Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: What would happen if US government made Bitcoin illegal?
by
pushups44
on 15/06/2019, 07:10:24 UTC
Let's say tomorrow there's a US law that any US person who gets caught with bitcoin server goes automatically to jail for lifetime.
And the 2400 US bitcoin nodes would go offline.
What would happen to price?
What would happen to hash power?
How long would it take to recover?
Let's speculate!

First off, this law would be challenged in the courts, so it would likely not be implemented any time soon. But assuming the law were somehow put into place and approved by Congress, it would have a severely negative effect on bitcoin in terms of price and network activity. There would be an underground market, obviously. I suspect most Americans would sell their bitcoin to the government or whoever is willing to buy it. Perhaps seeing the antagonism to bitcoin, China and Russia would consider it an alternative to the U.S. dollar, thus possibly offsetting the impact of American prohibition.

Bitcoin would still be around, however.