Many people will become criminals. Some people will become violent criminals. The country’s economy lags behind the rest of the world while they all innovate, train people in new, useful skills, build new businesses, create new markets, and thrive.
Some countries have already banned cryptocurrency, like Venezuela, so we can look what is happening there. They banned it because they’re increasing the supply of their money to pay off debt. This over supply of money means prices go up, and they’re going up so fast that many people there would rather use another medium of exchange. This lowers demand for the government money even more that it becomes worth less. To combat this, the government made it illegal to use other currency. This is appallingly corrupt, and I hope the people of Venezuela understand what their government is doing and try and make it better. As an interesting side effect, many are turning to using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange or actually mining Bitcoin directly. You can read more about it here: Bitcoin is exploding in Venezuela — but not for the reason you think. Of course, the government is arresting Bitcoin miners and trying to stop people from using it.
If the United State’s government wanted to ban cryptocurrency, people would have to be convinced, and, more importantly, amenable to being convinced, that banning cryptocurrency was good. This has already been done.
In the 1920s, enough people thought alcohol wasn’t worth the trouble and made it straight up illegal until 1933. That’s 13 years of no alcohol unless you’re willing to make or buy it illegally. The only people willing to risk the increased cost of producing and selling it illegal also happened to use violence to achieve their ends. When you think of the mob in the 1920s, you’re thinking of people getting rich off selling alcohol.
Sound familiar?
Of course, there’s a similar condition now with marijuana, but public opinion is starting to change. With it, the government is changing. People are less amenable to thinking weed should be banned.
There would have to be a few scares to make people think cryptocurrency was something to ban. Perhaps a massive market crash in price, and if many businesses were invested, perhaps they suffer. This would get the media and public attention focused on cryptocurrency. Once it’s in people’s minds, you push as many stories about people losing their fortunes, drug dealers using Bitcoin and Monero to take payments, child pornography rings using it to sell videos online, and so on. Eventually, people start to have negative opinions about cryptocurrency. Kids start debating if it’s good or bad in political science classes. People make YouTube videos of people getting “owned” in debates on whether or not we need to be protected from cryptocurrency by the government.
You wouldn’t see a straight ban at first. It’d start with some “reasonable restrictions” such as requiring any business which sells cryptocurrency to require ID from the customer, as well as forcing business to abide by other KYC / AML laws, for your protection of course. Or requiring merchants who take cryptocurrency transactions to check the sender address to see if it’s associated with a known terrorist group, communist party, domestic terrorist, and so on.
This probably won’t happen at all unless some group with a lot of money gets threatened. Let’s say a all financial institutions were suddenly being forced to adapt and compete with new innovations being built on the permission-less blockchains of Bitcoin and Ethereum. What if they start losing significant business to these new startups and can’t adapt the technology for themselves because it effectively dis-intermediates them out of the market and they’re no longer needed. The trust functions they provided are inherent properties of proof-of-work secured, open, blockchain, Uh oh!
They’re not going to just go out like the saddle makers when cars were invented or candle makers when light bulbs got popular. They’re going to fight. You’ll see it in the legislature and in the court of public opinion via the media.
I hope that if cryptocurrency is threatened, that those in the United States, including myself, are capable of agreeing on a form of government which is most beneficial to everyone, and that produces the most wealth and economic progress. I believe this form of government is one which doesn’t ban cryptocurrencies.
Resources : quora.com