Ray Dalio: ‘Good probability’ the U.S. will outlaw Bitcoin

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/very-likely-u-outlaw-bitcoin-100000280.html

by chaostheory • 5 years ago

71 126 5 years ago

finance.yahoo.com

maxclark• 5 years ago

Or ban the ability to exchange USD for Crypto and vice versa. Part of the argument for crypto is the exact reason why central governments don't want it to exist.

kube-system4• 5 years ago

... outlawed the way gold was outlawed.

i.e. not outlawed.

lmkg• 5 years ago

Private ownership of (large quantitities of) gold was actually illegal for a few decades in the US. This is separate from transitioning to fiat currency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

kube-system4• 5 years ago

Ah, I knew about that, but it totally slipped my mind. Regardless, there were loopholes, like jewelry. Maybe a bitcoin ban would just mean art like NFTs become suddenly popular.

simonh2• 5 years ago

Hence the plot of Goldfinger which otherwise, and without an appreciation of the psychological importance of the gold standard, doesn't make a lot of sense to a modern audience. The premise seemed quaint even to me as a teenager in the 80s.

wppick• 5 years ago

Sure... right after they outlaw owning 10 homes

Also what does "outlawing" bitcoin even mean. It's not a US based entity.

actusual• 5 years ago

Not allowing exchanges to exist as US companies or interface with US banking institutions would be two very obvious steps towards "outlawing" Bitcoin. I make no value judgements on whether this is a good thing, but want to point out that these steps would likely cripple Bitcoin.

plank_time4• 5 years ago

They can seize the assets of all of the Bitcoin trading exchanges overnight. If they coordinate it across the globe so it affects all known exchanges then it will crush the value and lots of people will lose a lot of money. They would effectively shut it down.

Havoc2• 5 years ago

They can seize the assets of all of the Bitcoin trading exchanges overnight

The exchanges don't hold the assets. At least not of the guys that know what they're doing.

If they coordinate it across the globe

In all 195 countries? Doubtful.

Even if by some miracle this could be pulled off, there are now decentralized exchanges.

Pretty much the only thing that would make any dent is getting visa & mastercard to shut down what they can...except they're both making moves in favour of Bitcoin currently

nickysielicki• 5 years ago

Outlawing bitcoin means legally preventing people from participating in the network by running full nodes, and it means legally barring exchanges from operating.

It's easy to scoff at the idea of censoring bitcoin, but I'd love to hear someone defend the censorship-resistance of bitcoin, because I really don't see it.

It's trivial to make it illegal to operate a full node, and it's not like the government doesn't have the dragnet surveillance infrastructure to enforce it. You can't transfer bitcoin without access to the network (ie: you can't physically transfer bitcoin between two untrusting parties) and if the government bars exchanges from operating legally, how do you actually trade bitcoin for anything?

If you think this sounds draconian and far-fetched, you might be right, but remember: the government once tried to ban gold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 ).

RamshackleJ2• 5 years ago

sure, if you think the US government is united against bitcoin and willing to step on the civil liberties afforded the ~30 million US citizens who own it.

but.... I really don't think either of those things is true. You should talk to people in the state dept or DoD and pay less attention to FED/Treasury. The current USD global reserve status quo isn't always great for the US gov.

Rule355• 5 years ago

It's trivial to make it illegal to operate a full node

Right, making something illegal is trivial. But how would you effectively stop someone from doing it? You can tunnel the traffic as with anything. They'd have to go full China to stop it.

And you don't need to run a full node if you're willing to trust a consensus of miners about the current state. (You can see how much work a block (probably) took to mine, so if someone shows you a block with the wrong proof-of-work target you know they're lying, meaning that even this forgery to show to an offline user is 51%-attack level hard.)

if the government bars exchanges from operating legally, how do you actually trade bitcoin for anything?

Have you ever travelled and bought currency privately? Either just because you ran out, or the listed exchange rate is fixed. You meet someone in a bar and hand them an envelope of cash.

If you used something like the OpenDime offline wallet then it would be easier. They'd transfer to the offline wallet which you would verify, and then you'd do a regular handover of physical items, cash for hardware wallet.

Sure, it's a bit shady, and maybe horribly illegal, but if you were trying to get out of the country with your family's wealth all of a sudden it'd seem pretty easy compared to the alternatives.

alkonaut• 5 years ago

You don’t ban holding it in some foreign exchange account. You ban the contact points with the regular economy.

amelius• 5 years ago

If owning/trading bitcoin becomes a criminal offense, then 99% of people will switch back to regular currencies.

gpapilion4• 5 years ago

There used to be(in the 80s and 90s) these groups that used trade scrip to avoid paying taxes. They were always getting in trouble for making alternative currencies, and trying to avoid direct exchange to keep out of trouble. If I recall someone explaining this to me years ago.

I've always wondered why this hasn't happened with bitcoin.

kube-system4• 5 years ago

The IRS taxes bitcoin.

gpapilion4• 5 years ago

As an asset, so your gains are taxed. The variability creates a tax nightmare, since the price isn't stable.

ca98am792• 5 years ago

They also auction bitcoin that they have confiscated (i.e. they sell it)

rmah• 5 years ago

The only effect of not using USD to conduct financial transaction has on your taxes is that it makes them more complicated. It will not reduce your tax burden one iota. (In the US, of course)

newacct583• 5 years ago

At least one reason is that a big chunk of crypto value is being driven by wealth flight out of the PRC. A lot of the dollars propping up BTC's valuations represent trade deficit dollars that would otherwise be leverage for a plausibly hostile government.

Surely the feds are aware of the scale of money laundering being done in the cryptocurrency world, but I'm guessing they'd prefer to see that being laundered by western criminals than leveraged by China.

plank_time4• 5 years ago

Frankly I’m surprised they haven’t done this already. There’s no way to account for money laundering which is an obvious use of Bitcoin. There are services that outright specialize in this.

My expectation is that they are coordinating with other countries so that they shut down bitcoin immediately across large swathes of the world. That would be enough to damage it permanently. They did something similar with online poker in the US and I can’t believe they wouldn’t do the exact same thing in this situation.

scsilver2• 5 years ago

That's not why Dalio says Bitcoin could be outlawed. His justification is based on gold being outlawed in 1934. It was about monetary policy, not legal matters.

plank_time4• 5 years ago

Yes I know. But the USD was backed by gold then. Today it’s not. Janet Yellen has made several talks about the dangers and risks of Bitcoin in the last several months. I think the US government is definitely setting its sights on Bitcoin.

lazypenguin• 5 years ago

Was hoping for an insight into the cryptocurrency markets by a financial markets insider but this was a rambling interview of little informational value. I'd be curious to know what the general sentiment is among high-level financiers and politicians towards bitcoin, if there is even a consensus. Right now most of the perspectives I have heard are either from the uninformed individual or from the biased crypto enthusiast.

PEJOE• 5 years ago

Having spent some time around a subset of what I think you would call high level financiers, for the most part they don’t really know what it is or understand it, and it isn’t relevant to their day to day job of doing transactions.

scsilver2• 5 years ago

Here is a class at MIT taught by Gary Gensler, the pick for SEC head, focused on blockchain. Its a nice starting point for a detailed view from the perspective of a top regulator with deep industry experience.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-s1...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gensler

rfd4sgmk8u• 5 years ago

Highly doubtful. Code is free speech, and the ability to run whatever software one wishes is the expression of that free speech.

Where they do have the power is regulations regarding (legacy) financial industry. Given the interest in magic internet money from institutional investors and wall street, I think the moment where it would be acceptable to block fiat->cryptocurrency transactions has passed, and would now offer a systemic problem for big finance today.

jcranmer3• 5 years ago

Highly doubtful. Code is free speech, and the ability to run whatever software one wishes is the expression of that free speech.

Yeah, that's not how the law works. There are regulations about what software you can run with software-defined radios, since the FCC regulates radio emissions and SDR allows you to potentially violate those regulations. Free speech is not going to be a defense here that will win you victory in the courts.

naravara• 5 years ago

I don't think this interpretation is supported by any caselaw or jurisprudence but I'm open to reading it if you have it.

jasode• 5 years ago

When some people think that governments can't really ban bitcoin because the bitcoin nodes can always exist "underground" and keep mining over VPNs, and the government has no mindreading technology to know which citizens have memorized a 12-word passkey to their wallet, and so on... that's a naive view of the coercion tools the government has at its disposal.

To lower bitcoin's advantages as an inflation hedge, governments can:

- tax heavily the conversions of bitcoin into fiat cash and vice-versa back into bitcoin. E.g. an "oppressive 90% tax" at the exchanges like Coinbase

- declare exchange businesses as illegal. This is analogous outlawing nationwide gambling websites. Yes, the bitcoin network by design still operates without exchanges but the barriers to quick liquidity and fears of cashing out affects its value as inflation protection

- declare property transactions enabled by bitcoin to be null & void. E.g. If you convert 4 bitcoins @ $50k to buy a $200k house, that real estate transaction is illegal and the government uses its power to confiscate the property. Analogous to property seizures because of drug money. The government still wants to trace the origins of money and if it's an illegal activity, the property is forfeited.

- require citizens to declare the bitcoins they own. This is based on the honor system and citizens can try to hide it of course -- but the FBI and IRS can monitor large amounts of fiat cash deposits into bank accounts and if the citizen can't explain where $200k legitimately came from, ("Uh, I sold a car wash business!"), they get fined or go to jail. Of course, the black market will come up with solutions to "legitimize bitcoin cashouts" but again, the barrier to lawful liquidity decreases its inflation hedging value.

- require a government license to use bitcoin. E.g. After your license is approved, you must run extra software to notify to the government the bitcoin addresses and amounts you intend to transact. Yes, the bitcoin network is independent from the government but that doesn't matter because if your self-reported declarations don't match the bitcoin activity, your property can be seized. Analogous to informing the SEC ahead of time of a new issuance of corporate stock.

- ... any creative other ways? The common theme is that citizens still have to interact with the real world and the government has a monopoly on enforcing property rights and putting people in jail in that real world. There doesn't have to be a law that literally has the word "ban" in it. Instead, governments can changes bitcoin's utility and thus its market value.

So to balance all the negativity above, the way bitcoin can avoid government interference is to virally embed itself so thoroughly in society that it makes it politically impossible for the government to pass anti-bitcoin laws. Examples:

+ many influential members congress have significant net worth tied up in bitcoin so they are unwilling to pass laws that hurt themselves. Self-interest and self-preservation can be used against the government.

+ several large institutions (e.g. California Federal pensions, cancer charity endowments, etc) that millions depend on have significant bitcoin holdings.

+ the more influential billionaires that hold bitcoin, the more they pressure congressmembers into leaving bitcoin alone

It's hard to predict how game theory between government and citizens will play out. It seems like it's easier for China & Russia to control its citizens bitcoin rather than the USA.

chromatin• 5 years ago

+ several large institutions (e.g. California Federal pensions, cancer charity endowments, etc) that millions depend on have significant bitcoin holdings.

This is actually a key observation, and I hope that some crypto whales can see that it may be in their best interest to donate large amounts of crypto to some high-profile charities (or possibly University endowments?)

Not only would they get income tax deduction for charitable giving, if they donate the crypto directly (rather than converting it), they pay no capital gains on a conversion.

Plus, importantly, the philanthropic beneficiary -- ideally high profile -- is now invested in ensuring the survival of said alternative financial system.

Rule355• 5 years ago

To make it effective you'd need to prevent the charity from cashing out. Perhaps make a dividend-paying instrument by continually re-loaning the base currency and taking the interest payment and converting them into a stablecoin which gets paid to the charity, but with no way to redirect the payments or convert it into a lump sum.

nodamage• 5 years ago

The US government effectively destroyed the US internet poker industry a decade ago without banning internet poker itself by simply banning banks from transferring money to/from poker sites.

ryandrake3• 5 years ago

They also seized the top few online poker sites. That probably had a bigger effect.

PoignardAzur2• 5 years ago

+ several large institutions (e.g. California Federal pensions, cancer charity endowments, etc) that millions depend on have significant bitcoin holdings.

That's horrifying.

That sounds like a strategy a sentient AI would use in a cyberpunk novel to deter the humans from acting against it before it's too late.

(not to say that you're wrong or that it wouldn't be effective; just... jeeze, I hope it doesn't get that far)

habitue2• 5 years ago

South Korea backed off from just such a ban in 2018[1], the details of which might be informative if anyone is trying to determine how likely a similar ban here might be

[1] https://www.pymnts.com/news/bitcoin-tracker/2018/south-korea...

syrrim• 5 years ago

The South Korean government has no other choice but to follow the regulatory frameworks and trends established by other leading governments

I.e. the US.

nuisance-bear• 5 years ago

Greece implemented capital controls in June 2015. The United Kingdom struggled to keep them implemented in October 1979. I'd look at these episodes and the Asian Financial Crisis from 1997 as examples of the kind of thing Dalio is probably thinking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_controls_in_Greece

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Controls_in_the_Unite...

undefined1• 5 years ago

there is over $1 trillion held in Bitcoin, which represents a lot of people and companies. how exactly do you unwind that without generating a massive backlash and other secondary effects? would the government buy out everyone's position or what?

innagadadavida• 5 years ago

How about capping the maximum amount you can withdraw to something like 100k and taxing the rest at 99%?

TuringNYC2• 5 years ago

They can do it indirectly by changing the tax treatment.

gruez• 5 years ago

In what way? You already have to pay capital gains on it.

creato• 5 years ago

I can't put my finger on it but I doubt the valuation of bitcoin/other crypto assets when converted to USD. Look at NFTs: there's no way those prices would hold if someone were actually paying USD. Those prices are only possible because people are exchanging one funny-money cryptocurrency for another.

I think the basic issue is there is huge amounts of cryptocurrency that can't be converted to USD for one reason or another (proceeds of ransomware, inability to pass KYC checks, etc.), and that is causing some crypto assets to be worth far less USD than others, and inflating the price of assets when purchased with those coins. But that isn't stopping people from pricing them just the same.

solosoyokaze2• 5 years ago

I can't put my finger on it but I doubt the valuation of bitcoin/other crypto assets when converted to USD.

That valuation is based on what you can, right now, exchange crypto for USD on the exchanges.

Havoc2• 5 years ago

Look at NFTs: there's no way those prices would hold if someone were actually paying USD. Those prices are only possible because people are exchanging one funny-money cryptocurrency for another.

Not really - because you could exchange you crypto for USD easily & reliably enough. The second that's true it stops being "funny-money" as you put it.

Contrast that with monopoly money where nobody will give you USD for it.

NFTs - either people are doing it for the giggles or they're betting on greater fool theory

yumraj• 5 years ago

Aren't majority of bitcoin held by a small majority, that is both international (read China) and anonymous.

So, who will participate in this massive backlash in the US besides Elon Musk and Dorsey whose companies have public positions in bitcoin, and a few others?

jsutton2• 5 years ago

1. It's a false narrative that majority of bitcoin is held by a small majority, as this doesn't account for custodianship services, funds, lost coins, etc. [1]

2. Many companies and citizens and even the US gov itself have over $1M in bitcoin, to name a few: Square, Microstrategy/Michael Saylor, Greyscale, Tim Draper, Winklevoss/Gemini, etc [2]

Safe to say, Bitcoin and crypto is Big Business now in the US, with hundreds of companies and startups in the space based in the US.

[1] https://insights.glassnode.com/bitcoin-supply-distribution/ [2] https://www.kevinrooke.com/bitcoin

daenz• 5 years ago

Imo Bitcoin will eventually be outlawed because it will be competition to the banks' coins. When banks make a crypto coin that is ready for public consumption then they will come down hard on Bitcoin.

simonh2• 5 years ago

Except bitcoin isn't actually used as a currency, it's only really used as an asset. As such it's not in competition with anything functionally, because it has no significant functional utility outside it's asset value.

dkjaudyeqooe• 5 years ago

You're confusing econdings with what they represent. For instance, the EBC doesn't care about BTC because they're not euros and never will be.

y-c-o-m-b• 5 years ago

Slightly off-topic: with currency being mostly digital and now crypto-currency being more common, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the event of a massive power failure (e.g. coronal mass ejections, mega-earthquakes, super-hurricanes, etc.). I imagine if you had a bank statement as support, you could at least withdraw money from the bank in the form of cash. Where with crypto you don't have that potential safety-net and any mining operations will take a huge hit, possibly causing catastrophic volatility in its worth.

liuliu• 5 years ago

Isn't that the entire plot of Mr. Robot (S1)? :)

arthurcolle• 5 years ago

Not really - you can have a cold wallet that contains your private keys. Unless every single computer lost a copy of the blockchain blocks dir simultaneously, this seems pretty much of a non-issue

RamshackleJ2• 5 years ago

so you're saying a black swan event might affect the price? gee well Im glad that doesn't currently happen with USD, CNY, JPY....

you can also use bitcoin like a physical bearer asset (gold bullion) by using things like https://opendime.com/ so even if the network was 100% down transactions could still happen IRL. You'd just be exchanging a hidden private key that can move UTXO's on the blockchain.

considering that I'd say bitcoin is much more anti-fragile than a bank statement, in most of the natural disasters you're talking about im not so sure banks will be letting you withdraw any significant amount of $

whytaka• 5 years ago

It's irresponsible to hold your assets in any one vehicle. Your 6 month buffer savings should be in cash or something equally liquid. If I had all my safety net in real estate or paper gold, it'd be the same problem.

majewsky2• 5 years ago

If your threat scenario is a long-lasting large-scale power outage, the correct answer is a stash of canned food and clean water. Cash money is going to be less useful than you think when the grocery store supply chains collapse.

jtsiskin• 5 years ago

No, this makes no sense. No bank would allow you to withdraw cash. Because what is stopping you from withdrawing cash at one branch and then again at the same branch down the road, or a different branch a state away?

aphextron• 5 years ago

Thank god. This will make sure no one has access to Bitcoin, just like when we outlawed heroin and cocaine.

enoughalready• 5 years ago

The same can be said of rape and murder.

rspeele5• 5 years ago

For the record, I doubt the US will ban bitcoin. But let's imagine what would happen if it did. It wouldn't eliminate access to bitcoin but it would hurt its value quite badly.

The demand for heroin and cocaine is driven by intrinsic value: it gets you high. You can restrict supply but you can't stop people from wanting to get high. The demand will be there no matter what. The utility of the product is unchanged by laws or public perception.

Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value. It has value because people will buy it from you. I think BTC is a crappy technology, but I'm not ashamed to admit I'd buy one at $50,000/ea this instant, only because I know I can turn around and resell it for $57,000/ea. The only reason I want 1 BTC is that I know enough other people want 1 BTC badly enough, that I can sell it to them at a good price.

If exchanging my Bitcoin back into fiat or directly for goods becomes illegal, now I've got difficulty and risk involved in using it. I won't want Bitcoins as much. Its utility -- being useful for exchange -- can be directly impacted by the law.

A lot of the people who want to buy bitcoin today would not buy it if it were illegal to do so. I'm talking about casual retail speculators, Tesla, Microstrategy... all of your basic white collar investors who are looking to make a buck but don't want to get in trouble for it. If you delete all those people from the buying side of the order books, and put those who have already bought and want to get out on the selling side, what happens to the price?

jsutton2• 5 years ago

I'm tired of this flippant statement that many crypto-detractors take as fact, that there's no intrinsic value in Bitcoin. When you create a product or service that other people want to use and pay you for, is there no intrinsic value there?

DennisP3• 5 years ago

He uses the gold ban as precedent. The US didn't outlaw private gold ownership because gold was competing with the dollar.

It outlawed gold ownership because the dollar was backed by gold, the Fed wanted to print more dollars to stimulate the economy, and at the time it could only do that if it had enough gold to back those dollars. They were running out of gold so they confiscated it from regular people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102#Rationale

bendbro2• 5 years ago

I'm amazed I've never heard about this. If I lived then and was going to have my gold confiscated, I don't think I'd be able to avoid going full killdozer.

taylodl2• 5 years ago

The 1% are still pretty pissed about it - nearly 100 years later. If you're an American then I am surprised/concerned you never heard about this in history class.

DennisP3• 5 years ago

They did at least pay people, if they surrendered it in time. (Then they raised the price of gold afterwards.)

Come to think of it, that's another difference from "outlawing Bitcoin."

ardit332• 5 years ago

Good... bitcon is just a massive ponzi/M&L scheme, being held by few whales with the rest holding crumbs and just hoping for the moon... My biggest issue with it is that is extremely inefficient and just pollutes needlessly.

Has anyone tried to buy something with it lately? I tried in 2016, and it was almost impossible unless you go through 3rd party exchange, and the rates were insane.

blhack• 5 years ago

So let me get this straight:

You haven't used bitcoin in half of a decade, but you assume you have some knowledge about its uselessness that everybody else doesn't?

ardit332• 5 years ago

If you read it, mine was a question. If you have any special knowledge, Enlighten us please.... If you have to use centralized third parties to use it efficiently, then it defeats its purpose.

my single bitcoin remained there, because I couldn't use it in an easy manner. I am kind of glad about it, as it has risen in value, but really, apart 'it rises in value', what practical use does it have? Feels like modern day tulip mania.

Animats2• 5 years ago

The real question is which cryptocurrencies can survive a net outflow. That's how bubbles suddenly collapse. Someone sold US$2.1 billion in Bitcoin on March 15th, and the price of Bitcoin dropped 10%.[1] Which is not too bad.

The SEC made most of the Initial Coin Offering industry go away by prosecuting some of the blatant frauds. The ICO backed by nonexistent diamonds and real estate was the first to go down. After a few of those, the SEC sent out letters asking ICO issuers why they thought they weren't issuing an unregulated security. A few registered. Most gave up.

The SEC has essentially grandfathered Bitcoin as pre-dating any SEC guidance on the subject, and as lacking an "issuer". Newer make-money-fast schemes get full scrutiny.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2021/03/15/22-bi...

bb88• 5 years ago

So quick math.

Bitcoin is a $1.6TB market valuation. $2.1B represents around .1% of that value.

So the total capitalization dropped $160B when someone removed $2.1B in value? That is a multiplier of 80 times.

And you're saying that's pretty good?

phroobster• 5 years ago

A huge number of assets would drop similarly if you unloaded .1% of their entire market cap in one day. I’d say BTC recovered fairly well from that sale.

habitue2• 5 years ago

By "effectively grandfathered", are you referring to their justification of bitcoin and ethereum as not securities under the Howey rule, or are you referring to some other comments? (Genuinely curious)

Animats2• 5 years ago

Yes.

techwizrd• 5 years ago

Is this really likely? We're seeing Bitcoin embraced by financial institutions, payment processors like Visa, pension funds, etc. It seems to me that the wind is not blowing in the direction of a Bitcoin ban (or "ban").

gremlinsinc• 5 years ago

Kinda wish it would a little... I love the concept of crypto, esp. possible uses for fighting income inequality and creating UBI.... but Bitcoin is a power hog, I'd love to see it die--but still keep Ethereum, Cardano and newer tech, unless BTC can figure out a switch to proof of stake or something a bit less energy required, or move miners to the moon.

motohagiography• 5 years ago

Seems more plausible that mixers and other techniques for evading surveillance would be outlawed, as I can't imagine a government giving up the blockchain data on peer-to-peer transactions. Imposing a KYC regs and social credit scores on wallets would be another likely measure. The U.S. will probably lead with a ban threat, and then walk it back to these measures as "reasonable," negotiated solutions. I'm not advocating these, but if I had to bet where the puck was going, this seems more likely.

jimbob45• 5 years ago

Can we ban proof-of-work cryptos at least? I know you can't exactly ban BTC itself but you can ban the new PoW ones for environmental reasons and mining BTC isn't profitable for...anyone but the NASA supercomputer, right?

marsrover4• 5 years ago

While I'm sure everyone here on Hacker News is hoping this happens, it won't. Large companies are adopting cryptocurrency. Telsa accepts it as payment. Visa is starting to settle transactions on Ethereum. Coinbase is about to IPO.

And if it does, it won't matter. How do you even ban Bitcoin? Are they going to set up a great firewall? Cryptocurrency isn't the type of thing you can just ban.

djohnston3• 5 years ago

They would ban exchanges from operating within the US, which would render Bitcoin useless for 99.99% of US users. I don't think they'll do this either, but they don't have to do anything fancy to make Bitcoin worthless for the average citizen.

marsrover4• 5 years ago

While being able to use exchanges in the US is helpful, it isn't necessary. It might curb short term adoption, but it doesn't stop the inevitable, which is crypto completely taking over the world.

It's in the US's best interest to embrace it.

Edit: the best downvotes are from people that missed out on the technological innovation of a lifetime.

ajkdhcb22• 5 years ago

Peer-to-peer exchange works perfectly fine. It is funny how it used to be the most common way to exchange crypto, but now people think you need these dangerous and inefficient centralised exchanges just because they became popular.

Bancakes• 5 years ago

US gov't has extensive training with drugs and firearms. Just convince normal people to stay away, and shame the rest to submission with propaganda.

majewsky2• 5 years ago

Large companies are adopting cryptocurrency.

So what? You can easily put a layer of legal red tape around something, so that individuals cannot reasonably use it, but allows corporations with large legal departments can continue.

marsrover4• 5 years ago

That's not outlawing. Also, you can't stop individuals from using this short of having a totalitarian government.

PoignardAzur2• 5 years ago

Large companies are adopting cryptocurrency

That's a strong reason for governments to ban them.

Governments derive their power from their ability to raise taxes; and they need to be able to measure how much people and companies make for that. Governments can't tolerate a widespread bitcoin.

lamontcg• 5 years ago

Bitcoin will have to fail and wipe out those investments first before the government is able to step in and ban it.

The Ponzi bubble will need to largely pop on its own, or will need to be popped by governments other than the US.

taylodl2• 5 years ago

Another chicken little claiming the Big Bad Fed is going to pressure Congress into outlawing bitcoin. The most open economy in the world is going to outlaw bitcoin? To what end? What are they going to outlaw next? Outlaw gold? Silver? Platinum?

Everyone calls bitcoin a currency. I don't think of it that way. I think of it as digital gold and should be treated the same way as you'd treat gold from an investment standpoint. The fact that Tesla takes bitcoin as payment is simply a novelty of our time.

Either way the US isn't going to outlaw bitcoin.

merricksb• 5 years ago

Two earlier discussions in recent days:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26625859 (68 points/119 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26618206 (34 points/79 comments)

Ray Dalio: ‘Good probability’ the U.S. will outlaw Bitcoin

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