Quote from: arklan on November 17, 2013, 02:55:18 AM

Quote from: Love_and_Squalor on November 17, 2013, 02:35:53 AM

Quote from: arklan on November 17, 2013, 02:17:06 AM

Just had an interesting discussion about bitcoin with a guy I just met. Fascinating. He's well versed and seems to get it fully, yet thinks governments won't allow it. No "oh, you out smarted us!" or such. He may be right. Yet he acknowledged it couldn't be shut down, just outlawed.

Who else is ok with bitcoin being "just" an underground thing, eh? Grin

if thats the case say goodbye to exponential growth. we'd see no new money and have people leave altogether. I would. The main reason i like bitcoin is due to its growth potential. Its cool it can be used to buy drugs anonymously(kind of) and it could still retain that use, but the demand for it would plummet and as a basic economic principle price would follow

Oh, completely true. It would certainly never reach the 100k level or such. But there's a lot of head room, in theory, between here and there. Or I'm delusional and outlawing would be a death knell.

Also, nah, he was a techy type, not financial or government.

i wish i knew more about bitcoins demographic, and who is capable in moving the market the most. I've dabbled in the forex market, and learned that the big financial institutions are the major market movers.not the average trader. So i wonder if the early bitcoin adopters have the most power as they probably have the most btc. I wonder who the average speculator is. I wonder how many wallstreet types are invested in bitcoin, if any are in the first place. Because that is what i think is key to large growth. and that kind of investor wont give a damn about bitcoins regulation and might even be more comfortable with a more regulated crypto. once/if wallstreet types start to buy up most of the crypto we should see really good growth

i am fairly confident the govt wont outlaw btc outright. They might introduce new regulation, but we've already seen this as exchanges now have KYC-AML policies. i think this hearing is just talk for now. besides it would probably take a few years to write new legislation and have it go into effect.