Okay so, bitcoin is outright banned in some countries, so the banning of bitcoin is already a reality. The major government including Russia, China, and the USA (just to name a few) could also ban bitcoin and cryptocoins in general. My questions to you guys are: What do you think will happen to bitcoin? If any, what is your plan of action and what would you like to see from the community in terms of continuation and development? Bitcoin probably will never die but the banning of bitcoin could change the whole dynamics (let alone a temporary major price dip).
I'll give my thoughts first. I think bitcoin will grow and develop into what we want it to be regardless of the legal status. Fundamentally what bitcoin represents is anti-authoritarian and governments banning of it should not much of an impact fundamentally. Sure the price will suffer for at least a while although still climb "to the moon" probably, but as far as technical development and social spreading goes, I think that will continue. Unfortunately that could mean that it operates in the black market only for a while which would slow things down but I do think that would be a temporary affect. I am curious though if the governments could have a strong enough desire to destroy bitcoin or prevent it from growing past a certain point, that they could actually do that. So I wonder what you guys' thoughts are.
Definitely. Bitcoin is designed to be functional, even without a government that says "you can do this but you can't do that". Essentially bitcoin itself is developed into a decentralized economy, which activity would thrive even though the government may want to ban bitcoin.
And there is really no way for a government to ban bitcoin completely, as it is difficult to shut down due to the decentralized and peer to peer protocol that this payment system bitcoin is built on.