“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.

If you can sleep soundly thanks to this

post, donate

some satoshis to 17eV8QXGK9XySqfmBkgmsdoCcjHQmdGfjp

