What will happen to bitcoin if the government just decides one day to make it illegal like in China

submitted by yabbit from self.bitcoin

India and the USA are considering it too and I think Russians are forbidden from using crypto exchanges. At least with fiat currency you don't have to worry about your currency getting banned.

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[–]SoCo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Your bank account can get frozen at any time with just a few weak accusations and you have little recourse. That's a currency with built in features for instant banning.

Your Bitcoin, on the other hand, cannot be taken, hacked, forfeited, or frozen; it is permission-less and decentralized.

A government could only hope to ban buying, selling, or exchanging Bitcoin with fiat currencies. Making a legal justification for that would be tough at this point.

Of course you could always hand over your Bitcoin, by allowing the government to seize a device with your unencrypted private keys, not properly protecting your private keys and getting your device hacked, or being compelled through coercion and threat to produce your private keys and their passphrase.

They call it rubber hose decryption; you beat the citizen with a rub hose until they give their private key and password up.

[–]neomarxist_bullshit 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

At least with fiat currency you don't have to worry about your currency getting banned.

Right now Russians have to convert large part of their foreign income into rubles if I'm not mistaken... this is where crypto has its use. Otherwise it's meme money