Can Government Really Ban Crypto?

[hyudien]

From this simple story, I personally take the point that increasing innovation to a more modern era and adapting to current technology, I strongly agree that Bitcoin's technology invites every country to advance and develop more massively so as not to be left behind by other countries. For example, El Salvador will be the only country that can make it happen to all countries that reject or block cryptocurrencies.

[BernyJB]

I wouldn't compare this situation to Nokia's situation. There is a stark difference between a private business making a wrong decision that affected them in the long term, and a country (that is represented by a government elected by a majority of its voting citizens,

I wouldn't too. Both situations are miles apart in. Going forward, the intriguing part for me is what do these nations banning cryptos stand to gain, apart from protecting the selfish interest of a few selected among the political and ruling class? Come to think of it, most of these selected few also trade cryptos but in secret. Nigeria is a case study whose Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) in this current administration was discovered to be trading cryptos on an exchange when someone took a snapshot of his laptop tools bar or something at a time the CNN hammer was on cryptos in the country. The elites don't really care what hardship they put on the masses provided their selfish interest is met. Cryptocurrency is changing the narrative of economic independence and that's why retards in government aren't happy about it.

Me three. 
First, the nokia explanation was a gross oversimplification. Nokia didn't fall because they adopted Windows: they fell for a variety of reasons, one of which was their adoption of windows. Then, you can't really compare a company that made cellphones to a beast like Samsung, that makes pretty much everything that uses electrons to work. Samsung was bound to take the lead sooner or later.
Then, the whole comparison makes no sense. It's literally comparing apples to oranges.
For a government to ban cryptocurrencies outright would be very difficult, as they'd literally have to isolate the whole country from the rest of the world. In any case, there are many other ways to de facto ban them, or at least make their usage very difficult.
For example, in Argentina, to make any international transactions online you need an international credit card with an account in USD. That alone limits cryptocurrency use to less than 10% of the population, probably a lot less.

In any case, can governments make crypto transactions illegal? Yes, they can, and more countries are bound to do so in the future. Cryptocurrency adoption may allow for increased liquidity from tourism (and eventually from other sources), but it implies losing control over part of the country's economy, and that's playing with fire in the best of cases.
The government's job is to care about the whole country , not about a given class. It doesn't make sense (from a macroeconomic point of view) to legalize a currency outside your control. Especially not if your own currency is in bad shape.

Classic example was Columbia. The drug kingpin Escobar killed over 20,000 cops and soldiers and eventually he was shot to death in the streets of Medellin (actually on a rooftop)

He had money and power ,workers and  soldiers etc. And his own government took him out.

Well, they did have a bit of "external help"...
In any case, Pablo Escobar's case was an extreme case of somebody with a huge ego, paired with a tiny brain. He was, at one point, so unbelievably wealthy he could've emigrated to any country in the world and lived off his money, but he had to go and fight both his own and the American government.
And he didn't have soldiers, he had a bunch of thugs that were blindly allegiant to him, but had no training whatsoever, and almost no equipment.

In any case, before any Colombian takes issue, it's Colombia, not Columbia.

[Reid]

It's windows injected in a phone that is not right. I'd rather just use it in a computer. It's not user friendly as I had tried it before and had a hard time tinkering what I need.
Back to the topic, I think it's because of the inability to check the people's balances that's why they don't want cryptocurrencies becoming their assets.
They like it all in a "legal" way where there are paperworks and so they could claim taxes. Yeah, they call it as a tool for tax evasion and governments wouldn't like that.

[jhonjhon]

Can Government Really Ban Crypto?

My answer is..

Definitely no. Government cannot ban bitcoin because it is decentralized digital currency. Which means nobody control or owns bitcoin.And also it is impossible for every government to create a system to trace a bitcoin transaction in the internet world.The only thing they can do is to put some limits and retrictions on any bitcoin transactions like what China did.
Governments cannot totally ban crypto unless they'll going to shutdown the internet.Instead of fighting the global world market,i think government should focus on spending our tax money more wisely...

[Mamun74]

I Think, Government can't really Ban crypto. Government can't ban bitcoin Because bitcoin is decentralised crypto.Bitcoin is digital currency. Decentralization will be never stable. Many countries government didn’t legal in crypto but people still using crypto.So government cant really ban crypto.

[Anonylz]

Banning crypto should be the least on each countries government list imo but unfortunately, instead of finding solutions to all the pressing issues that affect the economy they are more focused on crypto ban as if it is the solution to all political and economic issues,
I don't know if they are able to completely ban crypto, I know they can alter crypto activities to a great deal, still it won't stop crypto enthusiasts except they will follow up with physical arrest.

[whyrqa]

Very often, governments start banning things they can't control.  First of all, cryptocurrency is banned due to the fact that they will not be able to control the income and expenses of citizens, and, of course, some points in criminal activity.  But there are such crypto assets whose projects are aimed at making business easier, such as the CRATD2C project, where the interaction between the brand and the consumer is implemented.  In this case, the state will not be able to do anything against the project and, accordingly, against the crypto asset.

[mia_houston]

In this case I think the government will not be able to completely ban crypto just for some illogical reasons, the development of an increasingly modern era, of course, requires everyone in the world to think ahead, so blockchain or crypto which is one form of progress in Financial technology matters of course cannot be stopped by the government, instead of trying to ban crypto the government should be more open in adopting crypto and using it for the economic interests of their people as the current El Salvador government is doing.
In essence blockchain or crypto is a collaboration-based progress and we cannot prevent it from continuing to grow, so maybe in the next few years we will see some developed countries will use blockchain or crypto as a reference in building smart cities especially in their financial technology, and for some other countries that reject the presence of blockchain or crypto technology, I think maybe they will go back to falling and being trapped like in the stone age era.

[Pik2]

Honestly I don't think so. They can do everything in their power but there will always be a way to buy it underground.

[mindrust]

Taxing it is way more efficient. The picture in the OP illustrates that perfectly. If the gov bans it they'll shoot themselves in the foot because they won't able to collect them juicy tax money. I just read India about to tax crypto too but I don't if it was fake news. Banning crypto is pointless. Eventually they all gonna tax it imo.

[bitgolden]

They can always ban the use and purchase of bitcoin 100%, but they can never stop people from using it amid the legal threat of being jailed if they did not follow the enforcement of the ban. This will only force people to use it even more and even build underground networks and connections wherein bitcoin usage, purchase, and sale will thrive. Instead of the government legalizing cryptocurrencies and benefit from it, they want to force people to fend for themselves and force them to use their own fiat (and the banking system, which sucks.)

This is what the governments do not understand. If you can't stop it being used, and if you can tax it and make a profit, then why would you ban it? I mean there is no logical arguments over something that is unbannable and taxable, that is basically the situation people are involved right now.

I feel like there is at least one person in each government who doesn2t really understand it and that is why they end up making these type of mistakes. This doesn't mean that they can't try to, they can try to do it but there is no way that they could and that person who doesn't understand it allows the nation to go to wrong side just because that person has the power for it.

[Cornia]

I think the government can't ban crypto. Because there are many countries where the government has banned cryptocurrency but thousands of people are using crypto. Government can only hinder its spread.

[Quidat]

I think the government can't ban crypto. Because there are many countries where the government has banned cryptocurrency but thousands of people are using crypto. Government can only hinder its spread.

And this is why they do target out platforms and services that do involved with crypto because they couldnt do something on banning it out directly or completely
getting rid off because it couldnt be technically possible thats why this is where they do really put focus more and since those businesses or platforms
are involved with money then it would really be just normal that government could really make out some intervention which it isnt surprising.
This is where we do see these KYC verification and changes because they do get involved.

[Gozie51]

I think the government can't ban crypto. Because there are many countries where the government has banned cryptocurrency but thousands of people are using crypto. Government can only hinder its spread.

I hope hindering that you mean is giving the adoption a slow pace and that is what I think can happen for those countries banning or making such bars around bitcoin. In real fact it will be difficult for a stop in bitcoin. It has stayed above 10 years despite the challenges and yet it kept moving beating ATH

[hatshepsut93]

Government doesn't need to ban citizens from using crypto software, they can instead ban business from using crypto, ban exchanges and other services and that will be it. Crypto will become a thing of darknet markets and will never see broad adoption, because the general population won't be taking risks of breaking the law just for the sake of using alternative financial system.

[TheEconomists]

If government want be serious about banning Bitcoin it can do that it will all successful as they have all it take within their power to do so. And the issue of banning Bitcoin cannot in any way be related to that Nokia and the rest of them that you have mentioned.

[Silberman]

I personally don't think so, the shot above says it all, Any government banning crypto is like Nokia and Android, if you know the story, then you understand what I mean, but for those who don't know the story, I will Share a little about.

When Android came out and major phone companies like Samsung, Tecko, Infinix etc, started producing Android powered phones, Nokia being one of the biggest(if not actually the biggest) phone company at that time(was even bigger than Samsung) being over confident in herself refused to switch to Android powered phones, instead they opted for windows phones which close to no one uses.

This singular decision did not only cause Nokia to loose its number 1 place in the phone industry, the owner(s) of the company later lost(sold) the company to Microsoft.
And you all can agree with me that Nokia isn't doing well today as they did back in the days.

This same thing will happen to countries that refuse to embrace crypto today.

I think we all get what you are trying to say but your analogy is not perfect, the main difference between the example you give and governments is the ability to make laws and enforce them, we know what happens when people live in a police state and a government determined to ban bitcoin could use those measures in order to do so, now can they ban bitcoin completely under those circumstances? No, but they can make life miserable for those that adopted bitcoin.

[suzanne5223]

The government can only ban something that they can control. The last time crypto decentralization and autonomous in nature of crypto won't allow the government to control crypto or ban crypto. However, they seem to know cryptocurrency is inevitable ever since the IMF boss advised them to think about creating their own CDBC.
Just how Nokia missed the diamond chance presented by Android (According to the OP example).

[coupable]

I think we all get what you are trying to say but your analogy is not perfect, the main difference between the example you give and governments is the ability to make laws and enforce them, we know what happens when people live in a police state and a government determined to ban bitcoin could use those measures in order to do so, now can they ban bitcoin completely under those circumstances? No, but they can make life miserable for those that adopted bitcoin.

It's because of the nature of bitcoin itself. A decentralized product with no powerful entity controlling it ; this will surely make difficult (not impossible) for governments to control its use.
However, by the development by the tools for blockchain analysis, it becomes a little bit easier but this doesn't include other altcoins with different characteristics.

[Smitty Werben Man Jensen]

I think the government can't ban crypto. Because there are many countries where the government has banned cryptocurrency but thousands of people are using crypto. Government can only hinder its spread.

What the government does is like a futile thing because basically many people can still use crypto,
maybe what is meant is that the government has not legalized crypto as a transaction tool and I think it doesn't matter as long as it's not banned as an asset or investment