Sure... right after they outlaw owning 10 homes
Also what does "outlawing" bitcoin even mean. It's not a US based entity.
Also what does "outlawing" bitcoin even mean. It's not a US based entity.
It's easy to scoff at the idea of censoring bitcoin, but I'd love to hear someone defend the censorship-resistance of bitcoin, because I really don't see it.
It's trivial to make it illegal to operate a full node, and it's not like the government doesn't have the dragnet surveillance infrastructure to enforce it. You can't transfer bitcoin without access to the network (ie: you can't physically transfer bitcoin between two untrusting parties) and if the government bars exchanges from operating legally, how do you actually trade bitcoin for anything?
If you think this sounds draconian and far-fetched, you might be right, but remember: the government once tried to ban gold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 ).
but.... I really don't think either of those things is true. You should talk to people in the state dept or DoD and pay less attention to FED/Treasury. The current USD global reserve status quo isn't always great for the US gov.
Right, making something illegal is trivial. But how would you effectively stop someone from doing it? You can tunnel the traffic as with anything. They'd have to go full China to stop it.
And you don't need to run a full node if you're willing to trust a consensus of miners about the current state. (You can see how much work a block (probably) took to mine, so if someone shows you a block with the wrong proof-of-work target you know they're lying, meaning that even this forgery to show to an offline user is 51%-attack level hard.)
> if the government bars exchanges from operating legally, how do you actually trade bitcoin for anything?
Have you ever travelled and bought currency privately? Either just because you ran out, or the listed exchange rate is fixed. You meet someone in a bar and hand them an envelope of cash.
If you used something like the OpenDime offline wallet then it would be easier. They'd transfer to the offline wallet which you would verify, and then you'd do a regular handover of physical items, cash for hardware wallet.
Sure, it's a bit shady, and maybe horribly illegal, but if you were trying to get out of the country with your family's wealth all of a sudden it'd seem pretty easy compared to the alternatives.
The exchanges don't hold the assets. At least not of the guys that know what they're doing.
>If they coordinate it across the globe
In all 195 countries? Doubtful.
Even if by some miracle this could be pulled off, there are now decentralized exchanges.
Pretty much the only thing that would make any dent is getting visa & mastercard to shut down what they can...except they're both making moves in favour of Bitcoin currently
All legitimate Bitcoin trading exchanges have assets. Some countries have more flexibility to shut down companies than the US. During the golden era, governments weren’t sure what to do with Bitcoin so companies like mtgox were left alone but those days are gone. Especially with the threat of getting arrested for money laundering, it makes the risk much higher and popularity would plummet.
They could shut down Bitcoin trading in the Western countries and then put financial sanctions on any countries that allow Bitcoin trading. It would drive Bitcoin trading underground but with no legitimate and easy way of converting your Bitcoin to fiat currency, it would die quickly.
Once the price of Bitcoin drops below the price of the cost to mine it in terms of electricity, it would probably stop getting mined by many parts of the world. It also might drive Bitcoin into the hands of China but I think what would happen is that the governments would come up with some other form of cryptocurrency that they could control.