is there for anyone to see. Bitcoin is anonymous but not a private coin...maybe we should learn the big difference.

[dkbit98]

In Bitcoin-based transactions, about 76 billion US dollars of transactions are involved in illegal activities each year, accounting for about 46% of the total Bitcoin transactions. Almost a quarter of bitcoin users, and nearly half of bitcoin transactions, are illegal.

This is totally wrong and fake information, and it has been researched and proven that less than 1% of all bitcoin transactions are used for some illegal activities.
To see how laws can be very stupid we can see that once upon a time it was illegal to own gold, it was illegal to cross the street if you had darker skin, plant was illegal, etc.
After watching how FBI cracked Silk Road marketplace I found out that many of those ''illegal activities'' are created by them with their manipulations and lying.

If governments block Bitcoin, does Bitcoin have no value?

Governments tried to ban Bitcoin but that is not really possible in same way like you can't block torrent or internet, so they decided to add more strict regulations, and they can actually use Bitcoin to track every transaction that makes their job much easier in some cases.
That is why privacy solutions and mixers like Chipmixer are very important, and Bitcoin value can only get bigger in time.

[Leviathan.007]

You are just using random numbers here. No government can ban bitcoin completely, because even if they suspend any local exchanges and block and bitcoin related website, people can buy/sell bitcoins by suing p2p methods and social medias there will be also underground black markets allowing people buy/sell bitcoins without of any problem. So, even if all the governments ban bitcoin, he investors and traders will do their job, only some newbies may do panic sell, this can the worst theory happen to bitcoin. However, this is very much unbelievable to see all the governments suspend their local exchanges in their countries.

[ipanks]

Bitcoin will still have value, even if the government block bitcoin. But if only one government block bitcoin while the other government still allows people to use bitcoin, that will not have a big effect. But the important is as long as the internet still exists and people can use the internet and use bitcoin, bitcoin will have value.

Maybe the illegal activities using bitcoin have been exposed too big than the good activities using bitcoin, so people out there think that bitcoin is only for illegal activities. If they can see that bitcoin is only a tool and will depend on how people use bitcoin, they will not see the bad. Instead, they will use bitcoin for good things.

[ranochigo]

You probably mean if they illegalized it, because blocking/banning a peer-to-peer network seems unreal if you don't cut your country's internet connection. They've tried banning it, but failed.

They made Bitcoin transactions illegal but no one has tried banning it on a large scale, AFAIK. China never used its GFW to ban Bitcoin connections. It's perfectly simple to start blocking them, but circumventing them is quite easy too. Just make sure you can use Tor and run your node through it.

That seems small to me. It could be true for drugs and guns, but an illicit activity is to evade taxes as well. I'd guess that lots of people evade their bank with Bitcoin.

Well, nobody knows whether it is overstated or understated. I think I saw it from a report which collected data from the various known crime and that is what they concluded. There is simply no way to tell how accurate it is. I'd argue criminals would prefer using privacy coin for something like this, unless its a ransomware, most uses Bitcoin.