The reason 99% of people invest in Bitcoin is because they think they will be able to sell Bitcoin for more than they paid for it. Get real.

The reason 99% of people invest in Bitcoin is because they think they will be able to sell Bitcoin for more than they paid for it. Get real.

I believe that Bitcoin and other digital currencies will face a choice: become part of the system that cooperates with law enforcement or lose 95% of it's investors.

I realize there are "Bitcoin OG" or "hardcores" here that feel that a centrally-regulated Bitcoin goes against everything it originally stood for, but if people are given a choice between that or their investment going down by 95%, they are going to... let the government do what it wants .

These days there are probably almost nobody is using Bitcoin to avoid their government, which is what it was originally designed to do: most just think of it as an investment that will yield them a profit. And they pay taxes on their gains, and/or report their holdings to their government just like they would if they bought stocks or commodities.

It's also worth noting that regulations in democracies mostly stem from some kind of crisis or emergency. When the US financial system had major problems in 2008--and millions of people lost their retirement savings--then Congress responded with lots of new regulations. The FTX scandal prompted a lot of regulations for the digital asset world, and I suspect that work isn't yet done.

And now that there are major companies buying US elections like they did in 2024, companies like Ripple, Coinbase, Binance etc. are working every day in Washington to create new regulations that benefit them and disadvantage their competitors. These companies have a financial interest in centralized control as well--even while they go on about the "anti-government" Bitcoin religion in their advertisements.

For me, this portends more and more regulation around Bitcoin and other digital currencies--and the era where criminals can successfully use these products coming to an end. This will be very good for the price of Bitcoin in the long run--which is another reason why it will happen.

Why should bitcoin lose 95% of its investors if it doesn't cooperate with law enforcement?

And you're even talking about centrally regulate bitcoin? And who should it regulate? The US government maybe? I think you're not understanding that if bitcoin is where it is now it's exactly because it's completely decentralized. Bitcoin without decentralization is not bitcoin anymore, it's pointless.

That's not what I meant. I only meant to say that if the US made Bitcoin illegal, it would lose 95% of it's investors and probably a similar margin in market cap.
Hence the US government has extreme leverage over Bitcoin holders, and thus the Bitcoin network itself.

The story that the US (or whatever other country) could ban bitcoin and therefore people would start panic selling etc etc would have been acceptable a few years ago, not not. Why? Mainly because of the ETFs. If the ETFs have been approved despite the democrats and the SEC tried to do whatever the could to stop them, in my opinion it clearly shows that who decides is BlackRock and the other huge investment funds, not the government. And now that the investment funds are making a ton of money thanks to the ETFs and they keep suggesting their customers to buy more bitcoins do you really think the US government could somehow declare them illegal? It won't happen, now it's too late for them to do it.

Besides the approval from the regulation sector, it is also resistant to changes in the protocol, as evidently experienced in the block size war era. The 2016-17 was a very important period for bitcoin, because it turned out that people who seem very powerful could not modify the rules to their benefit; no one would rather have a fork over the original, no matter the influence.

There is not "no fork". There is fork, chain is split into two. People who own bitcoin will own coins in both chains. This isn't a matter of resisting to political pressure, it's just the nature of things. It is then down to people to decide which fork to use. They could very well use both. Or sell one to buy the other.

I know that you understand that the "illegal fork" will become worthless and you don't even consider it, but I think it's very important to draw a line over what literally will happen versus what you speculate that will happen.

I'm really struggling to follow you: how could BlackRock make more money after pushing the US government to make bitcoin illegal?