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Comment by boc | Hacker News Reader

That scenario makes no sense in the real world because the US government would just regulate/ban it before it got to that point. Once BTC even starts to threaten the sovereignty and power of the USD, it's game over for Bitcoin and the laissez-faire environment that helped it grow.

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At that time it will be impossible to ban because a large percentage of the US population will be exposed to it. If in spite of that they do decide to ban it there is not much they can do except ban the exchanges. The Bitcoin network is impossible to ban without heavily censoring the internet. Also what the US is going to do about the other countries of the world, invade them in order to ban the BTC?

Banning the exchanges is about all it would take. Besides, the current chorus is that large companies moving a share of their cash holdings into Bitcoin will drive the price way up. If the government bans Bitcoin then that's not going to happen.

Most probably a US ban will crash the price, but it will recover in time. Also it will establish a black market in the US which is the worst possible scenario for the authorities as they would have absolutely no control over it.

There already is a black market in for Bitcoin in the United States, that's basically all Bitcoin is used for these days aside from speculation. The fact that it would become a black market for Bitcoin itself doesn't change much. Almost all Bitcoin purchases these days are done through exchanges and held on exchanges, managing Bitcoin wallets is enough of a technical challenge that it will never be in any way widespread without the support of exchanges.

No, they'd have to accept that world is different now, and start amassing bitcoin.

The fact that it can't be banned is one of the main selling points.

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