No no it's not bad faith, it's good faith. I'm not trolling, and I'm not invested in this idea- if you can make this whole house of cards collapse, more power to you.
Power stations are a special case of the more general weakness of Bitcoin- that it depends on resources only readily available under governmentally administered civilization- power, chips, software, maker culture. That gives determined government endless leverage to crush Bitcoin if it so choses.
If something about Bitcoin, say, energy use, turns enough heads to register high enough on political opinion surveys to give the impression that, say, an environmental angle at a Bitcoin ban could win an election or four, then, my friend- Bitcoin is gone. Off the top of my head:
- Cut Internet off of "rogue regimes" willing to continue mining
- Ban or highly tax specialized mining hardware
- Ban the use of electricity for mining
- Ban the use of the currency
- Ban the markets
- Heavily sanction programmers involved in cryptocurrency
- Lean on hardware vendors
- Direct sabotage
Or, better yet- just, as one single government, hint at considering any of the above measures, and watch the price tumble everywhere.
Of course, none of these things are done, because harming Bitcoin does not currently win elections.
However, if a centralized digital currency like Taler where edicted to exist- destroying that wouldn't win any elections, either. So, if you take the perspective of hard Realpolitik, Bitcoin's decentralized aspects simply are not the ones that really matter. The aspects that do matter- and which were copied by Taler- is that the one with the power should be heavily restricted by protocol.
If the USA were to ban all things Bitcoin, the price would fall hard, but the machine would keep rolling. If, say, 5 of the top 10 GDP nations followed suit, then not only would the price crash, but the threat of some government sponsoring malicious mining would be strong enough to kill it off (even if it never actually happened).
Bitcoin is not invulnerable. It was bootstrapped from nothing and is still fledgling. Thankfully, it becomes harder to kill as it becomes more of a threat. Right now there is a trillion USD worth of distributed motivation to keep it running. Politically killing Bitcoin would be easier than politically killing Google. But, not that much... First major nation to do so could score some short-term political points. But, all nations are balancing concern about missing out vs. the threat to their own power.
Comments
No no it's not bad faith, it's good faith. I'm not trolling, and I'm not invested in this idea- if you can make this whole house of cards collapse, more power to you.
Power stations are a special case of the more general weakness of Bitcoin- that it depends on resources only readily available under governmentally administered civilization- power, chips, software, maker culture. That gives determined government endless leverage to crush Bitcoin if it so choses.
If something about Bitcoin, say, energy use, turns enough heads to register high enough on political opinion surveys to give the impression that, say, an environmental angle at a Bitcoin ban could win an election or four, then, my friend- Bitcoin is gone. Off the top of my head:
- Cut Internet off of "rogue regimes" willing to continue mining - Ban or highly tax specialized mining hardware - Ban the use of electricity for mining - Ban the use of the currency - Ban the markets - Heavily sanction programmers involved in cryptocurrency - Lean on hardware vendors - Direct sabotage
Or, better yet- just, as one single government, hint at considering any of the above measures, and watch the price tumble everywhere.
Of course, none of these things are done, because harming Bitcoin does not currently win elections.
However, if a centralized digital currency like Taler where edicted to exist- destroying that wouldn't win any elections, either. So, if you take the perspective of hard Realpolitik, Bitcoin's decentralized aspects simply are not the ones that really matter. The aspects that do matter- and which were copied by Taler- is that the one with the power should be heavily restricted by protocol.
If the USA were to ban all things Bitcoin, the price would fall hard, but the machine would keep rolling. If, say, 5 of the top 10 GDP nations followed suit, then not only would the price crash, but the threat of some government sponsoring malicious mining would be strong enough to kill it off (even if it never actually happened).
Bitcoin is not invulnerable. It was bootstrapped from nothing and is still fledgling. Thankfully, it becomes harder to kill as it becomes more of a threat. Right now there is a trillion USD worth of distributed motivation to keep it running. Politically killing Bitcoin would be easier than politically killing Google. But, not that much... First major nation to do so could score some short-term political points. But, all nations are balancing concern about missing out vs. the threat to their own power.