Do you think that government can stop Bitcoin?

[Riginac111]

Their is something I confide on me toward the existence of cryptocurrency and government, so do you think that government can make Bitcoin not be functioning, or do you think that politics of a particular country can obstruct the existence of Bitcoin, because their one particular things I know that can not make Bitcoin to stop because it's a safe independent coin, when looking at Bitcoin government can only make a control of Bitcoin in their country to restrict Bitcoin but can not stop the existence of Bitcoin. I don't know for any body in your country can government stop Bitcoin?

[Hispo]

A government in its own jurisdictionmcan make more difficult for people to use and have access to Bitcoin, reduce liquidity, stop access to exchanges and prosecute miners. But since Bitcoin is as decentralized as it is, it takes advantage of the lack of an effective global government which could distrupt it's functioning. The lack of a borderless government is one of the highest advantages of Bitcoin censonship and I suspect Satoshi Nakamoto was aware of it.
Even if an important market like the European Union or the United States decided to become hostile against Bitcoin, it would not stop the Blockchain from continuing existing as usual.

Perhaps, some entity in the future may try to destroy Bitcoin by distributing a computer virus against the nodes or miners, but it is kind of unlikely to succeed or be as effective as it sounds.

[Essential10]

In my opinion a government can never completely shut down Bitcoin, if that were the case then all governments would interfere with Bitcoin. So don't you think that the government is continuing to try, I think the government is still trying to stop or take control. The decentralized system has given Bitcoin freedom. In all the countries where the use of Bitcoin is prohibited, the use of Bitcoin is still going on in all the countries, the government cannot interfere in any way. But it can control how Bitcoin is used and exchanged in some way. Currently, Bitcoin seems to be impossible to stop despite the advanced technology in the major countries of the world.

[Zanab247]

Yes, government can stop BTC in a particular country because they have the power to stop anything they don't approve for their people, which they can also do the same thing to stop their people not to use BTC or have any relationship with any decentralized currency in their country, and they will deploy army forces to be monitoring people in the country.

Have you not heard about some government that banned BTC and crypto in their countries and you cannot use their traditional institutions to carry out BTC or crypto transaction because you will not find legal way to do it than to move to near by country where BTC and crypto are accepted in their financial institution.

Since, we know that BTC is not control by any government, because is a decentralized currency which no government have the power to stop BTC in the whole world or control the movement of BTC in the world

[moneystery]

yes, they can stop bitcoin through the regulations they make. you can see several countries that have made regulations limiting the use of bitcoin in their country, such as bangladesh, where their citizens cannot use bitcoin freely because the government has banned bitcoin. from this a government can limit the use of bitcoin whenever they want and citizens cannot fight this because it is the jurisdiction of the government to be able to secure their economy on the grounds that bitcoin could disrupt the circulation of their currency.

[Riginac111]

yes, they can stop bitcoin through the regulations they make. you can see several countries that have made regulations limiting the use of bitcoin in their country, such as bangladesh, where their citizens cannot use bitcoin freely because the government has banned bitcoin. from this a government can limit the use of bitcoin whenever they want and citizens cannot fight this because it is the jurisdiction of the government to be able to secure their economy on the grounds that bitcoin could disrupt the circulation of their currency.

when you check the history of Bitcoin you can see that government don't have anything to do with bitcoin blockage because they don't know exactly the technology of bitcoin because if they have known the technology of bitcoin by now they would have abolish the existence of bitcoin, on my own I know very well that bitcoin have what it takes to remain on earth and only thing government can do government can do to bitcoin is to regulate its power rate in that particular country.

[DeathAngel]

Technically governments can’t directly stop Bitcoin as it operates on a decentralised network. Bitcoin transactions are verified & recorded by a network of computers called miners making it difficult for any single entity to control or shut down the system. What they can do is governments can regulate or restrict Bitcoin through indirect means such as imposing regulations on exchanges, enforcing AML laws or banning cryptocurrency usage. These measures can affect the ease of buying & selling Bitcoin but they can’t completely eliminate its existence or prevent people from using it.

[legiteum]

Their is something I confide on me toward the existence of cryptocurrency and government, so do you think that government can make Bitcoin not be functioning, or do you think that politics of a particular country can obstruct the existence of Bitcoin, because their one particular things I know that can not make Bitcoin to stop because it's a safe independent coin, when looking at Bitcoin government can only make a control of Bitcoin in their country to restrict Bitcoin but can not stop the existence of Bitcoin. I don't know for any body in your country can government stop Bitcoin?

As I understand it (tell me if I am wrong about this), a majority of the servers for Bitcoin and the majority of the hashing power currently resides in China. Hence the CCP could simply order all of those servers to hard-fork and there's absolutely nothing any holder of Bitcoin could do about it--the network would naturally select China's version of the software because they'd have the majority. And if they effectively control the software, they could do anything they wanted including invalidate any block they wanted or put in their own blocks. And it wouldn't matter what country you live in (Bitcoin doesn't know what country you live in).

At the end of the day, there are physical servers involved in serving Bitcoin (or any other internet service), and those servers have a physical location, and thus those servers are subject to government intervention--just like anything else on the planet.

If China doesn't have the majority of the hashrate--or no single country does--then a group of countries could take over Bitcoin if they were so inclined (viz. China+Russia+client states of same = >50%).

I suspect, years ago, when the Computer Science people at the university went to the Political Science people and told them, "we've created a technology that is impervious to governments" they... probably had a good laugh...

[Fiasem20]

The government cannot stop bitcoin transaction because it is decentralized.Bitcoin was created for financial freedom,it cannot be manipulated by any central controlling authority like banks and government.The government of a country can only regulate the use of BTC and other cryptos in their country but can't stop the transactions because the P2P platforms allows users to buy,sell and trade.Like in my country the use of Bitcoin is restricted and the government has also banned one of the centralized exchange but even as that,BTC transaction is still growing rapidly in my country so it's pointless for the government to restrict a transaction that is not under their control.

[Majestic-milf]

 The truth is they can try to but can't totally stop it. Take the case of China for instance when the government tried to stop it's citizens from trading with it and making it illegal for start up businesses to raise funds via ICOs but thanks to it's decentralized and autonomous pattern, it was easy to get around this strict rules using the peer to peer investing done in private than in public.
In essence, a government can try to set bars around Bitcoin to have at least some semblance of control on how it is used in a country by limiting or restricting what is done in the public like trading on exchanges and all that, however Bitcoin's core technology prevents a government from completely seizing power of use from the citizens.

[legiteum]

The truth is they can try to but can't totally stop it. Take the case of China for instance when the government tried to stop it's citizens from trading with it and making it illegal for start up businesses to raise funds via ICOs but thanks to it's decentralized and autonomous pattern, it was easy to get around this strict rules using the peer to peer investing done in private than in public.
In essence, a government can try to set bars around Bitcoin to have at least some semblance of control on how it is used in a country by limiting or restricting what is done in the public like trading on exchanges and all that, however Bitcoin's core technology prevents a government from completely seizing power of use from the citizens.

As I understand it, China never made it illegal to personally hold or trade Bitcoin, they simply forbid their banks from holding Bitcoin as an asset on their balance sheet.

And as I mentioned above, it's certainly possible for a major government actor like China to usurp the Bitcoin network by winning the majority of the hashrate and then dictating a change to the software. This is probably not very likely (it would basically be an act of war), but it's important to understand that with governments, you should never say, "never" .

[jrrsparkles]

Technically they can't stop the Bitcoin from used as Bitcoin but they can definitely shut any centralized service that provides crypto services which can be an exchange, casino, or even wallet provider became the target of Fed in the recent days if you have been watching the news, for example Phoenix wallet has been forced to shut down their service from US.

[coolcoinz]

IMO they can, but only locally.

How?
Bitcoin depends on exchanges, ATM's and such. If you close gateways that people use to trade bitcoin, you'll stop its use.You won't stop people from holding, but they'll have to exchange it for cash, which will limit at least 80% of users. 

Silver lining is that people can easily leave the country with their bitcoin and exchange it somewhere where it's allowed and the country that banned it will only lose tax money that they'd have if they allowed bitcoin in the country.

[o48o]

As I understand it (tell me if I am wrong about this), a majority of the servers for Bitcoin and the majority of the hashing power currently resides in China. Hence the CCP could simply order all of those servers to hard-fork and there's absolutely nothing any holder of Bitcoin could do about it--the network would naturally select China's version of the software because they'd have the majority. And if they effectively control the software, they could do anything they wanted including invalidate any block they wanted or put in their own blocks. And it wouldn't matter what country you live in (Bitcoin doesn't know what country you live in).

At the end of the day, there are physical servers involved in serving Bitcoin (or any other internet service), and those servers have a physical location, and thus those servers are subject to government intervention--just like anything else on the planet.

If China doesn't have the majority of the hashrate--or no single country does--then a group of countries could take over Bitcoin if they were so inclined (viz. China+Russia+client states of same = >50%).

I suspect, years ago, when the Computer Science people at the university went to the Political Science people and told them, "we've created a technology that is impervious to governments" they... probably had a good laugh...

It used to be so before the Chinese mining ban that came in 2021. These days majority of the hashing power comes from United States (40%), china has only half of that. Also if one pool would have 51% of the hashpower, it would make no sense to use all those millions in mining for one double spend and get kicked out of the network, and cause bitcoin price to drop because of panic, when they could just keep mining cash in by selling those mined bitcoins.

Real problem is that regulations could cause these incentives (bitcoins) to become a less popular and lower the overal acceptance and liquidity.

[Ludmilla_rose1995]

The government will not be able to stop Bitcoin because there are already more than 1 billion people in the world who know Bitcoin and half of them own Bitcoin even in small amounts

what the government can do is only regulate the use of bitcoin in each country, and if you can look more broadly, then the regulations on bitcoin in many countries are different so stopping bitcoin is an impossible task

[oktana]

Yes they can. In some countries, your internet wouldn’t work on cryptocurrency related websites, and if they can do that to all the known cryptocurrency services, the citizens wouldn’t be able to use those service because they are probably blacklisted even by their service providers. However, people will always find a way around it like using VPN, or other solutions (even if it was illegal)

[boyptc]

Their is something I confide on me toward the existence of cryptocurrency and government, so do you think that government can make Bitcoin not be functioning, or do you think that politics of a particular country can obstruct the existence of Bitcoin, because their one particular things I know that can not make Bitcoin to stop because it's a safe independent coin, when looking at Bitcoin government can only make a control of Bitcoin in their country to restrict Bitcoin but can not stop the existence of Bitcoin. I don't know for any body in your country can government stop Bitcoin?

They can stop exchanges but entirely the Bitcoin network, unless someone from the highest authority form of government which we don't have because we're all basing from each country's form of government to instruct ISPs to cut all the internet connection as that's the only way to stop Bitcoin temporarily.

But is it worth it? no.

IIRC, Bangladesh has restricted Bitcoin in their country but it's a perfect example that even the government imposes rules like that, they can't stop people from using and investing to Bitcoin.

[legiteum]

It used to be so before the Chinese mining ban that came in 2021. These days majority of the hashing power comes from United States (40%), china has only half of that. Also if one pool would have 51% of the hashpower, it would make no sense to use all those millions in mining for one double spend and get kicked out of the network, and cause bitcoin price to drop because of panic, when they could just keep mining cash in by selling those mined bitcoins.

Real problem is that regulations could cause these incentives (bitcoins) to become a less popular and lower the overal acceptance and liquidity.

Got it. My point was that it was theoretically possible for a nation-state actor to gain control of Bitcoin if they really wanted to.

As for the network double-spending, I don't think they would do it that way:they would simply invent transactions to their own blocks or something. If you controlled the nodes, you control everything, and the majority of the hashing power dictates what is reality and what is considered "wrong".

As for the motive? It would be one hell of a hostage standoff . A country holding $1.5 trillion in wealth hostage could conceivably extract major concessions e.g. control of Taiwan.

[Volimack]

Government can't stop bitcoin for any company in our country bitcoins are decentralized, meaning that central banks do not control them governments cannot regulate its use. The use of bitcoin is more online even if the government wants to it will not get any information. Bitcoin is not subject to any tax laws as it is untraceable. No matter how many coins you own. You don't have to pay any taxes and the government can't force you to.

[Kelward]

We don't have one united government for the whole world, so despite the prejudice that some countries have about Bitcoin, others truly embrace it, that means that Bitcoin can not go into extinction because some people or government don't like it. I know that there's a total ban on Bitcoin in some countries while there's some levels of restrictions and regulations in others, despite these, people are still using it in those countries, because it's decentralized, although they do so at their own risks. The most important thing about Bitcoin is that it's adoption is increasing everyday and more people are seeing it as a store of value, and this movement is what will compel skeptical governments to accept it eventually.