Politicians forking the block chain

[Bungeebones]

Someone posted that the Canadian government was launching digital currency and couldn't believe it ... so I googled  it and, yes, sure enough, there it was .. http://www.thestar.com/business/article/1159513--royal-canadian-mint-to-create-digital-currency

Now, this would be a typical way a government could react so I took a couple of quotes from the article to "amplify" what they are REALLY saying 

The difference with MintChip is it doesn’t plan to link to a person’s bank account or credit card information. And unlike BitCoin, a peer-to-peer hosted digital currency with a fluctuating value, MintChip is simply a new way to exchange Canadian dollars. Plus, it’s backed by the Canadian government.

should read "And unlike BitCoin, a peer-to-peer hosted digital currency with a fluctuating value and that has a self adjusting system to limit the production of new currency,  MintChip is simply a new way to exchange Canadian dollars. Plus, it’s backed by the Canadian government who can create as many of the currency it wants (just like it does now) and destroy the value of the currency

It’s still too early for specifics such as how the Mint will make a profit from this, how it will prevent hackers from stealing cash, whether the money is anyway traceable or who exactly will load a chip with money, but Brûlé said the response to the contest has been tremendous.

Ok, so they are proceeding to create money out of thin air and wonder "how the Mint will make a profit from this". Are they retarded? LOL

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[dancupid]

All a fork would do is create a less attractive version of Bitcoin. And once the fork happens how do they control it? How do they enforce it? And which government?
If every government created their own fork with their own rules then inevitably market forces would kick in and the best fork would win - and the best fork would be the one that was most independent of government control and we already have that.

[Realpra]

Short of going into peoples home, checking their client version and killing them if its wrong you can't control BTC.

Even in a dictatorship the regime would likely loose too much public support and waste too many resources attempting this.

51% attack:
Only lets you obstruct payments, NOT change the protocol as has been mentioned.
Even obstruction only works until everyone blocks all the IPs you have access to.

Tracking:
TOR and mixing services lets people communicate highly anonymously using BTC. See Silkroad for example.

Pushing it underground:
Just forces people to convert to cash in public while converting back to BTC at first underground exchange.

This would basically accelerate inflation into hyper inflation even while the country appeared to be using the state fiat.

At that point the government would HAVE to accept BTC for taxes or collapse.


BTC is THE ultimate weapon in non-lethal struggle against oppressive forces. Its going to be a wildfire at some point.

Whats a strike next making every cop and soldiers paycheck worthless?

[Spekulatius]

All a fork would do is create a less attractive version of Bitcoin. And once the fork happens how do they control it? How do they enforce it? And which government?
If every government created their own fork with their own rules then inevitably market forces would kick in and the best fork would win - and the best fork would be the one that was most independent of government control and we already have that.

The best fork would be the one with coins being accepted at most places for goods being bought most frequently by its users.

[Spekulatius]

Also, it has been mentioned a couple of times in this thred that it would be nearly impossible for any government to enforce usage of "statecoins" due to the abilities of the bitcoin code and network. That may be true for a small fraction of computer savvy users prepared to take risks. But it wont be feasible or appealing for the vast majority of mainstream users. Especially if the level of punishment for non compliance is raised to the level of punishment of, lets say money laundering, which in oppinion is a likely option.

[dancupid]

All a fork would do is create a less attractive version of Bitcoin. And once the fork happens how do they control it? How do they enforce it? And which government?
If every government created their own fork with their own rules then inevitably market forces would kick in and the best fork would win - and the best fork would be the one that was most independent of government control and we already have that.

The best fork would be the one with coins being accepted at most places for goods being bought most frequently by its users.

It would be the best fork for transactions, but it wouldn't necessarily be the best place to store your wealth. Gold has proven itself to be a better investment than dollars, but no one accepts gold for payment over the counter. Bitcoin has also proven itself to be a better investment than usd - but few places accept bitcoin.
Digital currencies are potentially interchangeable & transferable immediately.
It wouldn't matter which coin was accepted at the POS if you could exchange them in real time, which is easy with bitcoin like currencies - not so easy with fiat.

[Spekulatius]

All a fork would do is create a less attractive version of Bitcoin. And once the fork happens how do they control it? How do they enforce it? And which government?
If every government created their own fork with their own rules then inevitably market forces would kick in and the best fork would win - and the best fork would be the one that was most independent of government control and we already have that.

The best fork would be the one with coins being accepted at most places for goods being bought most frequently by its users.

It would be the best fork for transactions, but it wouldn't necessarily be the best place to store your wealth. Gold has proven itself to be a better investment than dollars, but no one accepts gold for payment over the counter. Bitcoin has also proven itself to be a better investment than usd - but few places accept bitcoin.
Digital currencies are potentially interchangeable & transferable immediately.
It wouldn't matter which coin was accepted at the POS if you could exchange them in real time, which is easy with bitcoin like currencies - not so easy with fiat.

Ok, let me specify:
The best fork would be the one containing coins with highest deflation per time interval.

[doobadoo]

Let's assume that Bitcoin catches on in the future and is used for all kinds of online payments by a huge number of legitimate businesses. What happens when a large political power, like the USA or EU, decides to regulate Bitcoin within their borders by regulating the rules used by clients?

Merchants and traders would have to adhere to the new rules, which I'm guessing would make Bitcoin fall out of favour or fork the block chain dividing the currency into regional networks. At this point we'd have lots of local currencies depending on regulations enforced by local government.

Anyone care to speculate on what would happen in this case, or why it won't/can't happen?

In the world you are talking about capital controls become almost impossible without draconian control of the internet itself.  Any 'island' that forks the chain and imposes unfavorable rules would see capital flee the chain and toward the more desirable chain.  See the Alt. Chains.  We have them already but there is de-minimus actual commerce going on i the alt chain world.   At least BTC has alpaca socks and drugs of all kinds being traded in BTC.  Not super compared to the 50 Trillion global GDP, but you gotta start somewehre.