People have been saying that ever since Bitcoin existed.

1) they don't see it as a threat (ex: Powell comparing it to gold rather than USD)

2) it's actually generating capital gains tax, jobs and revenue for the country (by creating business around it, etc)

3) US has auctioned off seized Bitcoin in the past, so it would be weird if they make something illegal after selling it themselves

Last, but not least, they can't ban it, they can ban the on/off ramps and cause short term disruption, but that wouldn't be sustainable in the long term, how do you stop millions of people from running some code on their computer (case in point, torrent is still very much alive)?

What makes you so confident that the US will ban bitcoin?

Also, if the US bans it then it's still valuable in much of the rest of the world. Bitcoin is antifragile in that regard.

The US won't ban Bitcoin, because USG philosophy isn't based on obtuse assaults like that. What will happen is ever more "money laundering" laws making it irrelevant for its original purpose. You can already see startups gearing up for this with things like "cross border payment compliance" and the like. Eventually if you want to convert to fiat, you'll be forced to have good provenance coins as determined by such gatekeeper companies, effectively undermining the whole point.

I don’t think anyone has seriously suggested such a thing would happen.

India, though, has floated such a ban.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-india-cryptocurrency-ban/...

And I don’t think it would be crazy to imagine China doing such a thing.

The stock drops.