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You could make it illegal, but there are ways to be completely anonymous and still use it, and have no way for anybody to know that you performed a transaction

You could make it illegal, but there are ways to be completely anonymous and still use it, and have no way for anybody to know that you performed a transaction (not even governments). So fundamentally, sure making it illegal will make the hype less attractive, but it will continue being used for illegal activities and/or anybody who wants to transact without the government knowing. But it's fundamentally unstoppable, that's its main selling point.

riffraff 6y ago
> there are ways to be completely anonymous and still use it only if you stay within the ecosystem, but then the moment you want to spend money in real life you need to basically resort to money laundering. Now, that may not be a problem for some users, but it'd be a serious one for most people, and the price would plummet.
viraptor 6y ago
There are other ways to kill that market - heavy regulation on crypto exchanges and regulation on high energy usage via environment laws. Users will go away if it's both unprofitable to use/mine and if they can't find a reasonable exchange.
imtringued 6y ago
> but it will continue being used for illegal activities and/or anybody who wants to transact without the government knowing. You're confusing Monero and Bitcoin. Those are completely different cryptocurrencies.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The reality is that most Bitcoin users don’t use the blockchain and they don’t care to. They buy Bitcoin in their exchange like Coinbase or Robinhood, they watch the price in the exchange, and they sell in the exchange. Transaction fees are currently in the $8 range. Losing your password or having it phished away will irreversibly lose all funds. The average person doesn’t care about being their own bank. They only care about seeing the number go up, so they stick to exchanges. If the exchanges were cut off, Bitcoin would still exist. But the demand would disappear from average people, and the price would fall.

riffraff 6y ago

> there are ways to be completely anonymous and still use it only if you stay within the ecosystem, but then the moment you want to spend money in real life you need to basically resort to money laundering. Now, that may not be a problem for some users, but it'd be a serious one for most people, and the price would plummet.

viraptor 6y ago

There are other ways to kill that market - heavy regulation on crypto exchanges and regulation on high energy usage via environment laws. Users will go away if it's both unprofitable to use/mine and if they can't find a reasonable exchange.

imtringued 6y ago

> but it will continue being used for illegal activities and/or anybody who wants to transact without the government knowing. You're confusing Monero and Bitcoin. Those are completely different cryptocurrencies.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

The reality is that most Bitcoin users don’t use the blockchain and they don’t care to. They buy Bitcoin in their exchange like Coinbase or Robinhood, they watch the price in the exchange, and they sell in the exchange. Transaction fees are currently in the $8 range. Losing your password or having it phished away will irreversibly lose all funds. The average person doesn’t care about being their own bank. They only care about seeing the number go up, so they stick to exchanges. If the exchanges were cut off, Bitcoin would still exist. But the demand would disappear from average people, and the price would fall.