Who can destroy Bitcoin?

[BALIK]

You mean the founder of BTC don't have the power to destroy BTC? One thing we don't understand about what someone created and what people created, we all know that Satoshi is the founder of BTC and he has the power to destroy BTC if he or she wish, because he owen all the things that is making BTC stand in the decentralized market. We have heard about many governments that wanted to destroy BTC but till now they don't know what to do, because is only the creator of BTC can make sure decision to make many people to panic , because they know that Satoshi hold all the code and other details towards BTC nationwide.

No offense intended, but if you think Satoshi could destroy Bitcoin or arbitrarily interfere with and modify it. You do not understand anything about Bitcoin or decentralization.

Bitcoin is open source, has no off switch and no one has privileges, not even its creator. Any change to the network require community consensus.

Satoshi created it, but he does not possess any source code or secrets about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin itself has no secret. Everything about Bitcoin is open source, public and verifiable by anyone.

[Satofan44]

The government has the power to destroy bitcoin, especially its price.

Complete made up nonsense that comes as a result of you watching too many movies and TV shows. No government has the power to destroy Bitcoin, and especially not its price. If they did have the power to destroy it, they would have done it a long time ago. Meanwhile all attempts to destroy it have failed, and not even making it illegal has worked. This is why most of the places in the world have legalized Bitcoin as fighting it does not work. Monero is also widely used and despite exchange bans they have not managed to neither harm its price nor prevent people from having it.

I vividly recall the massive government sell-off some time ago that resulted in a collapse in the Bitcoin market price.

This never happened. The last big sale was by Germany, and it had no impact on the price whatsoever. No Government holds enough Bitcoin to tank the price through market selling.

This was clearly the biggest risk for holders with large amounts of Bitcoin in their wallets, but ultimately, Bitcoin will rebound strongly due to the support and confidence of its investors.

No.

The government can confiscate bitcoin from anyone if they discover a violation, which also threatens all holders. Regulation is something governments have always used as a weapon to seize assets, allowing them to then sell them for any reason.

Stop posting lies. No government has the ability to confiscate Bitcoin from anybody's wallet, that is one of the core principles of Bitcoin.

No offense intended, but if you think Satoshi could destroy Bitcoin or arbitrarily interfere with and modify it. You do not understand anything about Bitcoin or decentralization.

You should intent offense. 95 to 99% of the responses here are by complete shitposting idiots, most of the things that are written are wrong and they have no idea about Bitcoin or how it works. We need to bring back times where you get punished for writing something blatantly false, that would correct this timeline in no time. Your post is one of the rare ones that is correct this time.

Satoshi created it, but he does not possess any source code or secrets about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin itself has no secret. Everything about Bitcoin is open source, public and verifiable by anyone.

Correct, there are no secrets. Bitcoin and secrets are not a thing.

[HustleZ]

Complete made up nonsense that comes as a result of you watching too many movies and TV shows. No government has the power to destroy Bitcoin, and especially not its price. If they did have the power to destroy it, they would have done it a long time ago. Meanwhile all attempts to destroy it have failed, and not even making it illegal has worked. This is why most of the places in the world have legalized Bitcoin as fighting it does not work. Monero is also widely used and despite exchange bans they have not managed to neither harm its price nor prevent people from having it.

That's right, No government has the power to completely remove anything let alone Bitcoin. They can make it illegal but it will still exist in some place and people who want to use it will still use it. If they could destroy it then they would've done long ago.

The government can confiscate bitcoin from anyone if they discover a violation, which also threatens all holders. Regulation is something governments have always used as a weapon to seize assets, allowing them to then sell them for any reason.

Stop posting lies. No government has the ability to confiscate Bitcoin from anybody's wallet, that is one of the core principles of Bitcoin.

You're right at some point but not entirely. Governments dont have power to directly confiscate it from their wallets or the place they hold but they can force the person/owner to forcefully hand over the BTC. A while ago in our country there was a case of a youtuber who got held by NCCIA ( National Cyber Crime Investigation Authority ) Pakistan and they confiscated his entire Crypto Holdings in the Name of Investigation. So yeah they have the Power to confiscate it by forcing the owner but not from the system directly.

Satoshi created it, but he does not possess any source code or secrets about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin itself has no secret. Everything about Bitcoin is open source, public and verifiable by anyone.

Correct, there are no secrets. Bitcoin and secrets are not a thing.

Correct, I second that.

[Satofan44]

The government can confiscate bitcoin from anyone if they discover a violation, which also threatens all holders. Regulation is something governments have always used as a weapon to seize assets, allowing them to then sell them for any reason.

Stop posting lies. No government has the ability to confiscate Bitcoin from anybody's wallet, that is one of the core principles of Bitcoin.

You're right at some point but not entirely. Governments dont have power to directly confiscate it from their wallets or the place they hold but they can force the person/owner to forcefully hand over the BTC. A while ago in our country there was a case of a youtuber who got held by NCCIA ( National Cyber Crime Investigation Authority ) Pakistan and they confiscated his entire Crypto Holdings in the Name of Investigation. So yeah they have the Power to confiscate it by forcing the owner but not from the system directly.

While your story is accurate, it is misleading and incorrect to claim that Bitcoin can be seized itself and that is what the person was referring to. One of the core principles of Bitcoin is that it can't be seized by someone else, and with stories like that you are confusing what it means to seize something because we are not talking about it in nuance. Here are the differences and more detail:
1) When Bitcoin is used correctly (your keys, secured properly) then it is resistant to direct seizure also known as direct confiscation. The case that you are referring to is something else, situations like that can be called things like "compelled transfer" or "legal forfeiture under compulsion" (thanks AI).
2) Everything else is susceptible to both direct seizure and the different case that I labelled as compelled transfer and legal forfeiture under compulsion.

This is just another case where words are being used inaccurately in mainstream media. Focus on the key difference in this example:

• A bank account can be seized no matter how much I object or protest.
• My Bitcoin can not be seized no matter what you do, you can kill me but you still won't be able to take it as long as I can endure death -- that is what it means to be sovereign and seizure-proof.

In practice Bitcoin can be effectively seized through a number of ways, but they all relate back to incorrect usage of Bitcoin and those cases do not invalidate any claims that Bitcoin is resistant to direct seizure. For example, custodial services would be a common case, poor security, device seizure and so forth. However if:
1) You control your own keys.
2) You secure it properly.
Optional: 3) You hide your wealth. Note: This step is labeled optional because someone could come and bring up a stupid counter argument "but you can also hide a bank account" as if it were even at all comparable.


It is absolutely something that can not be seized. In the case that you have presented, there were several mistakes: the government knew about his wealth somehow and he kept this wealth with him. They can't force you to transfer something that you don't have ( ) or something to which you allegedly own but have no access to (where is it?). What are they going to do about that? Say that they believe this random person that they have selected has a lot of Bitcoin wealth even if there is no proof of any kind on his devices that the person has anything to do with Bitcoin? Life is not a movie script, if this does happen sometimes (and gets reported by the media) that is because the chance of it happening to you is 1 in a million or 1 in a billion.
This is also directly related to "who can destroy Bitcoin". If it were possible to easily seize Bitcoin, then it would have never reached the adoption and success that it has. Without resistance to seizure, one of the key aspects of Bitcoin falls through. Perhaps even you can claim that the whole system would collapse along with other features. If you can seize Bitcoin then it is not:

• Decentralized.
• Censorship resistant.
• Permissionless.
• Etc.

So, this resistance is actually a key building block. Don't let media and news stories confuse you into disbelief. The main reason why Bitcoin exists how it does is because it can't be seized by anyone. Nobody has ever had their Bitcoin taken away from a cold storage setup unless they did something wrong.

[HustleZ]

You're right at some point but not entirely. Governments dont have power to directly confiscate it from their wallets or the place they hold but they can force the person/owner to forcefully hand over the BTC. A while ago in our country there was a case of a youtuber who got held by NCCIA ( National Cyber Crime Investigation Authority ) Pakistan and they confiscated his entire Crypto Holdings in the Name of Investigation. So yeah they have the Power to confiscate it by forcing the owner but not from the system directly.

It is absolutely something that can not be seized. In the case that you have presented, there were several mistakes: the government knew about his wealth somehow and he kept this wealth with him. They can't force you to transfer something that you don't have ( ) or something to which you allegedly own but have no access to (where is it?). What are they going to do about that? Say that they believe this random person that they have selected has a lot of Bitcoin wealth even if there is no proof of any kind on his devices that the person has anything to do with Bitcoin? Life is not a movie script, if this does happen sometimes (and gets reported by the media) that is because the chance of it happening to you is 1 in a million or 1 in a billion.

You're correct and that's what I said in my post,it can not be seized directly as Bitcoin System was Solely made for this purpose ( many more also but it's one of the core principle) so it's clear that governments don't have the power to confiscate it without the willingness of the Owner. And that's one of Bitcoin's Greatest you can say characteristic. As you said coreectly They can Seize a bank account any time they want but not Bitcoin.

Your concern of them knowing if the person had Bitcoin is right as no one can know whether a person has Bitcoin or not which is a great quality of Bitcoin. (privacy) but in this Case the person is a youtuber and He in many places talked about trading cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin etc so that's I believe where they got the idea of him having BTC. And yeah he could've/should've stored it in a safer place ( A place no one except him knew) and aside from his personal phone so if a case like this had to arise he would've been safe. You're right that's just 1 in a billion or million case and is completely avoidable.. that's just the beauty of BTC ( can't be seized or controlled)  because his Bank accounts were seized for a much longer time (i think he got his bank account's acces a week ago while he was freed from jail about 3 months Ago)

That's his channel if you wanna see Ducky Bhai. His most popular video is about this topic.

[o48o]

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 say that Satoshi has power to destroy bitcoin, yet you say that Bitcoin won't cease existing. So what you mean by "destroy" then?
And how exactly would that "nuking" even happen? Worst and best thing Satoshi can do is dump all their own bags. But that's it.

How would he nuke open sourced code? No one would accept that kind of proposal from anyone. No one would stop mining and using the current version, as that wouldn't serve anyone's interests.

[Abiky]

I’m pretty sure the thing that could really kill Bitcoin is gradual centralization and big corporations buying it up, expecting huge profits in the future. Because of that, the original idea behind Bitcoin kind of gets lost, and honestly, it’s already not the same as it was 7-8 years ago.
Yeah, big companies are buying BTC and pushing the price up in the short term, but in the long run, this could hurt its reputation and make things worse overall.

You have the same mindset as me, mate. Unfortunately, most "hodlers" don't care because they're only focused on the profits. They just want to make money with BTC. Not because they truly believe in it or care about its decentralized and censorship-resistant properties.

"Wall Street's" and governments' main intention is to accumulate most of the circulating supply to effectively crash the price of Bitcoin in the long-term. They won't be able to control the network, but they will be able to control who buys/sells BTC. In other words, governments and institutions will control the flow of Bitcoin in/out of the Fiat world. An indirect way to "destroy" Bitcoin. Hopefully, people realize the "master plan" before it's too late.

What about the Chinese government? They have banned any crypto transactions in the country. This has caused many people to migrate abroad to countries that are more Bitcoin-friendly. If I imagine that it applies to the whole world? What would happen? Would Bitcoin go into the black market, apparently not. What is your opinion?

Because we live in a country that sometimes forces a condition. So it is possible that this could happen. Because the government is able to control from the outside, they have more power than us.

What about it? There's nothing a single government can do against Bitcoin. But all of them in unison? Maybe. Yet, we've seen how countries are unable to agree on common things. A unilateral agreement among countries to ban the use of BTC, would be practically impossible to achieve. It's an uncertain future, so better be prepared for the worst just in case.

[Iranus]

I’m pretty sure the thing that could really kill Bitcoin is gradual centralization and big corporations buying it up, expecting huge profits in the future. Because of that, the original idea behind Bitcoin kind of gets lost, and honestly, it’s already not the same as it was 7-8 years ago.
Yeah, big companies are buying BTC and pushing the price up in the short term, but in the long run, this could hurt its reputation and make things worse overall.

You have the same mindset as me, mate. Unfortunately, most "hodlers" don't care because they're only focused on the profits. They just want to make money with BTC. Not because they truly believe in it or care about its decentralized and censorship-resistant properties.

"Wall Street's" and governments' main intention is to accumulate most of the circulating supply to effectively crash the price of Bitcoin in the long-term. They won't be able to control the network, but they will be able to control who buys/sells BTC. In other words, governments and institutions will control the flow of Bitcoin in/out of the Fiat world. An indirect way to "destroy" Bitcoin. Hopefully, people realize the "master plan" before it's too late.

In my opinion, as long as they have not figured out how to control the network, they will have no way to centralize it further, let alone destroy it.

The decentralized nature of Bitcoin lies in and is determined by the network, not by its supply. Therefore, they can manipulate and control price by holding a large portion of the supply. But as long as they do not control the network and we can still use non custodial wallets to store BTC, there's nothing to fear.

[Smack That Ace]

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 say that Satoshi has power to destroy bitcoin, yet you say that Bitcoin won't cease existing. So what you mean by "destroy" then?
And how exactly would that "nuking" even happen? Worst and best thing Satoshi can do is dump all their own bags. But that's it.

How would he nuke open sourced code? No one would accept that kind of proposal from anyone. No one would stop mining and using the current version, as that wouldn't serve anyone's interests.

I find it hard to understand why people acknowledge the decentralized nature of bitcoin and praise its beauty that Bitcoin is not controlled by any government, organization, or individual. But they still believe that Satoshi could pose a threat, or even destroy it if he wanted to. If they say that, they are contradicting their own beliefs and understanding of bitcoin. Because a decentralized system cannot depend on a single individual, whether that individual is the creator or anyone else.

[Uhwuchukwu53]

Bitcoin currently is indestructible,  the only thing I consider could destroy Bitcoin is investor and users lost if interested which may inturn reduce value and when the value is lost the interest to invest will reduce automatically through this medium of reduced value may not exist because anything that has no value automatically is destroyed already. But as much as people, users and investor keep their interest centered on it nothing will destroy Bitcoin even government because when the population who have adopted Bitcoin react against government actions they will have some consideration to rethink their actions except the one acquired by illegal means that prompt such action, but as of today such thought of being destroy is unrealized dream.

[Satofan44]

You're correct and that's what I said in my post,it can not be seized directly as Bitcoin System was Solely made for this purpose ( many more also but it's one of the core principle) so it's clear that governments don't have the power to confiscate it without the willingness of the Owner. And that's one of Bitcoin's Greatest you can say characteristic. As you said coreectly They can Seize a bank account any time they want but not Bitcoin.

Your concern of them knowing if the person had Bitcoin is right as no one can know whether a person has Bitcoin or not which is a great quality of Bitcoin. (privacy) but in this Case the person is a youtuber and He in many places talked about trading cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin etc so that's I believe where they got the idea of him having BTC. And yeah he could've/should've stored it in a safer place ( A place no one except him knew) and aside from his personal phone so if a case like this had to arise he would've been safe. You're right that's just 1 in a billion or million case and is completely avoidable.. that's just the beauty of BTC ( can't be seized or controlled)  because his Bank accounts were seized for a much longer time (i think he got his bank account's acces a week ago while he was freed from jail about 3 months Ago)

That's his channel if you wanna see Ducky Bhai. His most popular video is about this topic.

That is the downside of being a public person and going through a shithole country. Imagine that you promoted your lavish lifestyle of expensive cars and whatever, and then after being robbed you blame Ferrari for their cars being "insecure".   Bitcoin can absolutely not be seized from you. Think about it a different way, you only know the 24 words in your head. How are they going to take it from you? They can only try to torture you until you give it up or die, but that is more a movie script storyline than something that would happen to an average person. As I said, if you expose yourself this way you are attracting entities that may do this: criminals or some very corrupt governments. But if you are not exposed, nobody can:
1) Know for sure how much Bitcoin you have. They can speculate, but speculations are useless and meaningless. I can speculate that you have 1M Bitcoin, what about it?
2) Take Bitcoin from you.

I find it hard to understand why people acknowledge the decentralized nature of bitcoin and praise its beauty that Bitcoin is not controlled by any government, organization, or individual. But they still believe that Satoshi could pose a threat, or even destroy it if he wanted to. If they say that, they are contradicting their own beliefs and understanding of bitcoin. Because a decentralized system cannot depend on a single individual, whether that individual is the creator or anyone else.

It is not hard to understand because you are completely approaching the topic wrong it is confusing you. People are mostly shitposting whatever comes to mind here, very few users understand even the basics of Bitcoin here that is why they can make categorical errors of just about anything that relates to Bitcoin. Now if you reorient your thinking with the correct motivation, i.e., that users are mostly just trying to write whatever has any relevance to the topic at all then you will find it easy to understand how they can write such nonsense.  

Bitcoin currently is indestructible

Wrong generalization, there is nothing that is indestructible.

the only thing I consider could destroy Bitcoin is investor and users lost if interested which may inturn reduce value and when the value is lost the interest to invest will reduce automatically through this medium of reduced value may not exist because anything that has no value automatically is destroyed already. But as much as people, users and investor keep their interest centered on it nothing will destroy Bitcoin even government because when the population who have adopted Bitcoin react against government actions they will have some consideration to rethink their actions except the one acquired by illegal means that prompt such action, but as of today such thought of being destroy is unrealized dream.

This can not destroy Bitcoin, and a devaluation has nothing to do with destroying Bitcoin. The protocol would continue to live on. We could consider Bitcoin almost practically "dead", but it would not be destroyed.

[barbara44]

~snip

Whenever I see people talking about "your bitcoins can't be touched" I remember how even Russ Ulbricht got all his money seized, all of his bitcoins , every single one. Believe me ,if the government doesn't seize your bitcoins or holds them, it's not because they can't, it's because they do not want to, if they wanted to, they can get it, it's just not going to be in technical form.

Normally when it's USD, they seize your money in the bank and that's it, very easy, just one letter to the bank and it's all done. But when it's bitcoin, they have to do more, in Ross case, it was FBI agents who seized computer while he was not looking before he could lock it and seized all of it. In your case it could be different, but believe me, if they want to, they can.

[Satofan44]

~snip

Whenever I see people talking about "your bitcoins can't be touched" I remember how even Russ Ulbricht got all his money seized, all of his bitcoins , every single one. Believe me ,if the government doesn't seize your bitcoins or holds them, it's not because they can't, it's because they do not want to, if they wanted to, they can get it, it's just not going to be in technical form.

That is still an incorrect case to bring forth. These Bitcoins were not seized because Bitcoin can be seized, they were seized because the door to the bank vault was left open. You guys really need to learn how to differentiate between features that are inherent to the thing itself, and methods that do not relate to that. My car is insecure because I left the doors open and someone took it? What kind of stupid argument would that be? This is what you guys are doing when it comes to Bitcoin and topics like this -- you are confused and making incorrect statements. Bitcoin can not be directly seized, this is a core feature of the protocol itself. Any circulating around it in order to take it away from the person, which was the case in every single example that was brought forth, has nothing to do with this and it does not change the fact that Bitcoin can not be seized.

If a user is dumb, tricked, or otherwise cheated off of their Bitcoin that has nothing to do with Bitcoin's feature that it can't be seized. Your Keys, Your Coin. Learn it.

Normally when it's USD, they seize your money in the bank and that's it, very easy, just one letter to the bank and it's all done. But when it's bitcoin, they have to do more, in Ross case, it was FBI agents who seized computer while he was not looking before he could lock it and seized all of it. In your case it could be different, but believe me, if they want to, they can.

Lol, no they can't. I am not the average pajeet user that you are talking about. Mr. Ulbricht's technical skills were quite limited, he made several mistakes and was being manipulated most of the time.