Total BS: "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments"

[legiteum]

Imagine this scenario.

A group of large Bitcoin brokers like, say, Binance, CoinBase, Robinhood and MasterCard, decided that the Bitcoin architecture should be changed to make it scale to everyday payments, and in the process swapping out the Proof-Of-Work architecture to a trusted centralized architecture driven by a few well-known companies.

Obviously the "hard core" Bitcoiners on the internet would freak out, and vow never to use their fork.

Now imagine that these giant companies lobbied the US government, and also got key players like Michael Saylor, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump on their side. With this political and financial support, they get the US Congress to pass a law declaring that this new fork is the "official Bitcoin" and every other fork is an illegal fake and cannot be called "Bitcoin". The US president, who would be on board with this change (say it made his own family a lot of $$$), would also use the military and economic might of the US government to bully many other countries to accept this new law.

The result would be that ~98% of the value of BTC holdings would fall in line with this new change. They would have no choice since the value of the original Bitcoin fork would be non-tradable in all of the major trading platforms, whereas the US government's fork would be tradable almost everywhere Bitcoin is traded today. Hence the market cap of the fork would be where Bitcoin's is today, at around $1 trillion, and the fork's market cap would be utterly tiny, probably not even breaking a few million.

Put it another way, you could use your keys on either network and access your Bitcoin. One would allow you to trade on mainstream platforms, trade with ETFs, and would have the full backing of the US government, and other would be a network that would include yourself and a few hundred Bitcoin religious hard-cores. In one network your BTC would be tradable for $10,000 in physical goods and services, and in the other it would be tradable for $1.49 in physical goods and services. Which one is any average person going to choose?

To 99% of Bitcoin users, all they will care about is their money being safe. They would go with the flow and not risk their savings on an illegal network.

The idea that "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments" is total bullshit. It's a product in the market just like any other. It's like saying "Microsoft Word cannot be controlled by any government". Sure it can, if the government really wanted to.

The reason Bitcoin isn't currently being controlled by the US government is because they don't feel like it. The current setup doesn't bother them, so they let it be. But it's not because of some "magic technical architecture" that makes it immune to political control. The US government has control of its $30T economy, and all of its benefits. You don't get to enjoy those benefits (for instance, thousands of new BTC investors coming in every day to make the value of your bags go higher and higher) without control. Real life doesn't work that way.

Please stop saying, "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments", because... it absolutely can, and to some extent already is.

[Charles-Tim]

Now imagine that these giant companies lobbied the US government, and also got key players like Michael Saylor, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump on their side. With this political and financial support, they get the US Congress to pass a law declaring that this new fork is the "official Bitcoin" and every other fork is an illegal fake and cannot be called "Bitcoin". The US president, who would be on board with this change (say it made his own family a lot of $$$), would also use the military and economic might of the US government to bully many other countries to accept this new law.

In short, you mean the United States is the only country in the world? You bring an idea that will not happen. Satoshi is a genus that created bitcoin in a way that people and government will accept it.

The idea that "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments" is total bullshit.

Is this what is happening? If this has not happened, your post is totally full of bull shit.

[serjent05]

The idea that "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments" is total bullshit. It's a product in the market just like any other. It's like saying "Microsoft Word cannot be controlled by any government". Sure it can, if the government really wanted to.

Say this if the government totally controlled BitTorrent, a well-known decentralized file sharing.    It been a decade of cracking and tracking but the government still failed to totally control this kind of decentralized file sharing.

And about Bitcoin the government can control the second layer of Bitcoin because most of these are centralized company integrate their service through this layer, but I doubt the government can totally control the core layer of Bitcoin.  And btw, I don't think that the US is the only country on Earth. 

[eaLiTy]

~
Now imagine that these giant companies lobbied the US government, and also got key players like Michael Saylor, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump on their side. With this political and financial support, they get the US Congress to pass a law declaring that this new fork is the "official Bitcoin" and every other fork is an illegal fake and cannot be called "Bitcoin". The US president, who would be on board with this change (say it made his own family a lot of $$$), would also use the military and economic might of the US government to bully many other countries to accept this new law.

Donald Trump runs the US government.  .

In your hypothetical story, even if they pass laws, they cannot rewrite the consensus rules of how a node is run globally. The core power lies with the nodes. Basically that fork will not be BTCitcoin.  

Put it another way, you could use your keys on either network and access your Bitcoin. One would allow you to trade on mainstream platforms, trade with ETFs, and would have the full backing of the US government, and other would be a network that would include yourself and a few hundred Bitcoin religious hard-cores. In one network your BTC would be tradable for $10,000 in physical goods and services, and in the other it would be tradable for $1.49 in physical goods and services. Which one is any average person going to choose?

We already went through a major fork, and we are still BTCitcoin while the other forks are known by other names. You can chose any number of coins, but there will be only one BTCitcoin network. Since I rebutted your hypothetical theory above, the rest does not matter.  

The idea that "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments" is total bullshit. It's a product in the market just like any other. It's like saying "Microsoft Word cannot be controlled by any government". Sure it can, if the government really wanted to.

You are comparing a product owned by a corporation Vs Peer to peer protocol that is run globally. So no, it cannot be controlled, and it is not a product like any other.

The reason Bitcoin isn't currently being controlled by the US government is because they don't feel like it. The current setup doesn't bother them, so they let it be. But it's not because of some "magic technical architecture" that makes it immune to political control. The US government has control of its $30T economy, and all of its benefits. You don't get to enjoy those benefits (for instance, thousands of new BTC investors coming in every day to make the value of your bags go higher and higher) without control. Real life doesn't work that way.

Please stop saying, "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments", because... it absolutely can, and to some extent already is.

As I mentioned above, they can pass law, they can shut down exchanges and ban banks from allowing businesses to operate, but that does not mean they have control over the BTCitcoin protocol.  

Since you seem completely clueless about this, China already have a complete ban, but all the exchanges moved out of China and users are still trading and using BTCitcoin and nothing changed within the BTCitcoin protocol itself.

[Ambatman]

Imagine this scenario.

A group of large Bitcoin brokers like, say, Binance, CoinBase, Robinhood and MasterCard, decided that the Bitcoin architecture should be changed to make it scale to everyday payments, and in the process swapping out the Proof-Of-Work architecture to a trusted centralized architecture driven by a few well-known companies.

if they want they can make use of an already existing money like Fiat
Or create theirs and name it shitcoin
Rather than trying to re-brand something to what it isn't.

Now imagine that these giant companies lobbied the US government, and also got key players like Michael Saylor, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump on their side. With this political and financial support, they get the US Congress to pass a law declaring that this new fork is the "official Bitcoin" and every other fork is an illegal fake and cannot be called "Bitcoin". The US president, who would be on board with this change (say it made his own family a lot of $$$), would also use the military and economic might of the US government to bully many other countries to accept this new law.

If they go this far for Bitcoin
It means Bitcoin is worth holding
But the world isn't called the US.
And you believe their counterparts wouldn't find a reason to butt in
We have seen these dramas playing out in recent war.

They would have no choice since the value of the original Bitcoin fork would be non-tradable in all of the major trading platforms,

Good thing DEX like Bisq and others exists.

at around $1 trillion, and the fork's market cap would be utterly tiny, probably not even breaking a few million.

that's like owning tonnes of Gold for few cents.
Just wait when they start printing.

The reason Bitcoin isn't currently being controlled by the US government is because they don't feel like it.

I guess is the same reason the planet hasn't been renamed the United States of America.

[EluguHcman]

Imagine this scenario.

A group of large Bitcoin brokers like, say, Binance, CoinBase, Robinhood and MasterCard, decided that the Bitcoin architecture should be changed to make it scale to everyday payments, and in the process swapping out the Proof-Of-Work architecture to a trusted centralized architecture driven by a few well-known companies.

That can only be imagined as stated like a dream World!
The scenario of those few firms agitations to hijack the Decentralized mechanism of the Bitcoin to be regulated had long been a strive of every governments in other to regulate it but had ended being a nightmare for them.

So it is an endless journey to no avail for all those firms and platforms you have mentioned and let it not give you sleepless night because Bitcoin will ever remain Decentralized as long as transaction process sticks to the Proof Of Work(POW) to override Centralization or authority.

Although the market price can be driven by manipulation of the Institutions but the Bitcoin core remains uncompromising.

[Charles-Tim]

They would have no choice since the value of the original Bitcoin fork would be non-tradable in all of the major trading platforms,

Good thing DEX like Bisq and others exists.

I know many people post about the bad sides of centralized exchanges, but this is not one of them because not all exchanges are licensed in United States. Some exchanges are licensed in Africa and other continents. I am very sure centralized exchanges will not be of a problem if something like this will happen. The OP said the original bitcoin will not be tradable in all exchanges because they have no choice, but which is totally not true and not possible.

[mcdouglasx]

The United States is precisely uncomfortable with Bitcoin, precisely because it's impossible for them to control it directly. Their only alternative is to use it and control second layers, whether through banks or specific tokens, based on Bitcoin reserves, to track money, transactions, block, and recover assets. Since they lack the capacity to control it directly, they can use it as a store of value and copy the technology. For example, your bank might show you have X amount of BTC, but you could only send it to other US banks, never withdrawing it to the main blockchain, at least not without a legal control process.

The point is, the United States can adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset and then operate it with other layers. Furthermore, regarding the name, I believe international regulations don't allow such things. It's like wanting to register God and prohibiting devotees from invoking him.

[legiteum]

In short, you mean the United States is the only country in the world?

Never said nor implied that. Most of BTC is held by Americans and/or American companies. That's just a fact. The US exerts economic and political influence over many other countries, especially the ones where the remaining percentage of BTC investors would be. All of the major brokers, miners and ETFs are all in the USA.

Take away the investment $$$ from the USA and BTC drops by 90% at least. That's what the American government can credibly threaten. With that threat, they can make BTC holders do... anything they want them to do.

Say this if the government totally controlled BitTorrent, a well-known decentralized file sharing.    It been a decade of cracking and tracking but the government still failed to totally control this kind of decentralized file sharing.

BitTorrent doesn't have a market cap. It doesn't have brokers. It doesn't have billions of dollars of people's money in it. It doesn't have ETFs. The US has therefore no leverage over it--UNLIKE BITCOIN.

In your hypothetical story, even if they pass laws, they cannot rewrite the consensus rules of how a node is run globally. The core power lies with the nodes. Basically that fork will not be BTCitcoin. 

According to you and your 17 friends maybe, but if 99% of the MONEY goes to the other fork, then THAT is Bitcoin. And the government is what enforces trademarks, which means if you call your thing, "Bitcoin" you'll be put in jail.

Since you seem completely clueless about this, China already have a complete ban, but all the exchanges moved out of China and users are still trading and using BTCitcoin and nothing changed within the BTCitcoin protocol itself.

Bitcoin is not banned in China. Please get your facts straight. Regardless, I don't know what that has to do with this discussion...

if they want they can make use of an already existing money like Fiat
Or create theirs and name it shitcoin
Rather than trying to re-brand something to what it isn't.

Nope, you got it backwards: the US-approved fork would be called "Bitcoin" by ever single non-illegal entity in the USA, and everything else could only be called "shitcoin" or some other name you gave it that would ensure it wouldn't be confused with the official Bitcoin.

This is exactly how the trademark of Bitcoin works today.

The reason why somebody can't come out with a new memecoin and call it "Bitcoin" and use the BTC symbol for it is because of trademark protection, and that protection comes from... the US government.

I guess is the same reason the planet hasn't been renamed the United States of America.

If Americans controlled 95% of the market cap of the planet, then yeah, they probably would have renamed it that already...   

The OP said the original bitcoin will not be tradable in all exchanges because they have no choice, but which is totally not true and not possible.

No, I did not say that. I said the opposite as a matter of fact: that there would be some exchanges and brokers who would trade in Bitcoin the pre-US fork of Bitcoin, and nothing could stop them. It's just that they would be so tiny as to be an insignificant portion of the market because the serious market players wouldn't touch anything illegal.

The United States is precisely uncomfortable with Bitcoin, precisely because it's impossible for them to control it directly.

The US is absolutely comfortable with Bitcoin (the US president owns almost a half billion dollars in BTC) precisely because it poses no threat to them whatsoever.

Bitcoin is totally legal to trade and hold in the USA, and where there have already been several laws passed through Congress here regarding Bitcoin.

The US Congress is as "uncomfortable" with Bitcoin as they are "uncomfortable" with Dallas Cowboys. It's just another company in their dominion.

Their only alternative is to use it and control second layers, whether through banks or specific tokens, based on Bitcoin reserves, to track money, transactions, block, and recover assets.

Controlling that = controlling 99% of the market value of Bitcoin. That's the same as controlling Bitcoin.

It's like wanting to register God and prohibiting devotees from invoking him.

Bitcoin is a pile of code, not.... God  .

[Charles-Tim]

Never said nor implied that. Most of BTC is held by Americans and/or American companies.

What is your definition of most?

According to findings, 40% of bitcoin supply is owned by the people in United States, while 60% is owned by the rest of the world.

Is the 40% the definition of most?

Just know that bitcoin is more decentralized than what you think.

[rat03gopoh]

Now imagine that these giant companies lobbied the US government, and also got key players like Michael Saylor, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump on their side. With this political and financial support, they get the US Congress to pass a law declaring that this new fork is the "official Bitcoin" and every other fork is an illegal fake and cannot be called "Bitcoin". The US president, who would be on board with this change (say it made his own family a lot of $$$), would also use the military and economic might of the US government to bully many other countries to accept this new law.

Bitcoin is open source, so I can't help but wonder why it took nearly two decades for Bitcoin to unify their vision against Bitcoin. They could have forked it and seen if it survived, at least against their own internal conflicts. Uniting and sustaining large companies around a single ideology for as long as possible is harder than keeping a single ice cream cone frozen in your hand.

[alani123]

Many things can happen in theory.

If mining pools decide to be complicit with government crimes miners could move to other pools.

If the majority of mining power also decides to be complicit, also the holders can decide to fork off to a new chain and stop trading the complicit-coins.

The Saylors and Musks of the world are also subject to shareholder criticism. The BTC in their companies isn't their property. But even if they decide to support a version of BTC complicit in government crimes, they risk all of their stack becoming worthless. Their interest should be aligned with the market or they risk losing the most.

Of course market interests aren't always idealistic. Maybe bitcoin will be less decentralised in the future. But if something as bad as de anonymization is to become mandatory, I don't think the majority of the network will accept something as blatant.

Bitcoin has many defenses against what the OP describes.
If they all fail, god save us.

[Cryptohygenic]

Believe me, the day bitcoin decentralized core will succumb to the control of the government, then will result a starting point of bitcoin crash.
This is not going to be because enthusiasts literally preferred it because they would have control over their funds but because the trusted fundamental that it resists regulations is lost and so on, gives doubt that bitcoin would still be trusted.
But nevertheless, all the fingers pointing on the financial technology and the aim of the government taking control of it are fairy tales. Absolutely impossible to happen.

[mcdouglasx]

The United States is precisely uncomfortable with Bitcoin, precisely because it's impossible for them to control it directly.

The US is absolutely comfortable with Bitcoin (the US president owns almost a half billion dollars in BTC) precisely because it poses no threat to them whatsoever.

Bitcoin is totally legal to trade and hold in the USA, and where there have already been several laws passed through Congress here regarding Bitcoin.

The US Congress is as "uncomfortable" with Bitcoin as they are "uncomfortable" with Dallas Cowboys. It's just another company in their dominion.

Their only alternative is to use it and control second layers, whether through banks or specific tokens, based on Bitcoin reserves, to track money, transactions, block, and recover assets.

Controlling that = controlling 99% of the market value of Bitcoin. That's the same as controlling Bitcoin.

It's like wanting to register God and prohibiting devotees from invoking him.

Bitcoin is a pile of code, not.... God   .

If they were comfortable, they wouldn't pursue mixers, sue exchanges, or create special regulatory frameworks. Comfort is similar to what they do with Apple stock: stable regulations, not constant legal battles.

Second, you would control the price and accessibility, but you don't control the network. The United States is just one country; although it can pressure others to follow its rules, it can't control Bitcoin. Bitcoin miners would simply migrate to other permissive countries. If you have your BTC in a non-custodial wallet, the government can't touch it. They can make it illegal to spend it, they can imprison you, but the ownership remains yours.

And finally, you say Bitcoin is just code, but you're omitting the fact that Bitcoin is a generic term like "email" or "internet." In trademark law, you can't register a name that's already in common use.

Your scenario requires the US to own the world... it's the typical mistaken thinking of Americans who think that America is everything, and they omit the rest of the countries; it's an ingrained concept, not reality.

[Darker45]

How do you define control? In the specific scenario that you provided, in what way did the US government control Bitcoin? The number of users isn't Bitcoin. The price of BTC isn't Bitcoin. The level of support, whether retail or institutional, isn't Bitcoin.

As a matter of fact, what is Bitcoin? If the new altcoin that's created is named Bitcoin by way of a law, if Bitcoin is equated with decentralization, then what they have won't ever be considered Bitcoin. And it's next to impossible to make the real Bitcoin centralized.

In the end, the Bitcoin that's made way less popular remained as it is, uncontrolled, decentralized, borderless, seizure-proof, censorship-resistant, and so on.

[PepeLapiu]

Here is an other way a state level actor could attack and control Bitcoin.

They infiltrate core and they start to gradually drift away from the concept of Bitcoin as money by inviting in all sorts of malware they claim are just "new use cases".

They make bitcoin more and more complicated with stuff like Taproot,  complex smart contracts, TapScript, and all sorts of other things that make bitcoin "more functional" but not required or often disired for bitcoin to work as money.

Bitcoin has a scaling problem. But instead of addresssing that, they attempt to make bitcoin do more and more stuff that have nothing to do with money, and in fact are doing the opposite of money.

And when some of us try to bring bitcoin back to it's monetary fundamentals, we get attacked for "taking away functionality". What they don't tell you is that those " functionalities" have nothing to do with Bitcoin as money.

And the only decentralized part of bitcoin is the 90,000 nodes. Everything else is highly centralized. So they attempt to constantly attack nodes are "irrelevant unless they are economic nodes" or "mining nodes".

And slowly and gradually, bitcoin slides into a slippery slope.

And here is the result in 2026:

40% of the UTXO set is malware dust.
50% of current blocks are pure spmy malware.
85% of Taproot UTXOs are malware dust.

Yet if you surf the mailing list, or this forum, or r/Bitcoin, you will see that they are all busy making up " new use cases" and more "functionalities" while completely ignoring the problem of malware on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is under attack. Join the bitcoiners against this. Run BIP110, run Knots.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

The idea that "Bitcoin cannot be controlled by governments" is total bullshit. It's a product in the market just like any other. It's like saying "Microsoft Word cannot be controlled by any government". Sure it can, if the government really wanted to.

Bitcoin can not be controlled by governments or you can also say no government can control Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is decentralized so no single Bitcoin mining pool can control it, no single Bitcoin whale can control it, and surely no single government can control it.
Mining pools compete with each other, whales compete with each other, and similarly governments compete with each other.

If governments forced people to use things like Wrapped Bitcoin tokens on altcoin blockchains, it's no longer bitcoin, and these altcoin blockchains and wrapped tokens are truly centralized so that governments can do their jobs well and easy. Fortunately, these chains and tokens are not actual bitcoins, what happen with them is not responsibility of Bitcoin.

https://casebitcoin.com/critiques/china-controls-bitcoin
https://quillette.com/2021/02/21/can-governments-stop-bitcoin/

[legiteum]

Believe me, the day bitcoin decentralized core will succumb to the control of the government, then will result a starting point of bitcoin crash.

We discussed this in another thread. Many people think the price of BTC would go down, but others think it might go up since it would have so much more utility.

But nevertheless, all the fingers pointing on the financial technology and the aim of the government taking control of it are fairy tales. Absolutely impossible to happen.

Did you know that the trademark for the name "Bitcoin" and the Bitcoin symbol are protected by... the US government? That means the US government decides who can and cannot use that name to describe their fork. That doesn't sound very "impossible" to me...

If they were comfortable, they wouldn't pursue mixers, sue exchanges, or create special regulatory frameworks. Comfort is similar to what they do with Apple stock: stable regulations, not constant legal battles.

LOL, Apple and every large company is in constant legal battles. That's part of being a large company. That's why they spend $billions in political contributions.

Second, you would control the price and accessibility, but you don't control the network. The United States is just one country; although it can pressure others to follow its rules, it can't control Bitcoin. Bitcoin miners would simply migrate to other permissive countries. If you have your BTC in a non-custodial wallet, the government can't touch it. They can make it illegal to spend it, they can imprison you, but the ownership remains yours.

Sure, you can do whatever you want with your fork. If you call it "Bitcoin" then you'll be prosecuted by the US or its allies who join the pact (and why wouldn't they?). It would be no different than if you created a fork today and called it "Bitcoin" and used the BTC symbol to describe it.

And finally, you say Bitcoin is just code, but you're omitting the fact that Bitcoin is a generic term like "email" or "internet." In trademark law, you can't register a name that's already in common use.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Tell you what: fork the Bitcoin codebase in Github and create your own coin, and call it "Bitcoin" and use the BTC symbol when you market it. Let us all know how that goes for you   .

Your scenario requires the US to own the world... it's the typical mistaken thinking of Americans who think that America is everything, and they omit the rest of the countries; it's an ingrained concept, not reality.

The US doesn't own everything, but they certainly own most of Bitcoin. I'm not talking about football or Champagne here. I'm talking about an industry that lives mostly in the USA--and that's more than enough to blackmail the market into following whatever they do.

How do you define control? In the specific scenario that you provided, in what way did the US government control Bitcoin? The number of users isn't Bitcoin. The price of BTC isn't Bitcoin. The level of support, whether retail or institutional, isn't Bitcoin.

Correct: The $1 trillion+ in tradable value is Bitcoin.

Imagine somebody whose life savings is in BTC: all they are going to care about is that their investment is safe.

For almost all holders of BTC, Bitcoin is an investment. The value of that investment is based on a market price. Any entity that can massively control that market price--which the US government absolutely can do--can control almost all holders of BTC's actions insofar as they care about their money.

If you want to debate what the 0.00002% of humans who don't care about money would do, be my guest  .

In the end, the Bitcoin that's made way less popular remained as it is, uncontrolled, decentralized, borderless, seizure-proof, censorship-resistant, and so on.

Sure, and Coca Cola started off as cold medicine. Strategy used to be a software company that did web log analysis.

Things evolved into something entirely different sometimes. Bitcoin has already changed a lot since it started, and can change a lot more. (And it's actually none of those things you mentioned anymore, really, except for "borderless").

If governments forced people to use things like Wrapped Bitcoin tokens on altcoin blockchains, it's no longer bitcoin, and these altcoin blockchains and wrapped tokens are truly centralized so that governments can do their jobs well and easy. Fortunately, these chains and tokens are not actual bitcoins, what happen with them is not responsibility of Bitcoin.

The US government determines who to send to jail who uses the word, "Bitcoin" and the BTC symbol to describe their product. Therefore if the US Congress passed a law that dubbed a certain codebase was the only thing that could be called, "Bitcoin", then it would be called Bitcoin and nothing else legally could be. Every broker, app, financial institution, Michael Saylor, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, all of the ETFs, and realistically almost every single holder of BTC would switch to the fork that was legal and wouldn't dare touch a fork that was declared illegal.

Yes, nothing will physically stop people from protesting what the US government did, and they could use the old fork, but they would be irrelevant, money-wise.

[PepeLapiu]

In the end, the Bitcoin that's made way less popular remained as it is, uncontrolled, decentralized, borderless, seizure-proof, censorship-resistant, and so on.

Sure, and Coca Cola started off as cold medicine. Strategy used to be a software company that did web log analysis.

Things evolved into something entirely different sometimes. Bitcoin has already changed a lot since it started, and can change a lot more. (And it's actually none of those things you mentioned anymore, really, except for "borderless").

That is some serious shitcoinery slop you are spewing out right here.

There are powerful entities in the world who control politics and money. They are the money printers, they use this freshly printed money to keep the population poor and enslaved, finance wars, and increasing surveillance and socialism.

We have a money problem.  Bitcoin solves that. Bitcoin doesn't need to fix some retarded forever dickbutt.jpeg hosting problem.

Those in power who control the money printer would only be too happy to sabotage bitcoin and turn it into a child porn hosting network. Bitcoin is their enemy, bitcoin is not the enemy of some jpeg mafia.

You are doing the work of the elite by defending those "use cases".

[mcdouglasx]

snip

Bitcoin is open source; you can't control the software. It's an impossible task. Suppose the United States makes paperweights called Bitcoin, what's the difference? Would they control Bitcoin because of that? It's absurd. From the moment you fork the Bitcoin code, it ceases to be the original, and the US will never have the power to confiscate all the unguarded private keys. You're confusing the ability to control companies on its own soil with the ability to control something that doesn't have an entity. Or tell me, where are Bitcoin's offices so their agents can go knocking on the door?

Your arguments fall apart because you're confusing value with controlling the essence of the protocol. It's like saying that the value of gold is gold itself. The value of things is only a derivative of something else; the value of things can change over time, but you can never control what produced that value. It's also like saying that because the United States changed the name of gold, the metal itself changed its composition. And no, the US doesn't own the majority of Bitcoin. What they have means nothing, it's a drop of water in the ocean compared to the US vs the rest of the world.

They can't control the bitcoins held by users on exchanges unless they suddenly become a dictatorship and prevent exchanges from safely moving their assets to another country.

I'll say it again: in an extreme case, they can control ETFs through legislation, and they can control companies within their borders. Not all of these companies are American, and those that are don't necessarily have to stay there as if there were no other place in the world to stand. As soon as laws are passed that harm these companies, they'll flee the country, I assure you.