The government could destroy Bitcoin (debunked)

[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. 

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[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.