| You think they're going to shutdown the Internet to kill Bitcoin? Even if they did, once the Internet was back up and running what would stop the Bitcoin network from continuing where it left off? There's thousands of people around the world running their own Bitcoin nodes, many also protected behind Tor [1]. In what realistic way could governments shut it down globally? They could go for centralised custodial businesses like the exchanges, but that doesn't stop the Bitcoin network itself. Also there are decentralised exchanges like Bisq that can't be shutdown. "Yes (you will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography.), but we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years. Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own."
— Satoshi Nakamoto "A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990’s. I hope it’s obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we’re trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system."
— Satoshi Nakamoto 1. https://bitnodes.io/dashboard/ |