Is Bitcoin Actually Legal If Governments Can't Control it

[Veloxcrypt]

Lately, with all the volatility in the crypto market and the increasing regulatory frameworks being introduced by different countries, especially the United States. One question keeps coming to my mind.
I’ve been genuinely curious about this, and I feel this is the right place to ask and hear different perspectives.
Is Bitcoin actually legal if governments can’t control it?
In many countries, Bitcoin isn’t explicitly illegal, yet it also isn’t fully controlled or issued by any government. This makes me wonder whether legality depends on regulation and control, or simply on permission to exist and be used.
Can something be considered legal if no central authority can fully regulate or enforce rules around it? Or does Bitcoin operate in a grey area where it’s tolerated rather than formally accepted?
I’d really like to hear different opinions on this, especially from people with legal, regulatory, or long-term Bitcoin experience.

[zasad@]

Lately, with all the volatility in the crypto market and the increasing regulatory frameworks being introduced by different countries, especially the United States. One question keeps coming to my mind.
I’ve been genuinely curious about this, and I feel this is the right place to ask and hear different perspectives.
Is Bitcoin actually legal if governments can’t control it?
In many countries, Bitcoin isn’t explicitly illegal, yet it also isn’t fully controlled or issued by any government. This makes me wonder whether legality depends on regulation and control, or simply on permission to exist and be used.
Can something be considered legal if no central authority can fully regulate or enforce rules around it? Or does Bitcoin operate in a grey area where it’s tolerated rather than formally accepted?
I’d really like to hear different opinions on this, especially from people with legal, regulatory, or long-term Bitcoin experience.

Let's get to the facts:
I tried to do some research on this topic
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5487893
and discovered that we still don't know who owns half of all bitcoins

Some famous millionaires believe Bitcoin will reach zero, but they're not saying when that will be. Bitcoin could initially reach new ATX levels of $200,000 or more. But the most interesting thing is that there will be no one to complain to.

[zeuner]

Governments can make rules for entities who operate with Bitcoin publicly, as much as they can make rules for entities that do something else publicly, e.g. trading with gold.

Technically, they can't do so for activities which happen peer-to-peer, like transactions between non-custodial wallets. They can't do so for things their citizens do with gold behind closed doors.

Whether this affects the legality of the one or the other depends on how freedom-centric the country is. This is going to be interesting, especially in current times where more and more governments _do_ start to consider that they should have control over what people do privately.

[Yamane_Keto]

Governments do not need to control Bitcoin to make it legal. The high transparency of all transactions enables governments to track them, prevent money laundering or tax evasion. That is why governments fight privacy services and Monero because they make tracking transactions more difficult.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Of course it is legal (in most countries).
Something is illegal in any given country ONLY if that country says it is illegal there. Just because no government can 'control it' is irrelevant to it being legal elsewhere.

[rat03gopoh]

Is Bitcoin actually legal if governments can’t control it?
In many countries, Bitcoin isn’t explicitly illegal, yet it also isn’t fully controlled or issued by any government. This makes me wonder whether legality depends on regulation and control, or simply on permission to exist and be used.

I'm reminded of a quote from a local government cabinet member: "Everything is legal or permissible until a regulation prohibits it." This makes sense to me. This means that regulations are only created when an entity or activity becomes a trend or even mainstream. Otherwise, there will be no explicit regulations issued forever. The emergence of new laws is passive, following social change and development.

[YOSHIE]

Is Bitcoin Actually Legal If Governments Can't Control it

In general, we know that the legality of Bitcoin basically does not depend on the government legally, even though the government cannot control Bitcoin completely, yes, they will legalize and make existing legal regulations, whether it is buying and selling activities and ownership.
The reason:
Even though the government realizes that it cannot completely ban crypto/Bitcoin technology effectively, they can legalize several possible regulations and approaches such as creating legal laws for crypto exchanges, KYC, legalizing taxes and so on, in essence the country has not succeeded in controlling Bitcoin completely, but many countries apply legality to Bitcoin, such as England, the US, the European Union and others, they allow Bitcoin.

[SuperBitMan]

Is Bitcoin Actually Legal If Governments Can't Control it

Yes.
A government can make Bitcoin legal in there country, meaning that a government can pass a law that says citizens are allowed to buy and sell Bitcoin, businesses are allowed to accept Bitcoin as payment and exchanges can operate legally. When something like this is done in a country by there government it simply means that bitcoin is legal in that country even if government don’t have control over bitcoin.
Bitcoin is decentralized and no country controls it not even the creator Satoshi Nakamoto, however when a government makes Bitcoin legal in there country they can only control how the citizen uses it, they will have some regulations to prevent citizens from using Bitcoin wrongly, they can’t control Bitcoin itself but they can control how there citizens uses it. For the fact they can control how citizens uses Bitcoin that is the reason you see some government making Bitcoin legal in there country.

[yhiaali3]

Bitcoin was created to be completely decentralized, meaning it's not controlled by any government, institution, or entity. Therefore, I believe that as a peer-to-peer payment system Bitcoin should be beyond the reach of governments.

Of course governments don't like this, so they've started enacting laws to regulate Bitcoin. While they don't control Bitcoin itself they can control individuals or companies that use it. Thus, they can't ban Bitcoin, but they can impose restrictions on individuals and companies.

[m2017]

Can something be considered legal if no central authority can fully regulate or enforce rules around it? Or does Bitcoin operate in a grey area where it’s tolerated rather than formally accepted?
I’d really like to hear different opinions on this, especially from people with legal, regulatory, or long-term Bitcoin experience.

Bitcoin is a medium of exchange, not a means of payment. From a legal perspective (although, in general, my knowledge is far from legal ), why is this so? Because bitcoin is NOT officially recognized as a currency (with the exception of some countries, like El Salvador). This means that when user #1 buys a pizza from user #2 with bitcoin, it's not a purchase in the traditional sense, but rather an exchange of bitcoin for the pizza. In this case, bitcoin doesn't appear as money, because bitcoin is NOT officially (legally) recognized as money by the regulator.

And now the most interesting part. The regulator CAN'T prohibit the use of bitcoin as a "means of payment" (as we've established, it's essentially a means of exchange). To do so, the regulator must first recognize bitcoin as a currency and only then prohibit its use as money.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[zasad@]

Bitcoin is a medium of exchange, not a means of payment. From a legal perspective (although, in general, my knowledge is far from legal ), why is this so? Because bitcoin is NOT officially recognized as a currency (with the exception of some countries, like El Salvador). This means that when user #1 buys a pizza from user #2 with bitcoin, it's not a purchase in the traditional sense, but rather an exchange of bitcoin for the pizza. In this case, bitcoin doesn't appear as money, because bitcoin is NOT officially (legally) recognized as money by the regulator.

And now the most interesting part. The regulator CAN'T prohibit the use of bitcoin as a "means of payment" (as we've established, it's essentially a means of exchange). To do so, the regulator must first recognize bitcoin as a currency and only then prohibit its use as money.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

In Russia, Bitcoin is recognized as a separate property, but accepting cryptocurrency for goods or services is prohibited by federal law. The regulator can legally prohibit the use of cryptocurrency, but frankly, this prohibition is not enforced. Most transactions involving the purchase of goods from other countries to Russia are conducted using stablecoins, making this very difficult for the regulator to combat.

[Easteregg69]

It's considered and being treated to be legal tender even if it's not in the law.


You see cops running around without pants on, making roberies of it..