Could China (or similar) take control of Bitcoin?

[barto123]

from what i can tell: no individual or entity currently controls* the bitcoin network & it would be very hard to

* but what if i told you bitcoin has already been infiltrated from within? what if it was led down a path to make it unusable as money, it's been turned into a digital gold like token traded on wall st. it's just number go up technology at this point

no base layer privacy, no future proof on-chain scaling, lightning failing to gain adequate adoption - too expensive to run a node, transactions regularly fail, it's not easy to get privacy, still not fungible

i used to think roger ver was an idiot, now i realize he was right, it's just so hard to challenge the status quo when the media is controlled by a literal cult - they have a lot of influence over bitcoin & most of crypto in fact. monero is one they're trying to keep quiet because it currently works & provides real privacy to those who seek it (no you're not a criminal for wanting privacy - this is mind control by the state)

[pooya87]

Don't get me wrong, I'm talking about a hypothetical scenario here, but clearly somebody who tried something like this would probably think through the ways that they would be able to get everybody on their side, even if reluctantly so.

Well they could do that hypothetically but I still don't get why would China of all countries would want to do that!

You say it would "rattle the entire world economy" but I don't think so. Even if Bitcoin died today, it will only affect a small portion of the global population that has adopted Bitcoin (5%-10%).

What else would they gain if they had control of Bitcoin? A centralized and censored payment system in that hypothetical scenario.
Well they already have one that is pretty successful called Digital Yuan and last I checked its adoption was going fine and had already processed trillions of Yuan worth of transactions. And that only costs them a teeny tiny fraction of what it would cost them to actually mine bitcoin at large.

[graphite]

no base layer privacy, no future proof on-chain scaling, lightning failing to gain adequate adoption - too expensive to run a node, transactions regularly fail, it's not easy to get privacy, still not fungible

I currently run a node. Its not costly at all. The biggest expense was i had to upgrade my internet to allow >1TB a month of data. Which was an additional $20 a month.

Not sure what you mean by transactions regularly fail. I've never heard of a legitimate transactions failing on bitcoin

I actually do agree with you on bitcoin being a cult. It seems satoshi disappearing might have been a bad thing for bitcoin because now everyone worships him like a god and any mention of deviating from his original protocol is turned down.

[legiteum]

You say it would "rattle the entire world economy" but I don't think so. Even if Bitcoin died today, it will only affect a small portion of the global population that has adopted Bitcoin (5%-10%).

I agree with this. A trillion dollar asset evaporating would probably cause a stir in the news cycle for a few weeks, but the world economy would be fine.

What else would they gain if they had control of Bitcoin? A centralized and censored payment system in that hypothetical scenario.
Well they already have one that is pretty successful called Digital Yuan and last I checked its adoption was going fine and had already processed trillions of Yuan worth of transactions. And that only costs them a teeny tiny fraction of what it would cost them to actually mine bitcoin at large.

They certainly wouldn't do it in order to actually use Bitcoin for something. As I mentioned above, China has forbidden their banks from holding Bitcoin, probably because they find it too risky for exactly the reasons we're talking about here.

My scenario would be that a country would do it for terrorism, extortion, or plunder.

I actually do agree with you on bitcoin being a cult. It seems satoshi disappearing might have been a bad thing for bitcoin because now everyone worships him like a god and any mention of deviating from his original protocol is turned down.

I agree with this, but I think the cult is starting to fade and people are starting to get more... real. You can only repeat a mythology for so long while the predictions don't come true before even the hardest of hard-cores get tired of saying, "someday...".

Today Bitcoin is a meme investment and nothing else. All of the hoo-ha about "challenging governments" and so on is falling by the wayside because it's clear none of that was ever true.

And the future of digital currency, in terms of mass adoption by consumers, is centralized .

[Medusah]

Perhaps China could decide that Satoshi's blocks should be given away to charity.

Have you got any idea of how much energy it would take to reach satoshi's blocks? 

4. What would this do the broader cryptocurrency sector?

It would probably lead to total collapse for years. 

5. Have major governments e.g. the US and NATO countries ever (publicly) announced any contingency planning around this problem? Putting a $1.5T asset at risk is something that could rattle the entire world economy. This seems like something they would at least think through?

Right now?  Not exactly.  However, with the passage of time, we're witnessing an increasing number of powerful entities seeking a share of the pie.  For instance, Blackrock recently made investments worth billions of dollars.  Do you believe that Blackrock, the world's largest asset manager with over $10 trillion in assets, would tolerate another country attempting to undermine their own assets like that? 

[legiteum]

Do you believe that Blackrock, the world's largest asset manager with over $10 trillion in assets, would tolerate another country attempting to undermine their own assets like that? 

I agree with you (and others) that this would be no big deal to the world economy, but... Blackrock? Do they have a nuclear arsenal that I am unaware of? I'm pretty sure they are in no position to tell the CCP what to do...

[dothebeats]

This has been discussed for years, and there was a time when Chinese miners comprised the majority of the miners for bitcoin and people were speculating that these miners could just do a 51% aftack and destroy everything.

To answer your question, no, they won't do that. The money involved in bitcoin mining is huge right now that it will be a grave mistake to perform any of these 'control' in the network. People will notice immediately, and once that happens, see how bitcoin lose its value since they lost confidence to it. It is technically possible, but rationally it doesn't make sense at all.

[tread93]

Could China (or similar) take control of Bitcoin? And my answer is Yes everyone can control of bitcoin if they had enough money and enough resources

And if you talk about a country it definitely can do that, 51% attack is doable right? And then if you want to do price manipulation you can buy as much as bitcoin and then can be act as a whale. Tho this is just my opinion guys

I feel like if China were to do this it would only be to go procure another session of FUD for everyone similar to how they keep banning Bitcoin from their society just to get the price down so they can buy more. Talk about a power hungry country! Hopefully they never do this as I could see it being a devistating time for Bitcoin and definitely a lot of folks rushing to get their money out as welll.

[legiteum]

I feel like if China were to do this it would only be to go procure another session of FUD for everyone similar to how they keep banning Bitcoin from their society just to get the price down so they can buy more. Talk about a power hungry country! Hopefully they never do this as I could see it being a devistating time for Bitcoin and definitely a lot of folks rushing to get their money out as welll.

China didn't ban Bitcoin from their society, and it's still perfectly legal for individuals to hold and trade Bitcoin in China. The only thing they did is forbid their banks and financial institutions from holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

[Natsuu]

if China were to take control of 50% of bitcoin investors might lose some confidence on the coin.

That's for sure, that if half of the Bitcoin will be accumulated by only one entity be it China, other country or organization then they can easily manipulate the price fluctuations of it. Since they have the most liquidity, once they sell in large amount then price also will fall a lot. Same in on buying aspect where price could trade up higher easily by their own manipulation in price and supply. However that's not even true yet. Most BTC are in cold wallets and others were missing. That's why BTC is a great digital asset as how also complicated it is.

[Jawhead999]

I would ask a counter question: If China, Black Rock, Elon Musk or anyone able to take control of Bitcoin, why they didn't do it till now? mining rigs are limited, even they have a lot money they can't own a lot mining rigs. If they want to buy mining rigs from other miners, not all miners will want to sell their rigs.

China didn't ban Bitcoin from their society, and it's still perfectly legal for individuals to hold and trade Bitcoin in China. The only thing they did is forbid their banks and financial institutions from holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet.

Says who? China and Hong Kong are different, China completely ban Bitcoin while Hong Kong accepts Bitcoin.

SHANGHAI/LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - China's most powerful regulators on Friday intensified a crackdown on cryptocurrencies with a blanket ban on all crypto transactions and mining, hitting bitcoin and other major coins and pressuring crypto and blockchain-related stocks.
Ten agencies, including the central bank, financial, securities and foreign exchange regulators, vowed to work together to root out "illegal" cryptocurrency activity, the first time the Beijing-based regulators have joined forces to explicitly ban all cryptocurrency-related activity.

[Nrcewker]

No matter what facts you include here. A nation cannot control Bitcoins. It’s designed in such a manner that no one can have manageable access on it. Yes nations can track the transactions made with Bitcoins. They can impose a tax on it, but there is no way possible they can control it. China always promises things with high values but never able to prove it or delivers it. Hence its not at all possible.

[legiteum]

Says who? China and Hong Kong are different, China completely ban Bitcoin while Hong Kong accepts Bitcoin.

SHANGHAI/LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - China's most powerful regulators on Friday intensified a crackdown on cryptocurrencies with a blanket ban on all crypto transactions and mining, hitting bitcoin and other major coins and pressuring crypto and blockchain-related stocks.
Ten agencies, including the central bank, financial, securities and foreign exchange regulators, vowed to work together to root out "illegal" cryptocurrency activity, the first time the Beijing-based regulators have joined forces to explicitly ban all cryptocurrency-related activity.

That story is old, and it's outdated:

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2024/02/05/china-never-completely-banned-crypto/

Binance is doing $90B per month in crypto trading in China, so it's not "banned" by any normal definition. Individuals can still buy, sell and hold Bitcoin in China.

As of last September, China had 21% of the world-wide hashrate for Bitcoin:

https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/by-country/

So that "ban" isn't really doing very much for that either.

Regardless, whether China did or didn't fully ban Bitcoin on their own soil isn't really the point of this thread. It was discuss the possibility of a country like China having the ability to take over Bitcoin. The answer here seems to be: yes, they technically could, but it's unclear what they would gain from doing so, so in lieu of a strong motive, it's unlikely to happen.

No matter what facts you include here. A nation cannot control Bitcoins. It’s designed in such a manner that no one can have manageable access on it. Yes nations can track the transactions made with Bitcoins. They can impose a tax on it, but there is no way possible they can control it. China always promises things with high values but never able to prove it or delivers it. Hence its not at all possible.

Any entity that controls 51% of the hashrate controls Bitcoin, and while that has never yet happened, it's certainly possible.

[jrrsparkles]

What you're saying is 51% attack forever on Bitcoin which is technically possible but not in reality and I doubt China will be interested in doing it cause it costs billions just to keep the control for that they don't get anything at all so there's no point of any government try to take control of Bitcoin in that way.

[graphite]

What you're saying is 51% attack forever on Bitcoin which is technically possible but not in reality and I doubt China will be interested in doing it cause it costs billions just to keep the control for that they don't get anything at all so there's no point of any government try to take control of Bitcoin in that way.

Theres no incentive to attack the network now but if bitcoin is to become more adopted by certain nations it will become a target. If a country like the USA ever tried to adopt bitcoin it would have to stock pile billions of dollars worth of ASIC miners to potential secure the network if china tried to attack it. Which i'm sure china would try to attack in times of war. So the USA will most likely never adopt bitcoin because it would be to expensive and uncertain if they could secure it. no way to really know how many ASIC miners china has stock piled. similar to a nuclear arms race.

[spectre71]

Why would they now?

They already own the Oval Office.

[bitcoinissobadpleasebanit]

Yes, they already have a lot of coins too.

China oppresses people I think.

North Korea oppresses people I think.

These people have control over freedom?

Wtf?

And it's not the people we see on camera either, those guys must be miserable.

It's the anon's.

The sun will shine on them one day, however.

[legiteum]

Why would they now?

They already own the Oval Office.

They don't now, but they very well may in January of 2025. That's why the Chinese are doing everything they can to get Trump elected.

[blckhawk]

To take control of bitcoin, you need to take control of 80% if not all the networks and even at that moment, you'd still need a lot of power and money (for the equipment) to be able to pull it off and China's lacking in money already if you're keeping up with the Chinese stuff that's reported by investigative reporters so I don't believe that it's in their agenda to take over the bitcoin network anytime soon, pretty sure that whatever they're doing now, bitcoin or any cryptocurrency has no relation to it or anything like that.

[graphite]

To take control of bitcoin, you need to take control of 80% if not all the networks and even at that moment, you'd still need a lot of power and money (for the equipment) to be able to pull it off and China's lacking in money already if you're keeping up with the Chinese stuff that's reported by investigative reporters so I don't believe that it's in their agenda to take over the bitcoin network anytime soon, pretty sure that whatever they're doing now, bitcoin or any cryptocurrency has no relation to it or anything like that.

Why would they need 80% and not just 51%?

China has no problem finding the money to build large scale infrastructure projects. I don't see how it wouldn't be possible for them to get 5-10 billion dollars worth of ASIC miners. Also with the current block reward it would only require 32mil USD a day worth of power to produce majority of the hash power. Based on my rough math this would require a 12GW power source and china has a large number of power plants to spread that over. For reference Chinas largest power plant is Three Gorges Dam with 22GW.