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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

While the lawsuit was insane, it serves a good reminder that when Bitcoiners proudly proclaim that “governments have no power over them”, it’s not quite that simple in lots of ways.

If the governments of the world really started to believe their fiscal powers or national currencies were threatened by crypto, they have an extensive repertoire of tools to shut it down.

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You misunderstand the point people saying this make. They know governments can suppress their freedoms ultimately but since Bitcoin is an open and public system, the measures governments have to use to "kill" it force them to limit very fundamental freedoms (like freedom of speech to restrict the publishing of its source code, freedom to consume the energy citizens purchase and/or produce how they want, neutral access to Internet, etc.).

These kind of measures are political suicide in Western democracies, hence why politicians are seen as powerless against Bitcoin in these places, why they "let" this market grow and why they just setup ways to tax it as best as they can (at the borders between fiat and crypto).

In places where preserving such freedoms is not a burden for governments you already see bans flourish when it is convenient for the people in power... but even then, it just marginally stops the actual access to Bitcoin as a network participant (which is not limited to mining). It doesn't actually kills Bitcoin.

But everyone knows that if governments around the world decided to install massive censorship, invade the privacy of all their citizen, and magically all were in agreement to do so at the same time, Bitcoin wouldn't survive... if you think this is a possible scenario, is Bitcoin really the thing your should worry about?

These kind of measures are political suicide in Western democracies

CSAM has entered the chat. ("Why do you support child abuse, Senator?")

The fastest way to kill Bitcoin would be to use it to publish the torrent hashes of child porn. Since it is nearly impossible to erase information from the chain, this “taint” is forever. Any participant node processing the chain will be “distributing child pornography.”

That’s thoroughly illegal pretty much everywhere. Worse, it has a very powerful social stigma against it, which means you can’t even fight it in court.

It has already been done [1], the issue is that Bitcoin is not really made for large files storage, so you'd store hashes to a torrent as you suggested or you'd split parts of the illegal content that then would require some other protocol be recomposed... Historically that has not been enough to cause legal trouble for network participants, another reason is that this data can also be deleted from your own node once you are made aware of it. It's been an anti-Bitcoin talking point for many years, nobody really cares about it.

[1] https://blockchain.comsys.rwth-aachen.de/

The one fundamental that you have to understand about all government is that it is essentially a monopoly on violence. That monopoly enables things like taxation and broad social consensus and consent.

But, it's there, and if Bitcoin began to chip away at the core of any state you can expect it to be used.

Some people say that they can't take my gold. Some people say that they can't take my guns. But history says that they can and will and have.

Sure, but as I said, if they come after Bitcoin, it's a good time to worry about a lot of freedoms your governments are supposed to protect/afford you... it could be seen as the canary in the mine in that regard.

> But history says that they can and will and have.

Indeed. The ability and willingness to use violence is how most of governments seem to have gotten their start(s).

China banned bitcoin mining and now there's hardly any bitcoin mining in China. Maybe the legal wrangling would be more involved in western countries, but I can't see why enforcement would be any harder.

ISPs already block bittorrent and blacklist domains. They could easily block bitcoin, too.

> Maybe the legal wrangling would be more involved in western countries, but I can't see why enforcement would be any harder.

For the USA, computer source code is considered speech protected by the First Amendment, there's not much "legal wrangling" you can do around this when it has been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Short of drastically restricting this right/freedom... don't think the US population would welcome this "wrangling" with open arms.

You're also missing the point I've made, China's ban and various blocklists have not killed Bitcoin, it is still used a lot in China these days, it's simply illegal to mine it... for now, they've gone anti to pro Bitcoin many times over the years.

Actually, it's estimated that about a quarter of mining is in China. The largest players moved, the rest are lying low, so it's hard to get exact numbers.

I disagree. This lawsuit was against a single individual. There is nothing here that is threatening to crypto as a whole.

One thing that will make it harder to regulate as time goes on is that more people will be financially involved. From traditional finance getting involved through funds, to the masses getting involved, the ecosystem has grown far beyond the fringe, and will continue to do so with each successive hype cycle. Hell, many governments themselves have skin in the game now.

I’m curious how you think serious crippling legislation or enforcement would play out.

EDIT: additional thought… this case protects the industry, not the other way around. The industry was being attacked by a fraudulent individual, and the government defended the industry.

This is a misunderstanding. The lawsuit was not one suit: it wrapped up one against Wright, but several that he instigated against others. This involved dozens of individuals and companies, sued by him for various ends such as control over the word "Bitcoin", control over bitcoins themselves, and forcible changes to the protocols.

It was absolutely a threat to Bitcoin and other crypto.

Ultimately I can memorise 12 words representing my private key. And when the dictatorship finally ends, or I manage to flee, no government can ever freeze my money.

No tax man, no dictator, and no other thief can distinguish someone who memorised 12 words from someone who didn't.

Erm, no.

No government can freeze your bitcoins.

It's not money.

You might find it ever increasingly difficult to change bitcoins to real money if a country -- or multiple -- is against it. No such thing happens currently but there are constant efforts to bring KYC and so forth to exchanges.

> U.S. persons and entities – meaning anyone on American soil or any U.S. citizens abroad – are barred from transacting with the addresses or people added to the sanctions list.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/09/14/us-treasury-black...

Governments can shut down the core developers, or at least force them into hiding and force them to use nyms (like they should do, as cypherpunks anyways).

But stopping people from downloading and running some code… well on a closed eco system like Apple App Store, sure, you can pressure a company into compliance, but how are you going to stop determined people? Who download and share code over I2P and TOR?

It’s off course true that if it really came to this globally, the price of bitcoin would probably tumble and be more compatible to other currently more privacy forward coins like Monero .

Well, you make it a capital office, or less draconian... make it an offense punishable by 10 years of hard labour in a dire penal camp somewhere cold.

In addition you make it an offense to fail to disclose knowledge of the use of such capabilities, and you institute a system of rewards to positively encourage disclosure.

Perhaps you call it social credit.

You are correct that there are a few people who would defy such a system, a very few.

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