The government could destroy Bitcoin (debunked)

[RaheemRaj]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

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[cozk]

yeah sure.

Next !

[DannyHamilton]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

That's not how open markets work.

Many people wouldn't sell their bitcoins for such a low price.  As the government bought up the available bitcoins, the price for the remaining ones would continue to rise (due to the surge in demand with limted supply).  The increasing exchange rate would cause many other people to buy bitcoins hoping to make money on the rising exchange rate.  This would drive the exchange rate even higher.  It would quickly become prohibitively expensive for the government to buy all the bitcoins in existence (especially since 25 more bitcoins are being created every 10 minutes.

Meanwhile all the people holding bitcoins would make a lot of money on the huge investment bubble that would be triggered.  Eventually the bubble would pop, and the price would come crashing back down.  All those that made large amounts of money would have the opportunity to buy even more bitcoins at the new extremely low price.

[Thekool1s]

hmmm never thought of this. But government will sell to whom??? They will become even more expensive because government can only hold them and the demand for btc is increasing it will only increase the price of btc not reduce it

[bornil267645]

Thats the speculation running around since the beginning...tell me something new...

[aboo]

Their purchases would drive the price up increasing speculative interest and driving more people to purchase it.

If they managed to acquire all the Bitcoin investors would rally behind alts.

[Tootoo4]

If the government were to buy them it still wouldn't destroy them...There are ways of government disrupting cryptocurrencies but buying them certainly isn't one of them.

[RaheemRaj]

hmmm never thought of this. But government will sell to whom??? They will become even more expensive because government can only hold them and the demand for btc is increasing it will only increase the price of btc not reduce it

They wouldn't sell them their purpose is to destroy Bitcoin because it's a threat it doesn't have to be the government either it could be a bank they want fiat money and not Bitcoin bitcoin is a threat and I think the majority of the attacks came from banks in the early days of Bitcoin.


AND if it did drive up the price first of all like you said it would come crashing down if this was done in a small amount of space people might be afraid of investing in Bitcoin....
thus effectively killing it.
 I'm just raising a concern I've had and would love to see Bitcoin succeed but I should imagine the banks and te government have enough money or resources to require a lot of the Bitcoin money either from seizing or buying a large amount of Bitcoin.



The government have intelligence behind them and some of the best hackers in the world and I think they would be able to gain access to the majority of the exchangers and could compromise the Bitcoin stored in them or they could simply take legal action against them

[DannyHamilton]

hmmm never thought of this. But government will sell to whom??? They will become even more expensive because government can only hold them and the demand for btc is increasing it will only increase the price of btc not reduce it

They wouldn't sell them their purpose is to destroy Bitcoin because it's a threat it doesn't have to be the government either it could be a bank they want fiat money and not Bitcoin bitcoin is a threat and I think the majority of the attacks came from banks in the early days of Bitcoin.


AND if it did drive up the price first of all like you said it would come crashing down if this was done in a small amount of space people might be afraid of investing in Bitcoin....thus effectively killing it. I'm just raising a concern I've had and would love to see Bitcoin succeed but I should imagine the banks and te government have enough money or resources to require a lot of the Bitcoin money either from seizing or buying a large amount of Bitcoin.

Try saying the same thing using the word "gold" in place of the word "bitcoin" and maybe you'll see how silly it sounds:

If the government really wanted to fuck gold they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the gold in existence right now and gold would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 312,500 tons in existence right now thats like a few trillion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked gold would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

[Razick]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

You have no idea how the Bitcoin market works. According to Wikipedia:

In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded by consumers (at current price) will equal the quantity supplied by producers (at current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity.

The four basic laws of supply and demand are:[1]:37

If demand increases (demand curve shifts to the right) and supply remains unchanged, a shortage occurs, leading to a higher equilibrium price.
If demand decreases (demand curve shifts to the left) supply remains unchanged, a surplus occurs, leading to a lower equilibrium price.
If demand remains unchanged and supply increases (supply curve shifts to the right), a surplus occurs, leading to a lower equilibrium price.
If demand remains unchanged and supply decreases (supply curve shifts to the left), a shortage occurs, leading to a higher equilibrium price.

Even if the price didn't skyrocket as a result, which would only increase interest in future cryptocurrencies, they couldn't make anyone sell. As has been mentioned, even one Bitcoin is divisible enough to serve as a money supply.

[ChuckBuck]

But how would the government buy each and everyone's coins, if the owners won't sell it to them?  I'm sure there's quite a bit of whales and early adopters, that will just sit on their stash until mass adoption occurs.

With all those huge multimillion dollar mining farms you see around the globe...it would take an exorbitant amount to purchase these coins from them.  And by government, I'm guessing you mean US Government?  How would they pry these Bitcoins from the likes of Bitfury, KNC, AsicMiner's, and all those megafarms located outside the US?

Just don't see how any one government can take down Bitcoin, would need to be a coordinated global effort.

[Jordan23]

Wow you thought of something no one here has ever thought of, well except nearly everyone here. You don't understand markets. Go away troll.

[BitCoinDream]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

No. I'll piss off your government's plan to destroy Bitcoin. I wont sell my 2 Satoshi for whatever price offered

[franky1]

not all of bitcoins are on exchanges. so goodluck anyone trying to destroy them all, the best that they can do is make bitcoin more rare and also worth alot more.

using latest data of just the other day. 10k coin moved the price by $200 so imagine buying just 100k ($2k price rise). imagine if they managed to buy 1mill coin ($20k price rise) and 13mill coin.. well thats over quarter of a million dollar per coin.

so let government spend billions of fiat to help bitcoins price rise.

[RaheemRaj]

Maybe I don't understand markets and I'm not the most smartest person here and thats why I wanted to bring my concern up I presented my idea which could potentially harm Bitcoin and I've had some real good answers and thank you all for that but for the ones that didn't contribute at all...then no thanks to you for helping me understand.

thank you dannyhamiltion and franky1 you gave the best arguments which convinced me I was making a stupid assumption that this was possible.

[wenben]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

They can only destroy this version of bitcoin and blockchain.

The technology and protocol are open source, developers can start another identical coin with new blockchain. Not to mention there are many other altcoins waiting to be the "main coin".

[Ron~Popeil]

Free markets are more elastic than brittle government manipulated markets. There is a sweet spot where supply meets demand and it will inevitably snap back to that spot eventually. Short term manipulation is always possible but long term is a lot more difficult. My over simplified .02 btc.   

[conspirosphere.tk]

Free markets are more elastic than brittle government manipulated markets.

more than government it's the banksters: they have quite some trick of the trade developed in the last centuries. I guess a mix of pumps&dumps with some btc ETF /derivatives to cap the price as much as they like gold-style would allow them quite some degree of freedom to do what they please with btc -not even counting the leverage they got on 'regulators' and the pwning of fiat conversion gateways.

[Meuh6879]

gov don't have money to pay asic park.
it have debt ...
only bank can generate money from air ...

[oceans]

If they were really going to do this and had the ability to do so they would have done it by now, bitcoin has been around for a few years now giving all governments that time to make a plan and put it into action. As of yet I have not seen any plan take place and I am pretty sure with most Countires their minds are set on something else right now.

[abercrombie]

The government already holds the largest Bitcoin wallet from the SR seizure.

They can already crash the market if they sold all their holdings on the open exchanges. 

[itsAj]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

That's not how open markets work.

Many people wouldn't sell their bitcoins for such a low price.  As the government bought up the available bitcoins, the price for the remaining ones would continue to rise (due to the surge in demand with limted supply).  The increasing exchange rate would cause many other people to buy bitcoins hoping to make money on the rising exchange rate.  This would drive the exchange rate even higher.  It would quickly become prohibitively expensive for the government to buy all the bitcoins in existence (especially since 25 more bitcoins are being created every 10 minutes.

Meanwhile all the people holding bitcoins would make a lot of money on the huge investment bubble that would be triggered.  Eventually the bubble would pop, and the price would come crashing back down.  All those that made large amounts of money would have the opportunity to buy even more bitcoins at the new extremely low price.

I would disagree that this would necessarily create a bubble. The added demand would be from the government buying up the bitcoin only and would not be demand that the market would not otherwise see (apart from the government). So when the government were to stop buying the additional coins the price would simply stop rising.

I do agree with you that this would not at all do anything that would hurt/destroy bitcoin. All it would do is cost the government a lot of money. It would actually likely make bitcoin more secure because the block rewards would then be worth that much more giving miners a more incentive to mine, which would increase the hashrate, which would make the network more secure.

[Wealthy]

Their purchases would drive the price up increasing speculative interest and driving more people to purchase it.

If they managed to acquire all the Bitcoin investors would rally behind alts.

yes absolutely this process quite unbeatable,the whole internet must go down in order for bitcoin to be destroyed

[catlinhappy]

hmmm never thought of this. But government will sell to whom??? They will become even more expensive because government can only hold them and the demand for btc is increasing it will only increase the price of btc not reduce it

Certainly, they are rather building its potentials and value if they carry out these actions .

[Cream]

If govt wanted to fuck btc, they still couldn't do it at their very best...only taxing people so its value will somewhat go down...nothing drastic.

[gtraah]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

That's not how open markets work.

Many people wouldn't sell their bitcoins for such a low price.  As the government bought up the available bitcoins, the price for the remaining ones would continue to rise (due to the surge in demand with limted supply).  The increasing exchange rate would cause many other people to buy bitcoins hoping to make money on the rising exchange rate.  This would drive the exchange rate even higher.  It would quickly become prohibitively expensive for the government to buy all the bitcoins in existence (especially since 25 more bitcoins are being created every 10 minutes.

Meanwhile all the people holding bitcoins would make a lot of money on the huge investment bubble that would be triggered.  Eventually the bubble would pop, and the price would come crashing back down.  All those that made large amounts of money would have the opportunity to buy even more bitcoins at the new extremely low price.

This and not only this, As below stated...       Too many tin hat theories all over the place getting old.

[gtraah]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless. they see it has a threat so this is going to happen if we like it or not. They have a plan and this is probably it. theres only 13 million in existence right now thats like a few billion dollars right? the government can afford that. All they would have to do is buy anonymously and offer 10% more than the current price peoples greed would take over and it would then be fucked Bitcoin would become worthless in less than a week.

unless we have a way of protecting this? did not think so.

That's not how open markets work.

Many people wouldn't sell their bitcoins for such a low price.  As the government bought up the available bitcoins, the price for the remaining ones would continue to rise (due to the surge in demand with limted supply).  The increasing exchange rate would cause many other people to buy bitcoins hoping to make money on the rising exchange rate.  This would drive the exchange rate even higher.  It would quickly become prohibitively expensive for the government to buy all the bitcoins in existence (especially since 25 more bitcoins are being created every 10 minutes.

Meanwhile all the people holding bitcoins would make a lot of money on the huge investment bubble that would be triggered.  Eventually the bubble would pop, and the price would come crashing back down.  All those that made large amounts of money would have the opportunity to buy even more bitcoins at the new extremely low price.

I would disagree that this would necessarily create a bubble. The added demand would be from the government buying up the bitcoin only and would not be demand that the market would not otherwise see (apart from the government). So when the government were to stop buying the additional coins the price would simply stop rising.

I do agree with you that this would not at all do anything that would hurt/destroy bitcoin. All it would do is cost the government a lot of money. It would actually likely make bitcoin more secure because the block rewards would then be worth that much more giving miners a more incentive to mine, which would increase the hashrate, which would make the network more secure.

Wait a minute, how do you know the added demand would be from the government?  The price will rise further UP UPUPUPUPUP, more people will jump on the BTC boat to buy not only the government, If the government were to put buy orders in this does not mean they will get all the buy orders, and if they put buy orders for 10% higher this will start a rising buy price which will gradually increase and the 10% will have to increase and be 10% of the new base buy price and will just repeat again rising, this will be a extremely slow process which will end up driving Crazy public interest which will attract 10000s of brand new people to study Bitcoin when they realize how it works we will have a whole new world of adoption, most likely hedge funds will jump in, and the government will have to work even HARDER to buy it all, eventually they will get to a dead lock as there are MILLIONS of BTC in Cold storage with never even the thought of being sold. The amount the governments bought, will mean there isn't 13Mill out there anymore and there are heaps less, meaning LESS SALE orders and MORE buy orders. And if it were to get to that stage, it would have TAKE YEARS and there would be much less sale orders than buy orders. Then there will be people competing with the government trying to get their hands on the VERY rare BTC and guess what? prices will be staggering and only rising, and even after that, they still will not be able to buy it all  dont forget as I said there are 10000s of people out there holding onto there BTC with dear life.  Mehhh this will be a stupid tactic to say the least

[V8x8d]

Bitcoin is irrelevant to the masses being difficult to obtain and spend and therefore no threat to Governments. I suspect this will only change when the protocol behind Bitcoin enables businesses to launch cryptoshare IPO's that payout dividends in BTC with minimal hassle. Imagine you are a business that wants to list on the stock exchange however the listing requirements are too expensive, what else is available to you?

As an investor shares could be traded peer to peer without a third party taking fees and you would have physical possession of the shares (unlike the current system were the bank doesn't buy the shares and merely sends you a statement of the value). This would prevent banks selling 1000+ times more shares than they possess. As individuals would possess their own shares (and not just statements) they could vote via voting options built into the protocol. This would mean that the directors of the company would be answerable to a greater number of people. The powers that be know the importance of separating people from ownership (as it seizes control) and that's why it is a threat.

As businesses would need to hold BTC to payout to shareholders this would create demand and acceptance. Cue Government crackdown.

[MoonRise]

No it's not as easy to destroy and take down the whole bitcoin at once,they have to either seize the bitcoin from every single person,even bitpennies or shut down the whole internet.

[alwinlinzee]

I don't think its achievable because a shift in that direction will only make the value of bitcoin to rise.

[EndlessStory]

Government will have to try a lot hard to destroy BTC. They can fluctuate the prices, even it can go down to as low as 100$/coin but they have their limits.

[barbarousrelic]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless.

This is complete nonsense.

No one can buy all the Bitcoin in existence at once, at any price. No one.
The government dumping millions into buying chunks of Bitcoin would make the remaining Bitcoin far more expensive, not worthless.

[RickyRickyyyy]

They would need to arrest every person ever using btc, delusional.

[Marlo Stanfield]

If the government wanted to destroy Bitcoin it could. There are a few different ways they could go about it. But so far there is very little government resistance to Bitcoin so there isn't much to worry about.

[Ayers]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless.

This is complete nonsense.

No one can buy all the Bitcoin in existence at once, at any price. No one.
The government dumping millions into buying chunks of Bitcoin would make the remaining Bitcoin far more expensive, not worthless.

even if someone could buy them all, this will only make bitcoin stronger, a pump basically

[Wooden Plate]

Its hard to kill bitcoin. Its also somewhat profitable for govt to kill it, to make underground transactions public and to gather more tax. Not sure what the govt is upto.

[itsAj]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless.

This is complete nonsense.

No one can buy all the Bitcoin in existence at once, at any price. No one.
The government dumping millions into buying chunks of Bitcoin would make the remaining Bitcoin far more expensive, not worthless.

I have seen this argument many times recently. It really baffles me why people would think that something would become worthless if no one was able to buy it.

[littlewizard]

They cannot buy all the coins at the normal price, i suspect even if they want to buy 50% of the total coins exist currently, the price may go to the sky (increase at least 10 times)

[wasserman99]

If the government really wanted to fuck Bitcoin they would only need to folk out a few million and buy out most of the Bitcoin in existence right now and Bitcoin would become worthless.

This is complete nonsense.

No one can buy all the Bitcoin in existence at once, at any price. No one.
The government dumping millions into buying chunks of Bitcoin would make the remaining Bitcoin far more expensive, not worthless.

even if someone could buy them all, this will only make bitcoin stronger, a pump basically

This is true. Also if the government was somehow able to buy up all 21 million BTC (once they are all mined) then there would be nothing that would stop anyone from making some other coin that is very similar to bitcoin that would actually replace the bitcoin that is now owned by the USG.

[MightyBTC]

The govt will try to make any decision which will promote growth of its economy or strenghten its own currency...so BTC might be the way

It all depends on viewpoint of economists.

[Microbit001]

There is no point on destroying bitcoin as there are more other alts standing on line to get the hit you destroy one thousand others would rise,its not about bitcoin anymore its about the technology

[Marlo Stanfield]

There is no point on destroying bitcoin as there are more other alts standing on line to get the hit you destroy one thousand others would rise,its not about bitcoin anymore its about the technology

It's easier to destroy every alt combined than it is to destroy Bitcoin.

The alts are nothing compared to the amount of hashing it takes to mount a successful attack on the Bitcoin network.

[Moneyunmaker]

The BTC whales are enough to counter attact a FIAT whale treat.