Who can destroy Bitcoin?

[davis196]

Many have already tried and many have already claimed Bitcoin was going to be destroyed at some moment, but it has never happened for real.

Then the question arises, who have the ability to destroy Bitcoin? Ironically, the answer may be only the person who created it: Satoshi.

It's curious to think about the scenario where the creation goes too far away from the initial purposes of the creator, so he ends deciding to nuke this.

And how can this thought be understood and applied to reality? Of course Bitcoin won't cease existing, but as things go more and more centralized each new day, empowering and giving control to the groups who have been ruling this world since always, Satoshi can compromise Bitcoin's credibility, by for an example, dumping all his coins on the market at once.

You are mistaking the market price with the protocol. Satoshi cannot destroy the protocol, because all changes of the protocol must be made via consensus. Yes, Satoshi can potentially sell all his BTC and crash the price, but the price can recover after such mass sellout. It would take several months to several years, but the price would definitely recover. I actually don't believe that Satoshi would ever touch his coins. He's either dead or he can't access his wallet, because he deliberately forgot his private keys and password. This is his final contribution to Bitcoin.
People should stop speculating about how Satoshi Nakamoto would ever try to destroy Bitcoin.

[BitGoba]

Many have already tried and many have already claimed Bitcoin was going to be destroyed at some moment, but it has never happened for real.

Then the question arises, who have the ability to destroy Bitcoin? Ironically, the answer may be only the person who created it: Satoshi.

It's curious to think about the scenario where the creation goes too far away from the initial purposes of the creator, so he ends deciding to nuke this.

And how can this thought be understood and applied to reality? Of course Bitcoin won't cease existing, but as things go more and more centralized each new day, empowering and giving control to the groups who have been ruling this world since always, Satoshi can compromise Bitcoin's credibility, by for an example, dumping all his coins on the market at once.

People talk total nonsense that comes from not understanding how Bitcoin works or what Bitcoin actually is. Bitcoin is distributed software  no one can destroy it or change it because the software is not located in one single place.To understand Bitcoin more easily, you can imagine the internet. Bitcoin is a protocol, just like the internet. Just as the internet has millions of servers, Bitcoin has users who run their own software.Just as no one can “shut down” the TCP/IP or HTTP protocol because they don’t exist on a single server, no one can “shut down” or change Bitcoin itself.
Currently, very few people truly understand Bitcoin and run their own Bitcoin peer-to-peer software . around 107,000 nodes worldwide.
https://thebitcoinportal.com/nodes/overview
But the number is constantly growing. As more people begin to understand Bitcoin, there will be more and more peers, and Bitcoin could grow to millions of peers over time.


Another important point is that the fiat price and Bitcoin are two completely different systems. Even if all Bitcoin holders suddenly sold their Bitcoin for dollars and the price dropped to 1 dollar per Bitcoin, the network would still continue to function because it is not dependent on its fiat price.Some miners would likely stop mining because it would no longer be profitable, but the mining difficulty would automatically adjust. After the difficulty adjustment, the network would continue operating normally.

[Agathamay]

~snip~
Then the question arises, who have the ability to destroy Bitcoin? Ironically, the answer may be only the person who created it: Satoshi.

Do you really think Satoshi would do anything bad against Bitcoin? Even if things don't go the way he envisioned, Bitcoin still serves the people who use it as a currency and a hedge against rotten financial systems. It is always important to keep in mind that Satoshi may no longer be alive, and even if he is alive, he may not have access to the coins he mined.

To me, it is more likely that a comet will hit the Earth than that Satoshi will do anything negative against Bitcoin.

on the contrary, what if he is still seeing everything and how everything is truly going?
i still wonder why it is still very difficult for over a decade now for the world to figure out who satoshi is but i guess it's of no use since his creation didn't send any direct threat to the world.
i don't even know why i think satoshi is still fully active in  the crypto world but maybe with a totally different identity, we never can tell

[Abiky]

Many have already tried and many have already claimed Bitcoin was going to be destroyed at some moment, but it has never happened for real.

Then the question arises, who have the ability to destroy Bitcoin? Ironically, the answer may be only the person who created it: Satoshi.

It's curious to think about the scenario where the creation goes too far away from the initial purposes of the creator, so he ends deciding to nuke this.

And how can this thought be understood and applied to reality? Of course Bitcoin won't cease existing, but as things go more and more centralized each new day, empowering and giving control to the groups who have been ruling this world since always, Satoshi can compromise Bitcoin's credibility, by for an example, dumping all his coins on the market at once.

I don't think even Satoshi will be able to "destroy" Bitcoin like you've said. It's already in the hands of the community. The core Blockchain network is decentralized, with thousands of nodes distributed around the world. So even if Satoshi wanted to "kill" Bitcoin, he couldn't. The most he can do is "dump" his entire BTC holdings, effectively causing a huge market crash. The effects would only be temporary, as Bitcoin's market price recovers due to persistent high demand.

What can only "kill" Bitcoin is a severe disruption of the Internet worldwide. That can happen either with an EMP strike, or simply governments unanimously agreeing on shutting it down (something which is very unlikely to happen). A new coin with better tech might emerge, rendering Bitcoin obsolete. Other than that, I'd expect Bitcoin to live forever. Only time will tell...

[Faisal2202]

I really don’t know why people are now talking about bitcoin being destroyed or going to zero price these days in this forum the other day I saw a trend where someone was saying bitcoin will go to zero if Satoshi Nakamoto is discovered, all these are lies. Bitcoin can never die or go to zero.

Actually, that's what we want to hear, the market is in bearish mode, everyone is fearing it could dump, they want to know every news and word, or even gossip that is about the bitcoin downtrend, they are not even focusing on uptrend even if there are several news but still they want to talk about bitcoin and satoshi and all of it going to zero.

This is not new, old members don't even like this kind of topics in my opinion because this is boring and repeatitve for them. As a matter of fact, it has become boring for everyone. Here governments are shaping their rules to adopt bitcoin and here some of us are trying to pull it down to zero, actually they just want it to dump so they could buy if this is not the reason then they are stupid.

[kotajikikox]

Satoshi can compromise Bitcoin's credibility, by for an example, dumping all his coins on the market at once.

Credibility isn’t exactly the same as value. Bitcoin’s price might not be that high anymore but it’s not exactly “ruined” if it wasn’t hacked or its operations halted.

[Marvelockg]

And how can this thought be understood and applied to reality? Of course Bitcoin won't cease existing, but as things go more and more centralized each new day, empowering and giving control to the groups who have been ruling this world since always, Satoshi can compromise Bitcoin's credibility, by for an example, dumping all his coins on the market at once.

If satoshi had any intention of destroying bitcoin, i bet he would have done it before now. Satoshi is human as us and certainly, we can not say that he is super powerful such that he cannot do harm to bitcoin but then, it takes a selfless person to come up with the idea of bitcoin and the last thing to expect from same person is make an attempt to destroy it.

As government changes and policies also changes, there is an high chance that the change might have it effect on bitcoin and depending on the extent of the change, it is possible for it to lead to an end to so many things and if it gets really bad, we can consider that bitcoin might suffer same fate but what is the fact is that anything that can destroy bitcoin might have cripple the financial system in the same vain.

[Alonso_]

I don’t think Satoshi would even think of doing anything bad with Bitcoin, instead he would be more interested in making Bitcoin grow even the more and more, I wouldn’t believe that anyone have that power to destroy Bitcoin because Bitcoin is built in such a way that no one can regulate Bitcoin and Bitcoin itself it’s controlled by itself.

Considering that Bitcoin is coming down now, would mostly identify that Bitcoin is an a bearish season and nobody would generally understand how Bitcoin is operating now, and so many people would feel that Bitcoin is going downward to the drain, which is why so many questions would continue to be asked about the future of Bitcoin.

When investment and money is involved so many people would definitely begin to wonder what is actually happening in the sense that so many investors would be panicking to see and take their money but with Bitcoin I don’t see anything happening wrong, because we have bear Season and bull season.

[Z-tight]

Who can destroy Bitcoin?


As of this post, Bitcoin is down to $66,630 on Bitfinex.
People are selling off to get into silver. Why silver? There isn't enough left to keep making our electronics and cellphones, etc.

Lol, not the first time BTC price is down is it. I am sure you know what a bull and bear market is and how people react in each of these markets.

Weak hands selling off BTC does not affect BTC in itself, it can only cause the price of BTC to drop, temporarily. The reason why the answer to op's question is so simple is that BTC has no single point of failure, there is no plug that can be pulled to end BTC. It's decentralized with no central authority in control and thousands of independent nodes around the world.

What can only "kill" Bitcoin is a severe disruption of the Internet worldwide. That can happen either with an EMP strike, or simply governments unanimously agreeing on shutting it down (something which is very unlikely to happen). A new coin with better tech might emerge, rendering Bitcoin obsolete. Other than that, I'd expect Bitcoin to live forever. Only time will tell...

If like you say, internet access is shut down worldwide (which would never happen). How then would the new coin emerge, where would it run on? This is a situation that we'd never experience.

[MusaMohamed]

Lol, not the first time BTC price is down is it. I am sure you know what a bull and bear market is and how people react in each of these markets.

It's easily to learn by available resources like this chart but practically, it's harder to master it in this volatile market.

The psychological chart looks simple but it's very challenging for people as either investors or traders can control their psychology and emotion well in this market. They have to learn about psychological of market cycle first but they must practice and have enough experience in the market too.
Psychological pitfalls of market cycle.

[viljy]

Destroy it in the sense of large-scale price dumping? Even if this happens, it is unlikely that bitcoin will be destroyed. Technically, bitcoin has only one vulnerability - too long a period (in blocks) between difficult adjustments. If for some reason the hashrate of the miners drops significantly before the adjustment, then this will become a serious problem (if instead of 10 minutes between blocks it will be, say, 10 hours).

What scenarios can provoke such a thing: The destruction of the energy system on a large scale; disruption of Internet connectivity (destruction of intercontinental cables, destruction of satellite communications). Of course, it is not difficult to understand that in the case of a world war, such scenarios are likely.

[Bitcoin_Budha]

Lol, not the first time BTC price is down is it. I am sure you know what a bull and bear market is and how people react in each of these markets.

Weak hands selling off BTC does not affect BTC in itself, it can only cause the price of BTC to drop, temporarily. The reason why the answer to op's question is so simple is that BTC has no single point of failure, there is no plug that can be pulled to end BTC. It's decentralized with no central authority in control and thousands of independent nodes around the world.

What can only "kill" Bitcoin is a severe disruption of the Internet worldwide. That can happen either with an EMP strike, or simply governments unanimously agreeing on shutting it down (something which is very unlikely to happen). A new coin with better tech might emerge, rendering Bitcoin obsolete. Other than that, I'd expect Bitcoin to live forever. Only time will tell...

If like you say, internet access is shut down worldwide (which would never happen). How then would the new coin emerge, where would it run on? This is a situation that we'd never experience.

In this community mostly peoples understand about things but still talking like newbies because shut down of internet is looking not realistically possible now even everything is possible but for me now It's near not possible because world is running on this and many things can be destroyed if this happens not only bitcoin.

I read enough about Bitcoin and crypto where its started and many times already gone dead and also crashed but its never happen because its giving good features with many developments happen for common peoples which are not essential into their life just because of this now talking about this is completely nonsense even now Satoshi is also can't do anything It's going to stay for long time maybe till our lives then what will happen it's not easy to predicted because changes are possible, but end is looking not realistic.

[Youngrebel]

Many have already tried and many have already claimed Bitcoin was going to be destroyed at some moment, but it has never happened for real.

Then the question arises, who have the ability to destroy Bitcoin? Ironically, the answer may be only the person who created it: Satoshi.

It's curious to think about the scenario where the creation goes too far away from the initial purposes of the creator, so he ends deciding to nuke this.

And how can this thought be understood and applied to reality? Of course Bitcoin won't cease existing, but as things go more and more centralized each new day, empowering and giving control to the groups who have been ruling this world since always, Satoshi can compromise Bitcoin's credibility, by for an example, dumping all his coins on the market at once.

But why would he decide to destroy it if at all he wants to. Whats the point..
  Im sure he's truly proud of himself for the entire out come of Bitcoin, how far ot has hone amd the years of growth and success it has really attained. He is truely proud of himself. And the taughts of even wanting to destroy the concept of bitcoin has nor even entered his heart I'm sure.  Because that's an everlasting reputation he has built that will live on for like forever.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Then the question arises, who have the ability to destroy Bitcoin? Ironically, the answer may be only the person who created it: Satoshi.

Technically even if Satoshi were to release or move all of his Bitcoin holding into the market there is no chance that the Bitcoin protocol would collapse. No one can control the rule or consensus of the Bitcoin network alone, not even Satoshi himself XD
Bitcoin's security and decentralization do not depend on Satoshi's holding at all, so even if he were to sell them all the chain would not die.

However yes, if 1 million Bitcoin suddenly moved the market would be completely freaked out, I cannot deny it. Panic selling, extreme volatility and price collapse would be very difficult to prevent actually. But keep in mind this is just a temporary market shock, not the end of Bitcoin. As long as miner and nodes are active this game will continue

[noorman0]

In this community mostly peoples understand about things but still talking like newbies because shut down of internet is looking not realistically possible now even everything is possible but for me now It's near not possible because world is running on this and many things can be destroyed if this happens not only bitcoin.

Destroying the infrastructure doesn't necessarily mean destroying the technology or the idea itself. Since Bitcoin was accused of environmental degradation, the green Bitcoin narrative has emerged, and recent reports indicate that approximately 43-52.4% of Bitcoin mining now uses renewable energy sources.
It's not impossible that in the future, Bitcoin contributors will truly utilize a self-sustaining network infrastructure, including a way to connect nodes.

[red4slash]

Nothing will really be expected here because even if Satoshi exists, it is certain that Satoshi will also not be able to do anything to stop bitcoin because he does not have any access to the destruction of bitcoin and we know this.

The only thing that will be possible is that bitcoin will continue to exist until it's all patched up a century later and it will continue to run according to the original program of its creation and nothing will change from that.

The only possible thing that can kill Bitcoin now is quantum computers, even Kevin o Larry said that this is why institutions won't risk more than 3% of their entire worth into Bitcoin, not until that phase is passed.

This crap again.
What do you expect from a quantum computer? Ever since the rumor that they could crack elliptic curve cryptography that secures wallets a few years ago until now quantum computers have just been a bunch of nonsense. So what do you expect now that they can destroy bitcoin? That's another ridiculousness for me.

[DiMarxist]

Privacy control is becoming one issue that governments are giving much attention to and I share thesame sentiments with you, government is trying to use KYC to totally kill the reason behind Bitcoin. Government wants control of Bitcoin this has been their aim and making KYC compulsory in exchanges is part of the plan to take away freedom from individuals who believes in Bitcoin. But I definitely know that at the end of the day all the plans of government concerning Bitcoin will fail because Bitcoin were not programmed to fail.

[Kelvinid]

If there's only one person or entity that aim to destroy bitcoin, it's the centralized government. Unfortunately, they don't have the ability to shut down bitcoin.

And for Satoshi, what's the point of destroying bitcoin? He is not fool enough to destroy his own invention.

However, if there is possibility to destroy bitcoin, that will only happen if there's no enough bitcoin enthusiasts who will patronize bitcoin, but chose to leave bitcoin for good because they no longer find bitcoin worthy of their time and money.

[r_victory]

I don't think so. Bitcoin has already gone too far. Even if its creator dumps all its coins, remember that their "production" will soon end, and there are many people wanting to buy Bitcoin. Even if the price falls, it will soon return to normal due to demand and may even reach new levels. Bitcoin has become too big to be destroyed by this.

[Sandra_hakeem]

If some people knew how much money some other people have made during such a flash crash as they had buy orders at extremely low prices, they would want to suicide themselves. Someone who is not ultra wealthy made more than someone did working 30 or more years in a second, simply by having a strategy placement of buy orders and adequate knowledge to asses liquidity, risk and probabilities. This is one example why it is good for idiots to continue to live in ignorance and let them work like slaves until retirement.

I've always regretted my late decision of not jumping into the market when it was much more younger. It was worth literally just your time to have loads of BTCs, but anywhere I don't have to feel the frustration that much. I know of people who, by their fast enthusiasm to adopt new things, have made it major from Hodling Btc way before I thought of it. The fools, like you said, are still doubting its abilities and have fallen victims of their skepticism in one way or another.