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Comment by dsyrk | Hacker News Reader

ok I’ll take your bait and it’s an easy answer the smart ones don’t. We aren’t even in the first battle of the coming war to wrestle currency back into private hands. My question for you would be why do you think governments even stand a chance? Try shutting down the internet, US SEC chairwoman admits will be very hard to stop without extreme technical measures. Please tell how are they going to stop cryptocurrency? With silly bans like Turkey’s? What a joke.

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You seem to vastly, vastly underestimate the scope and powers of governments, specifically the US government. The internet - the symbol of free speech and a free world long before Bitcoin claimed to be - was a military and academic project for robustly securing the US communication infrastructure in case of nuclear attack. It benefited the US. How does crypto benefit the US? By taking away its ability to regulate its own currency? Seems like a lose to me. And the government does not like to lose.

The internet would be terrifyingly easy to shut down. Point blank. For the truly technical and nerdy, maybe we could return to a Usenet situation but for the overwhelming majority of people (and it is the size of the user base that gives the internet (and supposedly crypto) its power - network effects) all it would take is shutting down ISPs, which historically are extremely compliant with legal action. Just try torrenting something and you’ll quickly realize how little your ISP cares about the “free and open internet.”

Also, I don’t see how Turkey’s ban is “silly” in anyway. Crypto is banned there. That will deter the vast majority of people seeking to use it. The ones who manage to weasel around using arcane technical methods will find themselves in an empty room - what’s the use of owning crypto if no one accepts it?

This is true: the internet could easily be shut down, at least in the US, by the federal government, and hopefully not anyone else. All they would have to do is go to each ASN, find the BGP instance, and physical shut that box off, or order ISPs do to it themself. The ISPs could run, but without talking to each other, there is effectively no "internet".

There are other things, like shutting off some exchange points/fiber optic network that would have a serious regional effect as well. It's all very possible to do.

You seem to vastly overestimate the power of your government and you are very naive to believe it will have the effect Turkey’s government wants. Turkish bazaars are neat places and the population has decades of experience dealing with an inflationary trash fiat currency, Bitcoin demand in Turkey will increase not decrease. Check back with me in 8 weeks.

> what’s the use of owning crypto if no one accepts it?

I mean, when your currency is being heavily devalued, putting your free cash into anything else is beneficial. The Turkish airbnb hosts I spoke with years ago had euro bank accounts, and immediately fx'ed into euro whenever they got paid. If bitcoin is too difficult to get then Turks will just go back to putting their money into euro.

Oh, and they can all still access bitcoin markets in a manner opaque to local government via a trl -> eur -> btc path, and if they need some local currency, via the reverse. Any Turks in Europe with contacts back in Turkey: you could probably make money facilitating this.

> I don’t see how Turkey’s ban is “silly” in anyway.

It's silly because it's unenforceable, and trying and failing to enforce unenforceable laws just makes you look weak. The storefront bitcoin brokers in Istanbul will have to shut down, but money is already digital and it's going to flee a sinking lira whether it's into crypto, foreign exchange, real estate, precious metals, art, or whatever.

If governments are so powerful, why would they ever feel the need to ban cryptocurrency? If they are not so powerful, how could they possibly succeed in banning them?

"hello sir it seems you are using a banned currency for doing business in these fine lands, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can...."

But unless it is globally everywhere, which it won’t. it will eventually fail. If you study the history of money, which I have, basically eventually the “better” money wins. This is the case for the last 5000+ years of human history across many civilizations. What we have is the emergency of “better” money. Fiat has huge advantages if a nation needs to wage war, among many other features, but those features have lost utility over what new cryptocurrency can offer. Governments will obviously fight back soon, but I believe will lose completely in the long run.

Perhaps, but "eventually in the long run" does not imply anything about Turkey succeeding or failing with this particular ban. The long run might be several centuries, in which a lot of things could happen that would make any of the current cryptocurrencies completely irrelevant.

Probably but it's rare in history people are so crazy about a slower, more expensive, less fluid, more static currency and call it progress...

That your savings' purchase power depends on Chinese electricity plant operating hours doesn't feel weird to you ? I prefer when it evolves slowly with the national debt :D

They would regulate the on and off ramps, obviously. What use is there for cryptocurrency that can’t be converted into USD? Some, currently, but I would bet that killing the off ramps would severely damage the viability of crypto.

Are you familiar with “Buried Treasure”?

https://www.coindesk.com/russias-darknet-criminals-have-a-no...

It will be impossible to regulate on and off globally. Yes banning mainstream access will drop demand and access to crypto currencies temporarily but long run the government currencies are in a losing battle. Improved scaling solutions, micropayments, and privacy upgrades are all coming soon. Bitcoin already processes more reliably and with greater transactions than Fedwire.

>It will be impossible to regulate on and off globally.

See, you seem to think what is required is a 100% shut off. If the US government could kill 70% of access within its borders tomorrow, the technology would not have a bright future.

>Bitcoin already processes more reliably and with greater transactions than Fedwire.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean seeing as it has no empirical content, but it's beside the point. You can't do shit with Bitcoin. USD is the reserve currency of the world. That's what matters right now, not what you consider to be technologically superior.

"All your crypto currencies are belong to us."

The government could roll over your tiny little hovel with tanks and jets, and you won't be able to do a thing about it.

That’s actually exactly the point. Tanks and jets are pretty useless to extract private keys. They were great and confiscating gold or nations or oil fields. Fiat currency is tightly linked to war. Your immediate reaction shows that. But your tanks and jets are garbage and your governments should stop spending resources on them, they won’t help in anyway trying to confiscate crypto currency.

My point was that there's nothing stopping the government (or anyone with guns really) from seizing your crypto assets. With fiat currency, it's a given circumstance. With crypto, it's a false selling point. Not to mention how laughable it is how much centralized crypto has become over the past decade.

The largest and most sophisticated holders of crypto assets would be using multi signature wallets with a protocol between multiple private and secure participants. How does a gun allow you to seize private keys? We are back to they can threaten to kill you? But there is a problem, if they do they lose the keys also. Guns and weapons are massively less effective against crypto assets in comparison to traditional assets. If one owns a factory and doesn’t pay taxes, those guns work very well in comparison.

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