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Originally Posted by bad_carma
Bitcoin has crashed many times and yet still it stands.
No one has ever tried to stop it before.
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In this scenario, the price takes a hit and absolutely nothing is accomplished. Is bitcoin dead? Nope.
If the average person can't fund it by interacting with the financial system, it's dead. Dead in the sense that its market cap disappears and never recovers.
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Do hackers stop using ransomware demanding bitcoins as payment? Nope. They just ask for more bitcoins because the price is lower.
Of course they stop demanding payment in Bitcoin. If they average person can't fund the payment, what's the point? Right now, buying Bitcoin is as simple as joining an exchange and doing a bank transfer. If those bank transfers are no longer possible, how does the average person fund bitcoin? 95+% of people aren't going to meet strangers on the street for cash, and they especially aren't going to do it for larger sums. So you're then holding a series of bits you can't cash out easily and can't buy anything with except drugs and gambling.
So what are you left with? The hardcore gamblers and people who don't mind going to lengths to do illegal stuff. That doesn't even support a quarter of the current market cap.
What's more, if there are no legitimate Bitcoin exchanges, businesses won't take it, people won't build infrastructure for it, etc, because you can't cash out concentrations of money without laundering. So it's dead if a couple of big governments decide to kill it.
I don't see how this isn't obvious.