Quote from: wheresTheCatch on January 26, 2014, 10:30:42 AM

it's really a mystery what will happen. If goverments will start to control bitcoin like they do with fiat currencies, or ban it entirely, the price may acctually drop. I really hope this doesn't happen.

On the other hand I would really prefer if the price of bitcoin stopped at what it ist now. The variability in BTC price is really bad, `cause services are affraid to accept it as a currency, as it is risky. Little more stability would really help bitcoin to be widely accepted imho.

I agree, but how exactly would they do this?

I think the bitcoin economy could self regulate in terms of blacklisting stolen coins etc if there's a concensus on what a stolen coin looks like and it's verifiable, but I don't see how the governments can control it. Cash, for example, is preferred by criminals for a reason. It's untraceable. It's not impossible to trace a bitcoin transaction to a person, but it's not easy as far as I know.

If the government moves to remove the anonymity of bitcoin somehow, that will probably affect things. Not sure how they would do that though. Especially if you have an offline wallet.