How should somepony use Bitcoin if its gets entirely banned? Is LN practicable anymore then? i mean Smartphones and PC's would get hacked and Wallets drained (Canada)?
Just meetup with Bitcoiners behind your neighborhoods pizzaria and stack them sats.
Nobody can stop the underground cyberpunk community.
Bitcoin is a grassroots movement. Nobody can stop Miners. Somebody will always sell something on the internet for Botcoin. Somebody will always need the advantages of Bitcoin and buy something from the first person. Noboy knows that you own a key pair or it's mnemonic. Nobody can stop a transaction through encrypted internet.
Bitcoin is unstoppable. It finds it way like water finds it's way downhill.
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you would need to use a smartphone for this which the regime can easily hack
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Can it tho? If you use FOSS software or use up to date software you're safe.
If you use a 3 year old android phone it's kind of your own fault.
If your premise is that we don't have safe computing hardware ... that's kind of dystopian and pessimistic. In the same way you could say you could die in a car accident tomorrow and therefore give up everything right now - same logic.
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If you use a 3 year old android phone it's kind of your own fault. You shouldn't asume everyone has access to last year's technology, I don't see that as 'dystopian and pessimistic' but something already real in most places.
If Bitcoin gets globally banned and only a bunch of first-worlders can afford to use it, it means it failed as a currency. On the other hand, if anyone with enough curiosity can use it even in black markets, we won.
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People not getting OS security updates anymore is a serious problem anyway. No matter if Bitcoin or traditional finance.
Be sure that all of those twitter bots and a sgnificant chunk of all likes on Instagram are just bots on old Android phones. We have not seen a mass theft of Bitcoin wallets worldwide. This is probably due to ARM chips having secure enclaves which are really hard to crack even when you already have malware on the victim.
Pray to God that we never see a headline about such a hack. And that free ROMs become really mainstream before that happens. And that Samsung/OnePlus/Sony deliver phones with 10 years of security updates soon. Otherwise the third world will be at a serious disadvantage.
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Can it tho?
yes.
If you use FOSS software or use up to date software you're safe.
NO. Stop being naive. Almost every Software or even Hardware has backdoors.
If your premise is that we don't have safe computing hardware ... that's kind of dystopian and pessimistic.
indeed. i have no solution for this unfortunately
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I think** you** are naive. Have you any knowledge about the cyberpunk scene? Have you made friends in the torrenting/darkwrb community? Do you know how powerful high-level software solutions can be? Because I do.
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your superduper darkweb software does not matter if your OS is backdoored
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Then go live in your cave with no internet lol.
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These uses of Bitcoin are the ones that really matter; without them Bitcoin wouldn't really have gained any value in the market.
The first meaningful economic usage of Bitcoin was to send donations to Wikileaks when credit card processors blocked them. This was something like Dec 2010 iirc. Silk Road started shortly after if I have my timeline right.
Today someone trying to get capital out of places like China might well end up using Bitcoin (usually mixing in Tether and stuff like that; everything apart from Bitcoin might be more convenient but also more dangerous, because nothing has the same censorship resistance). That's just a vague example, there are others of a similar flavor.
i mean Smartphones and PC's would get hacked and Wallets drained (Canada)?
Eh?
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How to obtain guns when guns are banned? Impossible, I know!
How to obtain recreational drugs when recreational drugs are banned? Impossible, I know!
How to obtain bitcoin when bitcoin is banned? Impossible as well, I tell you!
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what a retarded and useless answer
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Banning something that is desired results simply in that activity continuing, but "underground" / below the radar. Sure, a ban might cut out two thirds of the activity seen before the ban, but it doesn't eliminate it outright.
Build your local "circular economy" networks now, before any ban. That will make any ban much less relevant should it occur.
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Banning something is easy. But enforcing the ban is a whole other bale of hay.
China banned Bitcoin dozens of times before the "Great Mining Exodus" of 2021.
In the end, it comes down to the economics of eradication vs the economics of propagation.
It is currently an order of magnitude more expensive to forcefully turn off a Bitcoin node than it is to spin up a new node.
A regime would have to spend days and thousands of dollars of resources coordinating a takedown to locate and confiscate a single machine running Bitcoin core in someone's closet over tor.
Meanwhile, a resistance pony can spin up a new one on any PC in a few hours.
As with the china ban, they didn't have to forcefully take down every mining operation. They made examples of a few of the largest and propaganda made most hashrate leave "by choice".
Even still, there's a remnant in China that continues to ignore the ban.
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thanks for the first good answer. however i think its enough to state an example on some popular Bitcoin Pony to scare the most ponies off.
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I think that ship has pretty much sailed.
I will admit that an outright ban in the US would be bad for bitcoin for a few years.
But it will continue. Too many people have learned & believe in the technology for it to just go away.
A lot of bitcoiners will move to jurisdictions that embrace the tech.
Its now with us
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Nobody can ban bitcoin
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I highly recommend you check this article out: https://dergigi.com/2021/08/02/implications-of-outlawing-bitcoin/
I saw your concern about backdoors in the machines of users in other comments. Its pretty simple to replace your phone and computer's OS with a FOSS alternative. Graphene OS and Calyx OS for smartphones, privacy centric Linux distros like Tails for PC. Not sure if FreeBSD has a Bitcoin implementation, but its worth checking out. For on-chain funds, you can keep your seed off a machine and only load it up when you want to transact. See the SeedSigner.
I think that lightning is not only practical but probably recommended because its more private than on-chain transactions. Its not perfectly private in any sense, but its better than nothing.
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thanks, i already knew the article its a good read
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I recommend people use bitcoin today as if it's already banned, don't rely on exchanges, purchase P2P, via ATMs or voucher systems get your LN and Cold wallet set up and start practising
Why would LN not be applicable, if you run your own node, you're already limiting the attack vector of the hot keys used on that LN wallet
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Bit of a strange question. Bitcoin can't be banned. They can make ik difficult to use, but in the end, even the failed nation state-era will see that it's their only hope for a stable underlying value.
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In this situation bitcoiners should agree on hibernating chain, print guns and regain freedoms back because it may happen only in absolutely not free world.
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i don't believe using Violence is the right approach against the government.
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Always has been.
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Move to El Salvador?
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Need to educate people on the importance of key custody and ownership. There will likely be periods where governments try to restrict ways to cash out / use bitcoin, I don't think we've seen the worst that fiat hyperinflation has to offer yet. During these periods, probably will help to have some fiat cash on hand / basic foodstuffs.
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This post was featured on This Day in Stacker News.
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p2p its always there 4 everyone of us. that and a cold wallet
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If it gets entirely banned then we should contact India and China on how they got around all their bans of the orange coin very interesting things I've heard from out there on the subject. I think it would be fine with these open source wallets and there being so many worst case scenario is we would all have to revert to bitcoin core wallet and strengthen that making it the ultimate bitcoin wallet haha
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yeah there is a lot to learn from the hongkong protestors as an example
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