… and that means that if cryptocurrencies ever see notable adoption, those same currency controls will be expanded to cover it. There's this popular mythology that cryptocurrencies are immune to regulation but in reality it's just that most countries don't spend time regulating things which aren't widely used. If that changes, cryptocurrencies are perfect for those governments to enforce since the public ledgers provide an easily-audited track record of all of your activity to compare with what you reported.
>>There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.
I feel that's a geek dream far outside of reality we live in.
Making it illegal to adopt or trade Crypto is possible and feasible. If your employer doesn't pay you in crypto,your landlord and bank and grocery store and public transport and health services don't take Crypto, then you're basically limited to the black market. Which tends to work well enough without complications of Crypto.
People envisioning dystopian future that needs Crypto, severely underestimate the ability of that dystopian future to prevent Crypto. Basically, their imagination of dystopian future is limited and naive. Humans can get bad and nasty and societies can get scary and Crypto is not the way out of such for ordinary citizens. Paper money, maybe. But Crypto requires so much equipment through so many telltales with so many ways for regular humans to reveal themselves accidentally that it's a totalitarian regimes' wet dream.
I think that's a bold claim from somebody who has not been tortured, whose friends and family have not been threatened for their personal actions, and who has not actually lived in a dystopian dictatorship (but possibly gets kicks out of fantasizing and "preparing" for one).
Worried about dystopian future? Go out and vote, run for a city Councillor, participate in your local school board, educate and spread awareness. Be a political activist. Engage others, be persuasive and empathetic. Promote understanding and openness and getting along. Be the change you want to be - open dialogue with neighbors, fellow parents at school, teachers, city service people - instill the habit and values of open society. Bitcoin is not going to prevent the dystopian future or save you from it, and your noble death on the altar of bitcoin will not move the needle for anybody else.
They can absolutely prevent you from using it to buy milk at your local grocery store. In practice having bitcoin is no help if you can't convert it into something else. The regulation won't happen at on the blockchain. It will happen at the grocery store, car lot, or any other place you do business. That is plenty enough regulation to make it a nightmare to use in practice.
Enforcing it is trivial for a sovereign nation that issues it's own currency and collects taxes in that currency.
Just as we've seen; they can regulate the on/off ramps between local currency and crypto.
If you've got a method to turn meaningful amounts of BTC into USD without being subject to KYC regulations; then the US government is probably already building a federal money laundering case against it.
What? If you think a government can’t enforce crypto bans, then you haven’t thought about it very much. MITM certs to snoop all internet traffic, tying all devices to real identities as a prerequisite for internet access, making it a crime for merchants to accept any payment but the national currency, etc, etc.
Unless you already had some BTC or onramp set up somewhere outside the country, they can make it hard to onramp(buying BTC ). You could also buy direct from someone but that is impractical. And then you have off-ramp to deal with once you need the cash
> There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.
As long as you still need fiat currency to buy regular goods -- or pay taxes -- entities can make it difficult for you to use cryptocurrencies. If you have to convert cryptocurrencies into something real-world in order to live, governments can make that difficult for you.
I am just not convinced that we will get to a place where you can live solely (or nearly solely) in a cryptocurrency world, without needing fiat.
> That is the whole point of bitcoin. There is no entity that can prevent you from using it.
This is a common marketing claim which doesn't hold up if you think about it even a little. It's like saying that no entity can prevent you from saying something because you define “prevent” as whether there's a cop following you around ready to punch you if you open your mouth — almost all real-world censorship happens after the fact or relying on third-parties, and Bitcoin is no different in that regard.
Bitcoin can trivially be blocked or tracked at the network level. If you have a hostile government, consider the risks of connecting to a well-known network if they've banned it.
If Bitcoin is not completely banned, a government can require everyone to report transactions for taxation or other purposes. That means that your ability to evade punishment for a transaction comes down to whether all of your earning and spending can be done outside of the country without leaving a trace of that network activity, and that you and everyone you make transactions with will never be compromised (think about how would you know?) or cooperate with the authorities (businesses will share their records because they have a legal presence which can't ignore local laws). Similarly, if you want to actually spend that money you have to be extremely stealthy to avoid the authorities wondering how you're spending more money than you appear to make, hope that someone you know never develops a grudge or is coerced to tell the authorities that you're, say, living lavishly on your trips outside the country, etc.
If _any_ of those points aren't true for you, Bitcoin is not safe to use — especially because the public ledger gives the authorities a huge data source of all of your historic activity so you have to consider not just whether they're watching you at the time of an illicit transaction (as is the case with cash) but also whether you or the the other party will at any point in the future have your wallet IDs leaked.
(Yes, I've heard of tumblers. Ask yourself who in this situation is going to risk being charged as an accomplice to the worst crime anyone else using that tumbler is involved with — or whether the police are running the tumbler to get criminals to self-identify their intent to do something illicit.)
The underlying concept to understand here is that sovereign states control their territory. If you live under an abusive government, you are only safe to evade their rules to the extent that the government is weak — if so, just use USD like everyone else. If not, all of the options are risky and there's no magical thinking about technology which is going to materially change that … but almost all of it opens up new avenues for fatal mistakes which are hard to recognize until after the fact.
This is like thinking that you can avoid paying taxes if you do all of your work using cash, except using something more easily traced by the authorities. You might think it sounds bold as internet tough-guy talk but increasingly it just means you're self-isolating as increasing fractions of the economy are unavailable to you. Since real businesses don't use Bitcoin, you're either going to lock yourself out of normal life or have all of this information at exchanges where the authorities set legal requirements.
The problem with this is the fringe libertarian fantasy of thinking that you can be a society of one. It's not just you reporting transactions but everyone you do business with, and these things chain — e.g. maybe you can do work under the table for a while but then you want to buy things like cars or houses and your lack of visible income catches up with you, or someone you do business with gets caught and opts for a lower sentence by identifying their partners. The level of risk and lifestyle restrictions mean this isn't appealing for most people, especially given the entirely philosophical benefits.
> What if they just turn off the external internet?
No government is capable of this. Even North Korea has people smuggling phones over the border. A single cell or satellite connection that can sustain 2-3 KB/s is all you need to keep the rest of the country connected.
Okay, now think about this a bit further. Bitcoin is banned in your country and it's extremely risky to make a network connection to either the Bitcoin network, the client applications (better hope you disabled automatic updates and telemetry…), or industry sites.
How are you paying for that sat-phone? That's expensive, so you need real money and amounts of it which are beyond, say, the average North Korean. If you have a way to launder that money and conceal it, why do you need Bitcoin?
What are you doing to get Bitcoin? Again, you need hard currency which the average North Korean doesn't have access to.
Who are you using those Bitcoin to transact with? Nobody in country can use it legitimately so you're restricted to the black market and very riskily exposed since your full history is available to the government if they ever identify you or someone you're doing business with. It's much safer to use a suitcase of foreign currency since in that case you're at least only at risk for the amount of cash the police find on you at the time you're busted.
I was just responding to the specific question I quoted. More broadly I agree with you that it's a risky idea to immortalize your criminal activity on a public, immutable ledger.
If your devices are compromised or you ever make a mistake, you can identify yourself.
Even if your opsec is perfect, any transaction partner can identify you.
The problem with the public ledger is that it is, well, public and permanent — maybe you're able to fly under the radar for years, but then your records turn up in an exchange's data breech or an investigation into the services you're using to launder real money, etc. and then your full history is revealed detailing exactly how much money you weren't paying in taxes.
