“Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo
Could the government shut bitcoin down? No. Bitcoin combines
the resilience of bittorrent, the drug market and the
printing press.
BitTorrent
Seeding copywronged files is illegal, yet millions of people
do it, without any financial incentive. Why? It’s standard
behaviour of the bittorrent software, just as running a full
node is standard behaviour of bitcoin core (and thus of
wallets that depend on it). Furthermore, many users run
their bittorrent clients even when they don’t leech
anything, just to seed, to share the movies, music and
ebooks they love, and to give back to the
network. Similarly, apart from financial incentives, many
bitcoin users also want to spread the values and ideas
bitcoin embodies and will continue to run a full node for
that reason.
The Drug Market
All over the world drugs are prohibited and drug dealers and
producers get kidnapped by governments, but nonetheless
drugs are the third largest market worldwide, after oil and
food. Why? Financial incentives. And financial incentives
will motivate people to keep mining and investing in
bitcoin, even if that’s prohibited.
Of course some won’t invest in bitcoin then, and that will
slow down bitcoins rise. But the lower price will just
motivate others.
And of course some will stop mining bitcoins, just as some
stopped dealing cocaine, but that will just drive the
transaction fees up, and thus create a greater incentive for
others to keep mining, and even for yet others to start.
The Printing Press
Between 1524 and 1548 in France, owning a printing press was
punishable by death, yet people continued to run them, to
fight for their ideals and to make money. Many bitcoin
miners and investors share their idealism and greed, and we
will neither give up the free world, nor the untold wealth
that bitcoin can bring us.
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