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Comment by jiggywiggy | Hacker News Reader

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jiggywiggy

If you think the government doesnt have the power to knock on your door and take away your bitcoin you are delusional.

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Wrench-attacking one person is easy. Wrench attacking 10% of your population is impossible.

In CS terms - Digital Central Bank money is O(1) to control. Bitcoin is O(n2).

> Wrench attacking 10% of your population is impossible.

With digital goods/currencies, you just need to compromise their software. It's actually a lot easier, logistically, to confiscate bitcoin from 10% of your population than to confiscate cash from the same. How hard and for how long do you think Apple/Microsoft/Google could resist a legal mandate to block/confiscate bitcoin passing through the computer/phone OS that you use?

> How hard and for how long do you think Apple/Microsoft/Google could resist a legal mandate to block/confiscate bitcoin passing through the computer/phone OS that you use?

FB used a fun technique to get into the Vietnamese market. They got enough users onboarded that the government had no choice but to let people use their apps or face a huge amount of backlash for denying people access.

It’s not though and nobody needs a wrench. Pretty easy to prevent any institution to exchange crypto for dollars and then you have a black market only currency with a plummeting value and usage which is criminal.

Actually it's really easy. It works in exactly the same way we did it with cash. You wrench attack and punish those that don't comply and the rest will comply willingly. Of course if 10% of people decide they don't care about the law anymore you have a problem anyways but we're not there.

Peasant: You can’t take our Bitcoins!

King: That’s a nice house you have. Give 1000 Francs per year to our treasury OR ELSE.

Peasant: Anyone got Francs? I’ll trade you these shiny Bitcoin.

If that would be needed it would be taken into control

With modern ZK tech, the day is quickly approaching where the government won’t even know you have bitcoin in the first place

I look forward to see social implications of ZK tech. It will be different society, building trust will be different. ( trust between yourself, your family, your government ).

Im OOTL, what is ZK tech?

Zero Knowledge, a variety of technologies which leverage cryptographic proofs that someone knows something is true, without revealing the knowledge to the verifier. This is useful for privacy, rolling a number of transactions into one bundle, and many other use cases.

That's funny, same is true with any bank account... the California Franchise Tax Board recently emptied one of my bank accounts without any warning. They thought I owed them taxes, which I did not. I'll be getting a refund some day...

I feel a lot safer with bitcoin in a wallet than I do with my bank account.

I wouldn't advise making potentially catastrophic decisions based on a feeling.

I've held bitcoin in wallets for many years and the government has yet to take them (beyond the taxes I've paid). I'm not saying that it can't or won't happen, but so far, my personal experience is strongly in favor of the bitcoin wallet.

They didn't need to put a gun to my head or make any sort of threats to empty my bank account. I suspect they'd need to do that with my bitcoin wallet.

Not your keys, not your coins.

Sure... the thing is by protecting your savings from an imaginary threat you're actually incurring a much higher risk of losing them. I'm just informing you that this is a stupid decision, but whatever do what "feels safer" and see how things turn out.

What part of the FTB emptying my bank account without even telling me or asking permission was imaginary?

All of it.

Ok, that's rude and clearly diminishes this conversation.

They already lost them (at least for now, it'll take weeks, months, maybe years) by trusting those you have told them to trust.

How tone deaf can one be?

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