[anukin]

How do you ban bitcoin? It’s not hosted or supported by American financial rails or any entity like swift which can be influenced by the USA in any meaningful way.

[wrs]

It's supported and influenced by the USA in the sense that if you can't ever turn it into dollars it becomes much less interesting.

[nuancebydefault]

Anything anyone wants to spend money on, can be converted into dollars. The currency has no tell in what it is used for.

[wrs]

The hypothetical was that the US "bans" bitcoin, presumably meaning it becomes illegal for US financial institutions (or US-dependent ones, which is nearly all of them) to convert bitcoin to dollars. Somebody else might give you dollars for bitcoin, but then it becomes their problem. As the saying goes, "you can't eat bitcoin".

[LorenPechtel]

It's not like the Dollar is the only worthwhile currency.

Convert it into Euros. Or Yen. Or Yuan.

[jauntywundrkind]

You do what the the US is doing right now to starve Cuba & end civilization there: you embargo/sanction anyone doing business there.

Like the Treasury/Dept of Commerce & others did with North Korean backed Tornado Cash. Some very quickly retrieved/not well researched (caveat reader) search links; https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0916 https://www.paulhastings.com/insights/crypto-policy-tracker/...

[nathan_compton]

You could make it prohibitively problematic to use for most things.