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Comment by aub3bhat | Hacker News Reader

    It's also possible that the government may declare some bills invalid (what happened in India with larger bills). Also, government could inflate away your wealth by printing more currency.

At end of the day governments control both the network via (ISPs & Networking equipment) and processors (Try producing an 8080 in your backyard.).

You make mistake of assuming that countries won't put up a global firewall that makes bitcoin/ether network impossible to operate. If China can filter traffic at internet scale, crippling Bitcoin network even if say EU/US/China are on board is trivial.

Currencies are backed by the only thing that matters, its will/trust of the people. And no amount of crypto changes that. Unless of course you have some magical way of baking silicon on your own into processors and other chips used in computers and networking equipment in your backyard.

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Governments are not a conscious entity that is separate from society. They are institutions run by a collection parties with numerous competing and aligning interests, and with extensive stakes in society at large. They're not going to do something as massively destructive to society at large as ban encryption and prohibit all microprocessors lacking a back door.

HN/BitcoinTalk/etc, suffer from extreme (pro-crypto) filter bubble. The average man/woman on the street ("society") could care less about Bitcoin/Ether. Just look at the whole Net Neutrality debate.

Bitcoin/Ether barely register in terms of the total economic activity (75 Billion $). With significant fraction unusable. They will either be tamed or destroyed.

In fact another way of looking at cryptocurrencies is as a revolt against the Visa/MasterCard duo-poly & regulations that has made digital transactions too difficult. The moment digital transactions become cheaper/more-efficient, the allure of crypto-currencies will disappear.

It's not Bitcoin/Ether that the average person on the street cares about. It's the collateral damage that will be done if broad categories of technology are banned or have their security completely compromised. That's the only way to stop a purely informational technology.

As for the allure of cryptocurrency, only time will tell. I predict they will continue to grow in prominence.

> The moment digital transactions become cheaper/more-efficient, the allure of crypto-currencies will disappear.

Except for drugs, contraband, money laundering, and evading capital controls. Which, from day one, has been the entire actual value of these things and remains so.

That's a reasonably big business to be sure, but it will always remain a niche element and always be under fire, for obvious reasons.

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