This is an open question to anybody who can answer it.
My question is can a government stop a wallet from syncing with the blockchain if they decide to ban the currency completely and not allow anybody to use the wallet?
Will the wallet still function as normal and download the blockchain and will the user be able to send coins from the wallet to any other wallet in the world?
If they can do this then is there any way that this can be bypassed?
Please explain in detail if you could
You don't even need the blockchain in order to make transactions, you can manually Create and then Sign your own transactions with your key then broadcast the transactions hex to the network. Their are a ton of services that allow for this- Blockchain.info, Toshi, much more
https://blockchain.info/pushtxhttps://blockchain.info/decode-txhttps://toshi.io/docs/#relay-transaction Here is some good information:
http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoins-hard-way-using-raw-bitcoin.htmlDon't bother using Python's Random function as a source for address generation, it is not cryptographically strong.
(Remember that one user who used to post youtube videos of him brute forcing wallets?, he was probably just generating addresses using Pythons random till he found one with a balance greater than 0 that someone used)
Sure, it's possible if you are using some shit service which relies basically on someone's website, which can either be shut down, blocked, threatened, or forced into using 'requirements' in order to continue being 'allowed' to continue with its 'license' to do business... (A few sites / services, including exchanges, which too many people rely upon come to mind, that require or try to encourage you to use your 'realname' identity so they can later give it up to The Others, insert a few that come to mind here.)
But what alternatives are available to the failed (or at least, highly vulnerable) website-based model? Not many, admittedly, but the numbers are increasing. Decentralized, distributed p2p markets (as distributed software) of which I am personally aware, number right now at about 12, with some already being used and having development further refined and others being more in a testing and early development stage, though I'm completely sure that there are many more that I'm totally unaware of. An exchange alternative that is P2P (not the only one emerging, but here it is):
https://gist.github.com/drwasho/aa6ab79e92f2a876073ehttps://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaarSome possibility to help address parts of the overall _privacy_ problem (not a total solution or anything, just part of an exploration)
https://github.com/darkwallet/stealth.jsAlso, your IP address can be temporarily blocked or even banned - I'm not saying it will happen to you, I'm just saying it's possible. That doesn't mean you can't find a way to keep using bitcoin, I am just pointing out the obvious here.
p.s. Zerocash (_anonymity_ solution) is anticipated in Nov. or Dec. of 2014, hoping for the best when that release is out.
I am not certain if you are assuming my workflow suggests using an actual online wallet service to store your Bitcoin. I would never do such a thing as this is how I see others lose Bitcoin. What I was suggesting was using addresses that you generated offline, so never actually storing bitcoin on a machine that has a network card or drivers. You then create an unsigned transaction, then sign the transaction and paste the resulting hex into one of the sites or nodes that is available, so they broadcast your transaction to the network and it gets mined into a block. You are kind of right about the centralization of this method as their arent many places to post signed transactions anonymously, but nothing is stopping us from creating more places/APIs to do so, We got nearly 3 Identical API's that do push transactions this week. Also your right that your IP address can be blocked by services etc. It is easy to change IP, takes less than 5 minutes on-top of that, most have access to VPN/Proxies.
I remember reading about Zero Cash around January of last year, if this ends up having significant improvements over the Bitcoin Protocol, then Bitcoin might adapt any beneficial changes which are possible to implement or hardforks to implement. I don't see Bitcoin being taken over by another chain at this point, although it is certainly possible. I am pretty skeptical towards alternative coins in general, however I feel like its an example of Darwinism. The coins with the most innovation tend to survive and those that are nothing other than find replaces of "Bit" and an older Timestamp and string die off.
