Can They Find A Way to Do It To Bitcoin?

[michellee]

No one, including the government, can control Bitcoin. But the government can control the exchanges in their country, including the people who use Bitcoin. The government can easily request the data of people registered on the exchange and carry out a thorough check, including transactions of these people every month.

From there, the government knows what assets the people own on the exchange and can do anything, including imposing large taxes on crypto users. People have the option of not using centralized exchanges and using decentralized exchanges. But the problem is that when people send profits from trading into their bank accounts, the government can easily find out what they are doing.

And that's where the government can thoroughly check who they are and maybe the government will keep an eye on crypto users.

[worle1bm]

The government can crackdown or try to take action against these centralised platforms making certain rules for them or filing cases against them but can't attack Bitcoin directly because they don't have power to do so with it.If you are using non custodial wallet to hold your funds then you also don't need to care about centralised exchanges as well but with strict laws like putting ban on it complete usage but still can't kill it.There are many questions regarding btc being centralized but it has never happened which makes it true decentralised coin.

[rby]

In life, I believe that everything is in stages and once a certain stage is successfully completed, we would be looking forward for another stage of that event or project.

Bitcoin has actually past the stage of speculating if the government can shut it down or not. If the government actually has the power to shut bitcoin, they would have done it before it could turn 10 years old.

But for bitcoin to last up to this time, even when the government of the top countries are against bitcoin and making efforts to burning every bitcoin activity in their country including mining, it therefore means that they don't have the ability to ban bitcoin. So we should at this point respect bitcoin and be talking something of higher security concerns and not government of the word collaborating to ban Bitcoin.

[Blitzboy]

No one, including the government, can control Bitcoin. But the government can control the exchanges in their country, including the people who use Bitcoin. The government can easily request the data of people registered on the exchange and carry out a thorough check, including transactions of these people every month.

From there, the government knows what assets the people own on the exchange and can do anything, including imposing large taxes on crypto users. People have the option of not using centralized exchanges and using decentralized exchanges. But the problem is that when people send profits from trading into their bank accounts, the government can easily find out what they are doing.

And that's where the government can thoroughly check who they are and maybe the government will keep an eye on crypto users.

Aren't we veering off course, ignoring the grand scheme of things? Undeniably, Bitcoin remains a loose cannon, impervious to governmental control. Yet, central exchanges, within the confines of nations, do submit to their legal purview.

Painting the portrait of a 1984-like reality, with the government stalking your every transaction, craving your crypto gains—is that the reflection of our world? Yes, your digital coins might get taxed, but doesn't that equally apply to old-school assets?

Decentralized exchanges, though, provide a curtain of anonymity. Yet, bear in mind, once we cash in our crypto chips, we're back in the grid! Does that, by any stretch, translate to unbroken monitoring? We ought to be cautious in fueling such fear-inducing rhetoric. Let's steer clear of stirring unnecessary paranoia!

[Mpamaegbu]

I mean what they're doing to exchanges....

This seizure and high-handedness of governments across nations used to scare the shit out of me in 2017 as a noob. I was easily apprehensive whenever I read anything negative about Bitcoin and the wavering policies and bad press from government. It was until after the Chinese ban in August or so of that same year (2017) that I braced up because I realized then that there was nothing a few people could do to terminate Bitcoin. So, don't fret.

We know that the big miners control most of the mining power? if the big players can be identified in the top 5 countries and their governments collaborate, can BTC survive?

I read somewhere that it would take at least 51% of the miners to agree on a particular thing before anything that could disrupt Bitcoin would be effected. Even though your concern is reasonable here I doubt if that can be achieved.

[CryptSafe]

I do not think miners would be that dumb to allow the government to have their way into their activities. Miners know what the government stands for so there would be every means for them to resist any authoritative control over them as that has been the sole target of the government to control every sector of crypto.

Nevertheless, controlling Bitcoin by the government is not that feasible. Satoshi knew all these hence the reason he had to make it decentralized as it was the sole reason for developing the Bitcoin chain. Giving the people control over the financial economy was the war between Bitcoin and the government which has culminated in many actions and inactions meted out perceived opposing centralized exchanges and they seem unlucky falling for the government. Although the government had its way into the centralized exchange and made it its puppet in controlling the flows of assets and funds, knowing the identity of account holders, and also dictating activities for them but I for sure know those noncustodial wallet owners are not known and can not be cajoled by the government to go or do their wish.

The government cannot take their ill activities on centralized exchange to self-custodial wallet owners.

[Rruchi man]

This seizure and high-handedness of governments across nations used to scare the shit out of me in 2017 as a noob. I was easily apprehensive whenever I read anything negative about Bitcoin and the wavering policies and bad press from government. It was until after the Chinese ban in August or so of that same year (2017) that I braced up because I realized then that there was nothing a few people could do to terminate Bitcoin. So, don't fret.

I think the biggest moves by the government to discourage bitcoin is going after the exchanges like they are doing currently since they know they cannot directly hit bitcoins. Bitcoin is going nowhere because regardless of any new development against it, new alternative solutions will be discovered for bitcoins to continue to be in use.

Bitcoin is going nowhere.

[Newchanka]

I mean what they're doing to exchanges....

This seizure and high-handedness of governments across nations used to scare the shit out of me in 2017 as a noob. I was easily apprehensive whenever I read anything negative about Bitcoin and the wavering policies and bad press from government. It was until after the Chinese ban in August or so of that same year (2017) that I braced up because I realized then that there was nothing a few people could do to terminate Bitcoin. So, don't fret.

We know that the big miners control most of the mining power? if the big players can be identified in the top 5 countries and their governments collaborate, can BTC survive?

I read somewhere that it would take at least 51% of the miners to agree on a particular thing before anything that could disrupt Bitcoin would be effected. Even though your concern is reasonable here I doubt if that can be achieved.

Not 51% of miners, but mine power. Those hashrate are concentrated enough to the best of my knowledge.

[Z390]

In life, I believe that everything is in stages and once a certain stage is successfully completed, we would be looking forward for another stage of that event or project.

Bitcoin has actually past the stage of speculating if the government can shut it down or not. If the government actually has the power to shut bitcoin, they would have done it before it could turn 10 years old.

But for bitcoin to last up to this time, even when the government of the top countries are against bitcoin and making efforts to burning every bitcoin activity in their country including mining, it therefore means that they don't have the ability to ban bitcoin. So we should at this point respect bitcoin and be talking something of higher security concerns and not government of the word collaborating to ban Bitcoin.

Sug Knight walked away with his crime in the 80s because he is a black man and he is targeting other black men to grow is rich dream, the law kept silent because they never believe that black rappers can become a success, they left the man to do what he wants and all black rappers should keep getting rid of themselves, the law don't care.

That's similar to Bitcoin, they are so sure that it will fail at one point in time because they don't understand Bitcoin, they underestimated it because, why would anyone trust Bitcoin with their hard earned money just because someone named Nakamoto promised them decentralization, they must have thought it's a joke.

The best time to have killed Bitcoin was after it's release, today it's too late.

[Ucy]

I mean what they're doing to exchanges....


Edit: Thanks for your contributions. Can some mining experts explain to us how centralized or decentralized Bitcoin mining is? We know that the big miners control most of the mining power? if the big players can be identified in the top 5 countries and their governments collaborate, can BTC survive?

cc: o_e_l_e_o, Notatether, nc50lc, ImThour

Block will continue to be mined and transactions added to the Blockchain like nothing happened, even If most miners stop mining.

If 98% of the miners cease to exist, it will only benefit potential miners and the few remaining ones, as mining difficult will reduce drastically and they will be able to do the job of 98% miners and earn more income. More miners will quickly join and replace the 98% due to very attractive profit and reduced mining difficulty.
This self-adjusting difficulty is part of what makes Bitcoin decentralized. A nation owning most of the hash power won't change anything even though I do not like the idea.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Not 51% of miners, but mine power. Those hashrate are concentrated enough to the best of my knowledge.

Mining pools are not a single entity.

There are thousands of different entities which all mine under the banner of the same pool. Take AntPool for example, with approximately 21% of the current hashrate. If you want to mine on AntPool, you can head over to https://www.antpool.com/ and follow the instructions to join the pool. The same is true of pretty much every other pool.

If a government comes along and shuts down AntPool, then every miner who was pointing their equipment at AntPool can just point it to a different pool instead. If the AntPool operator starts doing something shady such as censoring some transactions, then every miner who was pointing their equipment at AntPool can just point it to a different pool instead. Even if every mining pool in the world was shut down, then miners can run their own software and solo mine. If one country bans mining entirely (which already happened fairly recently with China), then those miners will just move elsewhere.

The only way to stop bitcoin mining altogether is not only to ban bitcoin mining in every country in the world but also for the governments to spend a lot of money to enforce that ban and hunt down "underground" miners which is never going to happen, but even if it did it still wouldn't be completely effective.

[serjent05]

The government can crackdown or try to take action against these centralised platforms making certain rules for them or filing cases against them but can't attack Bitcoin directly because they don't have power to do so with it.If you are using non custodial wallet to hold your funds then you also don't need to care about centralised exchanges as well but with strict laws like putting ban on it complete usage but still can't kill it.There are many questions regarding btc being centralized but it has never happened which makes it true decentralised coin.

The government can also crack down or take action against Bitcoin user just to create fear and stop people from engaging with Bitcoin but they cannot fully shut down all the people that is engaging in Bitcoin because these people are scattered around the world. An attempt to apprehend all Bitcoin users is proven to be futile due to the decentralized nature of BTC, the government will be having a hard time tracking each individual in order to stop Bitcoin.  They can slow down the adoption but the government will never stop the Bitcoin network from operating unless the miners and communities give up themselves.

[mendace]

I mean what they're doing to exchanges....


Edit: Thanks for your contributions. Can some mining experts explain to us how centralized or decentralized Bitcoin mining is? We know that the big miners control most of the mining power? if the big players can be identified in the top 5 countries and their governments collaborate, can BTC survive?

If big players and the governments of some countries collaborated to influence or control Bitcoin mining, they could theoretically exert some degree of control over the network.  However, the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and its resistance to censorship offer some protection against such a scenario.

 Bitcoin's strength lies in its distributed peer-to-peer network, where each node in the network participates in verifying transactions and overall system security.  Even though the big players could acquire a significant share of the mining power, the independent nodes would still remain present and continue to participate in the consensus process.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If big players and the governments of some countries collaborated to influence or control Bitcoin mining, they could theoretically exert some degree of control over the network.  However, the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and its resistance to censorship offer some protection against such a scenario.

Various governments have already tried and failed. China banned bitcoin and mining entirely. The hashrate dipped for a couple of months and swiftly recovered as if nothing ever happened, and research showed that China still had a huge amount of hashrate despite the ban. Various mining pools have attempted to censor certain addresses and transactions on the whims of various governments (usually the US), and have only lasted for a couple of weeks at most before giving up on that idea since all it achieved was to reduce their profits and leave high fee transactions in the mempool for other pools to pick up instead.

Even though the big players could acquire a significant share of the mining power, the independent nodes would still remain present and continue to participate in the consensus process.

Miners and nodes are not synonymous. Independent nodes do not protect against a 51% attack - distributed and decentralized miners do.

[Walesone]

Yeah, it's crazy how they're turning exchanges into these complex mazes where you have to solve puzzles just to buy or sell some crypto. It's like they want to make it a challenge for us to access our own money. Can't they just keep it simple?

[bettercrypto]

You must remember that no government in the world will ever be able to control Bitcoin because it is a decentralized based platform. And the government is centralized that even when it can't be the same as decentralized with Bitcoin.

Although many have attempted to control and compete with Bitcoin but they have all failed in the concept that Bitcoin has in the industry that we have become aware of in the digital world.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It's like they want to make it a challenge for us to access our own money.

That's the whole point. Centralized exchanges want you to leave your money with them, because they can use that money to generate more profits for themselves while the customers take on all the risks of loss in the event of poor management, scams, bankruptcies, hacks, etc.

You want to make it easy to access your own money? Keep it in your own wallet. Doesn't get simpler than that.

[mendace]

Even though the big players could acquire a significant share of the mining power, the independent nodes would still remain present and continue to participate in the consensus process.

Miners and nodes are not synonymous. Independent nodes do not protect against a 51% attack - distributed and decentralized miners do.

I fully agree with you and maybe I didn't explain myself well but I mean exactly that the nodes are independent and by themselves they do not protect against a 51% attack.  A 51% attack occurs when a malicious actor controls more than half of the network's overall computing power, which gives them the ability to influence consensus and potentially perform malicious actions, such as double-spending cryptocurrencies.  To mitigate this risk, it is crucial that the blockchain network is distributed and decentralized, with a large participation of nodes and an adequate consensus system that requires the consent of the majority of network participants to confirm transactions.

[yazher]

The government can crackdown or try to take action against these centralised platforms making certain rules for them or filing cases against them but can't attack Bitcoin directly because they don't have power to do so with it.If you are using non custodial wallet to hold your funds then you also don't need to care about centralised exchanges as well but with strict laws like putting ban on it complete usage but still can't kill it.There are many questions regarding btc being centralized but it has never happened which makes it true decentralised coin.

I think the only power they have right now is on the centralized exchanges and as we can see they are not letting them go and will not slack off once they found something bad about the exchanges and they will not hesitate to file a lawsuit against it. That is why it is always recommended that you always have a non-custodial wallet to highly secured your funds because centralized exchanges are not safe if you want to store huge amounts of cryptocurrencies there because they can be held at any time once their owner is proven guilty on something related to cryptocurrencies.

[justdimin]

The government can crackdown or try to take action against these centralised platforms making certain rules for them or filing cases against them but can't attack Bitcoin directly because they don't have power to do so with it.If you are using non custodial wallet to hold your funds then you also don't need to care about centralised exchanges as well but with strict laws like putting ban on it complete usage but still can't kill it.There are many questions regarding btc being centralized but it has never happened which makes it true decentralised coin.

I think the only power they have right now is on the centralized exchanges and as we can see they are not letting them go and will not slack off once they found something bad about the exchanges and they will not hesitate to file a lawsuit against it. That is why it is always recommended that you always have a non-custodial wallet to highly secured your funds because centralized exchanges are not safe if you want to store huge amounts of cryptocurrencies there because they can be held at any time once their owner is proven guilty on something related to cryptocurrencies.

I think they will do whatever they can within their power to seize control, they are seeing these exchanges take money out and that's not something they can easily accept. Think about it, CZ is not American and he doesn't spend his money in the USA neither, and he is not investing into USA making them richer neither, he just pays taxes on the American version and that's it, nothing more but taking a lot more out.

This means that if they can stop him, that will make sure that there are someone they are more favoring that can start his company and not only that person will pay taxes there, but they will keep the money in there as well, instead of taking it to another nation. This is their last line of defense, this is the most extreme thing they can do, and even that's not too scary for crypto world.