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Such centralized businesses will be swiftly shut down by legislation if bitcoin cannot be regulated. If shutting down the centralized businesses isn't enough, b
by jdong 12y ago
Such centralized businesses will be swiftly shut down by legislation if bitcoin cannot be regulated.
If shutting down the centralized businesses isn't enough, bitcoin will be outlawed. Identifying users is easy enough due to the nature of the network.
- VMG 12y agoThat is not the direction the government is currently going. A ban of the technology would pretty bad and unprecedented, but if push came to shove, Bitcoin traffic could be disguised as other traffic.
- battani 12y agoWhat will the government do with Bitcoin the day a report comes out that American citizens have been killed in a terrorist operation financed by bitcoin?
- VMG 12y agoWhat did the government do the day evil things happened over the internet using encrypted communication?
- scott_karana 12y agoIt banned the export of cryptography.
- VMG 12y agoAnd yet a little "https" logo smiles at me in the address bar as we speak. Point being that the government can't and doesn't ban everything that can be used for evil, be it from incompetence or rationality. Bitcoin will probably be heavily monitored though, as it is very suitable for that purpose.
- alexeisadeski3 12y agoGive it time.
- scott_karana 12y agoI was referring to a mainly historic, very strict export ban that categorizes cryptographic software as munitions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U... HTTPS was crippled, since Netscape shipped only 40-bit RC4 internationally.[1] PGP's source code was printed so it would fall under First Amendment protections, since binaries weren't legal for export.[2] (See also DJB's Bernstein v. United States)[3] OpenBSD/OpenSSH is still based in Canada to avoid being subject to the laws. -------------- 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States#PC_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_U... 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_in... and http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/ http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/ 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States 4 http://www.openbsd.org/crypto.html http://www.openbsd.org/crypto.html
- VMG 12y agoI know, but in the end they couldn't keep it that way forever.
- scott_karana 12y agoYes, of course. Isn't it conceivable that the government would implement a similarly short-sighted (and ineffectual) policy if Bitcoins were seriously used to harm the US? :-P
- alexeisadeski3 12y ago>A ban of the technology would pretty... unprecedented It would not.
- mifreewil 12y agoI'm not sure identifying users of the network is quite as easy as you may think it is. If by users you mean those sending or receiving bitcoin transactions. It'd be an interesting challenge to identify the IP address originating even a single Bitcoin transaction. How can you tell whether a node is the originator or simply a relayer of a transaction? For added privacy, run Bitcoin over Tor.
- jdong 12y agoBy users I mean anyone participating in the network.