[cwkoss]

I don't think governments 'dont care' but rather they are powerless to act effectively against Bitcoin. A ban would legitimize its utility to people skeptical of central banking. Because Satoshi is anonymous, there is no person or team to attack with legal or extralegal coercion. Only way to effectively take down bitcoin is to spend ~$1B building a huge mining operation with the purpose of launching a 51% attack, but even that could be mitigated.

[root_axis]

> A ban would legitimize its utility to people skeptical of central banking

i.e. a tiny irrelevant niche. I don't think banning bitcoin is a good idea, but a ban would be highly effective because nobody cares enough to risk fines or jail time over something they have no use for anyway.

[cwkoss]

A government can ban BTC<>fiat exchanges within their country fairly effectively. A ban on transacting on the Bitcoin network would be extremely difficult to enforce - VPN to a different country and they've lost you. Cyberpunks could still cross borders to cash out, or just purchase digital goods/services.

[root_axis]

> A ban on transacting on the Bitcoin network would be extremely difficult to enforce

1. I disagree. There are many effective methods a government could utilize to enforce a ban on transacting on the Bitcoin network. I could think of many technical examples, like the use of weaponized malware and 0-days to spy on the population and uncover users. Yes, some technical people could evade detection, but most people (including most programmers) would be caught up quickly due to opsec mistakes. There is also violence, which would be very effective unfortunately.

2. Even if they couldn't effectively ban transacting on the bitcoin network, the network itself is useless if the state makes it illegal for businesses to accept bitcoin.

3. Strong enforcement isn't necessary since the masses are already uninterested in blockchain tokens except as a vehicle for speculation. If the government made it illegal most people wouldn't think twice about it. Why bother?

[vinay_ys]

There's a simple way to ban bitcoin. Govts already regulate the banking and payment companies. Govt can compel them to not allow/facilitate exchange of bitcoin for fiat currency or vice-versa. Without banking/payments infra supporting such a conversion (only hand to hand cash transfer and exchange conversion by person to person transfers would be possible) which will be very small and network will be dead soon. But obviously govts didn't do that and hence bitcoin has so much usage and hence such high value.

[ShorsHammer]

I use a decentralised exchange to both buy and sell bitcoin, all traffic is routed p2p through the tor network. Binance one of the largest exchanges in the world is building their own DEx too.

Your hypothetical situation is blown out of the water here by existing technology that is clearly very hard to stop. How are governments going with banning torrents?

https://bisq.network/

[tomjen3]

A billion is not much once you get to Pentagon scale budgets and is probably cheaper than going to war with Iran.

[cwkoss]

I am really looking forward to seeing the declassified memos in 30 years where DoD war-gamed ways to take down the Bitcoin network.