[QAPereo]

To be fair, the SEC losing their patience with ICOs and turning on the whole sector would do it.

Edit To replies: It does if the SEC decides the concept of cryptocurrency is one which fundamentally exists to bypass regulations for the purpose of fraud. I’d disagree, you’d disagree, but only their agreement matters.

[jacquesm]

What does that have to do with bitcoin?

[Alex3917]

The current price of Bitcoin is mostly driven by the fraud taking place within the Ethereum ecosystem. Let's see where the price is after a few rounds of SEC crackdowns.

[chrisco255]

It would suffer a temporary drop then inevitably climb back up again. Bitcoin is global at this point. No one jurisdiction is going to shut it down.

[kccqzy]

Here’s a thought experiment. Yes Bitcoin is global but like all other distributed systems, the CAP theorem applies. When there is a network partition, you can only choose between consistency and availability. Now what if tomorrow the Chinese government decided to totally block Bitcoin traffic, just like they block Facebook, Twitter, NYT, Tor and VPNs? Losing either consistency or availability would be a heavy blow. It’s either going to stop working at all, or fork into a Chinese and non-Chinese version. I don’t see how either of them inspires confidence.

[Xophmeister]

I think it would be pretty difficult to block a P2P network at that layer of the stack to effectively partition the network. The list of peers is dynamic, so it would always be one step ahead of The Great Firewall.

[colejohnson66]

Packet Inspection?

[chrisco255]

It wouldn't matter at all. It would inconvenience Chinese holders of Bitcoin. You can't really block Bitcoin traffic. There's ways around firewalls. For example, I could embed a bitcoin address into a JPG image, certain XY positions would contain the bits which could be decoded into an address or key. That could then be routed to the Bitcoin network once outside of China. As long as you can send bits, you can send bitcoin.

[QAPereo]

You can arrest people and seize their assets.

[QAPereo]

There is nothing inevitable about it, but even if it were, the SEC has a long arm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-arm_jurisdiction

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgorgement

http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/04/argument-preview-long-arm-...

[VarFarYonder]

> Bitcoin is global at this point. No one jurisdiction is going to shut it down.

Especially as countries like Japan are embracing cryptocurrencies. That must make other countries wonder whether trying to attack cryptocurrencies will end up leaving them at a competitive disadvantage.

[omarchowdhury]

That's kind of an absurd claim to make. What exactly is your reasoning?

[Alex3917]

The price is 5x since after the ETH hype started a few months ago. Literally just look at the price history.

[omarchowdhury]

Correlation does not imply causation. Did I really have to tell someone on HN this?

[QAPereo]

You asked for reasoning, not evidence, so it might be helpful not to move those goalposts.

[tlrobinson]

Or could the frothy ICO market be due to successful cryptocurrency investors throwing money at anything to try to "diversify" their portfolios?

[kobeya]

> To be fair, the SEC losing their patience with ICOs and turning on the whole sector would do it.

They are already doing just that in the last couple of months, and bitcoin remains unaffected.

[QAPereo]

The SEC have only cracked down a handful of obvious scams from the pool of obvious scams. That’s worlds away from a global crackdown on the entire space, or worse, congressional action. Whether or not you agree with said action, I’m sure you can think of reasons, stated or otherwise, that such action might Be taken.

[kobeya]

No they’ve been calling just about everyone operating in their jurisdiction. Many ‘reputable’ ICOs have halted their fundraising as a result of phone calls their lawyers received from the SEC. They’ve only filed suits agains the obvious scams so far, but that’s just a matter of priorities and the fact that they try to be soft handed with non-scams.

[zaroth]

I believe it and a very good point. But do you have a source?

[kobeya]

Not a quotable one no, although some like colony.io have blog posts explaining why they are changing the terms or schedule of their ICO. Others have refunded their ICO. But it is Back channel sources that tell me the others have received calls too (I work in this industry).

[QAPereo]

In that case, I doubly appreciate you sharing the info, it does fit with how the SEC likes to operate too.

[mrb]

«would do it»

The SEC only has jurisdiction in the US. I don't see how this would impact Bitcoin's use in the rest of the world. Bitcoin is a phenomenon that's worldwide.

[tylersmith]

That has no effect on Bitcoin.