How does the network protocol of bitcoin work?
Would governments be able to block it?
Can it be DDoS-ed?
Would governments be able to block it?
Can it be DDoS-ed?
The network transport would be trivial to change, or tunnel over (for example) SSH.
DoS also wouldn't be likely - if you have power to do that and can identify the connection, you're likely to have access to the physical address.
* Large energy use (lights, fans, pumps?)
* Very characteristic energy use (high, relatively invariant)
* Massive government budgets/surveillance to attack producers
* The need to move non negligible amounts of physical goods
* Moral campaigns by governments and social groups that it's bad for society
And yet the banned-market drug trade revenue is something on the order of 80 billion dollars per year or 220 million a year.
Bitcoin miners, currently:
* Large energy use (fans, HVAC, ASICs)
* Very characteristic energy use (high, relatively invariant)
* Mix of jurisdictions banning or allowing it.
* Only need about 2G / Shortwave radio worth of bandwidth to produce blocks
* Moral campaigns by governments and social groups that it's bad for society
Miner revenues need to be on the order of 10-50 million USD per year to sustain themselves. That's almost 10 times less than the failed (relatively global) "war on drugs"
Add to it that by defecting from national socialist forms of storing one's wealth, rather than just momentarily indulging in vice, one improves their position, I'd suspect your hypothetical ban won't work that well.
- regulate electricity consumption
- regulate bank accepting crypto-related money
- regulate exchanges listing Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies, etc
I'm myself in favor of cryptocurrencies (though, definitely not Bitcoin) AND for some level of regulation.
Deep packet inspect the network, raid current users and miners, then degrade the network for a few months for everyone. After that, random enforcement. Incentivise by letting police privately seize Bitcoin from the populace.
The idea that a protocol is immune to state violence because it can be sneaky is absurd.
I wonder if it's possible to just generate junk transactions and throw them at miners.
Junk transactions could stop a few nodes but all transactions are verified locally on nodes and won't be broadcast if they turn out to be junk.