Why Governments Can’t Ban Bitcoin

Worried About A Ban? Then You Need Bitcoin More Than You Think

Skeptics often argue that governments will ban Bitcoin when it becomes too important and threatens national sovereignty. At least these critics understand Bitcoin’s importance and the power that state currency monopolies exert over us. What they fail to understand is the power of distributed open-source technologies and the game theory faced by governments when making these decisions. TLDR: Bans are ineffective—they merely cede global technological power to peers. Authoritarian governments are more inclined to attempt regressive regulations. If you live under that type of regime, you need Bitcoin more than you think.

You Cannot Ban Bitcoin—You Can Only Ban Yourself From Bitcoin

Self-regulation is the most important component of distributed open-source technologies like Bitcoin. The bitcoin supply is preprogrammed with a hard limit of 21 million units, blocks are mined every 10 minutes on average, miners are rewarded with new bitcoin, supply growth halves every 4 years, anyone can view and validate transactions by running a node, and no one can be censored from the network if they have internet access and abide by the consensus rules. These principles remain intact no matter what you, I or regulators think. A government can attempt to ban its citizens from using the network, but Bitcoin will continue to run on the internet. The Securities Exchange Commission’s Hester Peirce made this point recently when she concluded that “governments would be foolish to ban Bitcoin.”

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