Oddbean new post about login | logout Sometimes people ask me, “what if American bans bitcoin like they did for gold?” 1) That’s why it’s useful to engage politically. To prevent that draconian tail risk. And it’s working. Prevent any sort of anti-Bitcoin supermajority. 2) America had a supermajority in Congress when they did that for gold. They could override every check on power. That’s uncommon. We became highly collectivist for a period of time. 3) America literally put Japanese Americans in camps back then. But not German Americans. Because we were outright racist. And this was all pre civil rights for Black Americans too. Terrible. 4) This was all pre-internet. Centralized media. Few memes. The slow speed of communication was relevant. The meme-work makes the dream work.
I was a dumb dumb dumb nocoiner in 2013 and this was my response when someone suggested I buy beetkorn... What if the gvmnt....? Oh well. I'm late to the game but I'm in still in it!!!! Oh YEEEE
And then ironically when America banned gold, it was too expensive to enforce at scale. They didn’t go door to door. Many families just hodled for decades until it became legal again. Few people were ever prosecuted because that’s embarrassing and expensive for the government. It was threat over action. It was like banning marijuana.
Then imagine going after cold wallets and BTC.
Abit easier and cheaper to know who has bitcoin now though isn't it with our every move online saved forever 😬
Criminalization is upstream of normalization.
Hi Lyn, I think about this topics quite some time. And I think they don't have to go door to door. In todays interconnected world for example crypto exchanges can correspond with financial institutions and vice versa. Just a scenario: In most european contries your tax id is linked to your exchange account. To make it easy for itself as the ministry of finance they just impose a 100 % tax on bitcoin with your next tax assesment notice. And then go on from there. It will force people out of there position. Is this a potential risk in you opinion regarding a nation state ban?
And that was for gold, which was harder to hide, transport and trade because of its physical properties. Now it's even harder to enforce because we can just travel to another country easier if we want to exchange it still in a legal setting.
Even then there was exemption for certain collectible and numismatic gold and silver coins. I suspect there would have been a big backlash amongst wealthy collectors so FDR didn’t want to go there.
And bitcoin ban is even less enforceable, equivalent to banning math – good luck with that.
Not really. Why should it? Making it illegal would make it illegal for any national company to accept bitcoin for paiment. And no exchanges could be maintained in the country. But yeah. Holding and exchanging bitcoin might not be possible.
It'll create friction for exchange use for sure, but if you're holding in cold storage you can just either wait it out or leave the country. And keeping 12-24 words hidden is easier than a gold.
Yes this for sure is possible. But temporally it can lower the price of cryptocurrencies, when some marketplaces stop working.
Well thats good news... or old news. New, old news... whatever
it’s hard to ban something you can’t touch, confiscate, or lock in a deposit. gold, alcohol, drugs, and gambling (even online) involve some physicality and centralization. bitcoin is different—more of a “catch me if you can” style.
Memes are a new, potent form of communication. Embrace ze #memes! 😁 nostr:nevent1qqsfmjtp8tlzzykjks93upnutyccw7jx7pp3lk3v4w5xpua36vpv2wqprfmhxue69uhhqatjv9mxjerp9ehx7um5wghxcctwvshsyg82krn4d5etsz7dge8nmpztspqrqvr45yl2hs6enfmzexk84wglfupsgqqqqqqspszf40
I thought Bitcoin couldn't be banned
In practice, you can only ban yourself from using Bitcoin.
Why is nostr:nprofile1qqsw4v882mfjhq9u63j08kzyhqzqxqc8tgf740p4nxnk9jdv02u37ncpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9uju6mpd4czuumfw3jsz9nhwden5te0wfjkccte9ec8y6tdv9kzumn9wsq3yamnwvaz7tmsw4e8qmr9wpskwtn9wvql3tqm worried about the government banning Bitcoin then. She doesn't know how it works.
You are either extremely naive, or wantonly obtuse. Governments can ban the possession/use of firearms, but you can ignore that or not. It doesn’t affect you if you self-custody firearms (or print them). In changes what you are in the eyes of the law though. Many people will decide it isn’t worth going to jail over such things
Firearms are tangible.
Your point? That only strengthens what I was saying
Who said that? It can be banned, but the ban is costly to enforce and thus just drives it into the black market. And so any bitcoin user would much prefer to live in a jurisdiction that is not authoritarian enough to ban the use of a decentralized spreadsheet.
Your Bitcoin friends say that. Representative example: nostr:nevent1qqszpd9myj2qsjqv88g6hrzf7sm2vtju3w22vpjflqcdu032gau3xyqpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchsyg8x7uflxks4nqljrnu3vhq3suf3hee3dhy6dxzlcd097upmuplhevpsgqqqqqqsnrxvmk
Well governments can ban it, and lots already have. But they can’t literally stop people holding or using it. The question is whether there is a difference. If there’s jail time for someone saying they’re using it then things have to get pretty dystopian before people will take that risk
Thx I like it when you now begin to focus more on ideas, and when you urge people to engage. Too many believe it's enough to stack sats, they think it makes them "freedom fighters"
it takes Germans a year to assimilate in America it takes Japanese 50 years
Ask you? Lmao
Yes. Since I write about bitcoin regularly, I get a lot of emails from readers asking certain questions about bitcoin, with risks of a ban being among the most common ones.
Countries have been banning* superior currencies (usually the USD) for as long as there have been countries and currencies. It never works. *i.e. the elites "ban" the superior for plebs, so they have to use the inferior currency and are forced to pay seignorage etc. Meanwhile the elites themselves use the superior currency.
Um, plus nobody can stop you using or holding bitcoin, so bans are irrelevant
Adding more friction to the on ramps would achieve similar results without going to a full ban
Not necessarily. Nigeria did that and they have some of the highest adoption rates in the world.
Fair point. Do you think the potential “higher need” in Nigeria drives them to overcome more friction?
Genuine question here. Seeing the power AIPAC has within congress and the senate (100% of their candidates get elected), what if AIPAC turns against bitcoin?
Thomas Massie and Ilhan Omar come to mind as two recent losses for AIPAC. I'm concerned about this as well. Solution is to keep pushing to ensure the pro-genocide lobby are pariahs in every context
i can’t even 🙄🤦🏾♀️ memes?
Yes. Ideas spread in a viral fashion. Eduction via humor in bite-sized amounts, in addition to long-form education.
@corndalorian gonna be the next Plato 😂
if memes were saviours of ideas we’d see an overall decrease of inanity over the past decade. that “viral” is now socially coded as a positive should be a tip off indicating an inverse of actual value. i’ll leave virality for the infected & unwell while i go galactic. 😉 ✨
https://i.nostr.build/xpKz97rCRvJlj7kM.jpg nostr:nevent1qqsfmjtp8tlzzykjks93upnutyccw7jx7pp3lk3v4w5xpua36vpv2wqpzemhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2un9d3shjtnrdakj7q3qa2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sxpqqqqqqzavzm8q
3.a. Caustically ironically: the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were NOT interned. https://m.primal.net/KAfp.png Aside for those not well-versed in the history: My grandparents were all natural born citizens (we've been in the US since 1898!), but they were forced into detainment -- worse, the Supreme Court said, "ya, okay, take away their rights."
With or without memes, congress passed the COVID stimulus package called the CARES Act in March 2020 with bipartisan approval where 434 out of 435 representatives voted yes (the exception being Thomas Massie). We all know the perverse effects that the stimulus package caused to the economy yet whoever were against were considered a bad person. That pressured several representatives to vote in favor of the aforementioned act. Having sensible representatives that understands deeply each bill passing trough their desks would be desirable but this is not the reality we live in. It doesn't matter what age we are in or what information we have in hands. Doesn't matter what representatives we have in congress. Eventually bad policies will pass trough because of political pressure, emergencies or even emotional over reason.
This won't happen. Because the financial elite accepted bitcoin in some way. Otherwise it would be prohi bited long ago.
Ban on gold? Oh you mean when they confiscated it? Well that was just a fed mandated resource reallocation and in my opinion govt. overreach.
"Few memes" is interesting phrasing. I'm fascinated by prehistoric memes - anything in particular you're referring to?
this is h0w they c0rrupt the c0re values of ₿itc0in. cust0dial ---> n0n-cu$t0dial de-centralized ---> centralized ETF$ P2P ---> #bitcoin backed $ emp0wer people ---> weap0ni$e #Bitcoin emp0wer warm0nger$ S0vereign ---> $bitcoin backed $laves. https://m.primal.net/KBKN.jpg
The War of Drugs, the War of Terror have been incredibly useful and lucrative scams for all gangsterments worldwide. With #Bitcoin, they stopped the war on it once there was sufficient infrastructure to coopt Bitcoin's original purpose through chainalysis, taxes, KYC onramps, futures/options, ETFs, et cetera. Until that was in place, the WARshington gangsterment did all they could to subvert Bitcoin through various 3 letter gangs #SEC, #FED, #IRS, #DOJ, et cetera. If that were not effective in coopting and looting Bitcoin, they would have banned it and declared a lucrative and formal War on Bitcoin, regardless of "voter" opposition to that. Most Americans tried cannabis at some point in their lives, yet their owners in WARshington still banned it for generations - despite opposing political engagement - and ruined millions of lives in the process. So, political engagement for Bitcoin is overrated; as usual, it mostly benefits lobby organisations, which is a well known and proven lucrative business in the District of Criminals.
Likewise, "checks and balances on powers" within the #US system have always been mythology. The proof is in the constant efforts to "pack" the SCOTUS with judges that shall declare unconstitutional laws constitutional. On anything affecting them, it's always the gangsterment sitting in judgment of itself: 🙃 "what could possibly go wrong?!"👮🕵😂 Don't forget that it's the same gang that declared that there are legal and humane ways to TORTURE people!😂 That was far more recent than FDR crimes, for which no members of their gangsterment were punished in any way in either era! Anything the uniparty members can't monetise for their gangsterment - much less any existential threat like Bitcoin - they simply change the law to marginalise or ban, regardless of their phoney constitution and "checks and balances" charade.
Can U handle the trUth? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skoNAt-ey3I
The US did intern German Americans too, in both WW1 and WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans About 36% of all people interned in WW2 were Germans. There were far more Germans in the US (millions) so interning them all was totally impractical, unlike the much smaller number of Japanese (~125,000). In Hawaii about 1/3rd of the population were Japanese. And again, due to the enormous numbers involved, only a small % were interned. The policies weren't about racism. They were about practicality.
Ngl I did not know this
Interned Germans were mostly German citizens. From your link: "During WWII, the United States detained at least 11,000 ethnic Germans, overwhelmingly German nationals [...] The government examined the cases of German nationals individually" OTOH for Japanese: "The scale of the incarceration in proportion to the size of the Japanese American population far surpassed similar measures undertaken against German and Italian Americans who numbered in the millions and of whom some thousands were interned, most of these non-citizens. [...] A key member of the Western Defense Command, Colonel Karl Bendetsen, went so far as to say “I am determined that if they have "one drop of Japanese blood in them, they must go to camp.""
Like is said, there were far more Germans, making a indiscriminate approach impractical; on Hawaii where there were far more Japanese, the indiscriminate approach was also impractical, and not followed. There's no racial difference here. Just circumstance.
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. There was racism against people of Japanese descent. However, in Hawaii, rationality prevailed due to practical considerations. https://m.primal.net/KDEW.png
Dude, by that standard there was plenty of racism against Germans too... The populations of both Japan and Germany at that time were deserving of scorn and hate. They both supported mass murder and had their own ideologies of superiority. Japan in particular was practically a death cult. Almost everyone alive then is now dead, with the extremists of the time suffering a particularly high death rate. It's also psychologically healthy to dehumanize your enemy in war. You have to kill or capture them, and more often then not it's the first option. No reason to spend valuable sanity worrying about their humanity when they're trying to kill you. That's especially true with large scale wars like WW2 where the whole population is meaningfully working together to kilk you.
"few memes" hits hard
