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Originally Posted by TomCollins
Of course not, just as long as they are powerful.
OK, so I guess you only disagree with him that it'll happen in 20 years. I thought maybe you were saying there's some reason why governments issuing money needs to continue forever.
To me it seems hard to say, 2012-2032 is a long time, a lot different than any 20-year span so far. Certainly if you extend it to 50 or 100 it quickly becomes impossible to imagine what life will be like. I don't think it's a great assumption that we'll still be using fiat currency in 20 years, but who knows.
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Only if it's in peoples interests to use it. It usually is not, unless the government becomes excessively offensive.
We're talking about a hypothetical where people use it so much that the government shuts it down. This is a goal post shift.
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If it's a threat to their control of currency, how could it not help?
In the same vein pouring gasoline on the fire doesn't help. Destroying Bitcoin doesn't destroy the possibility of people to create a different thing like Bitcoin, or the exact same thing again. So on one hand you shutdown the current operation, on the other hand you draw a lot of attention and curiosity to the idea.
Maybe the government will attack Bitcoin, maybe it will help them, but my point is it isn't as clear-cut as a $3million cost and nothing else to think about.