Comment by majormajor
4 hours ago
You say "devalue the paper currency even more" but if bitcoin holders need to be bailed in any given country aren't we talking about a scenario where bitcoin is the thing that's lost a bunch of value? Some sort of "it turns out shady bitcoin holders or companies were artificially pumping up the value in a sneaky way and then someone connected the dots" situation?
First thing that comes to mind off the top of my head as a US-Govt option here would be something like: bail out US people/companies of bitcoin holdings in USD in conjunction with banning bitcoin in the US going forward. So that would be quite the string of events at that point for non-US bitcoin holders: first a crash that caused all these US bitcoin holders to go screaming to the government for help. Then the overnight removal of a huge chunk of the bitcoin market, coupled with either a firesale to comply with the ban or US gov seizure of a bunch of the coins, which will push the price lower for anyone who hasn't sold yet since their buyer pool is now much lower.
I wouldn't be surprised if the US government doesn't attempt something just like this in the next 3-5 years. There are a lot of people fleeing the very inflationary US dollar for BTC. I think at this point it would be too late though. There are too many countries, individuals and corporations around the world that own BTC for it to be successful. There was a long term holder that dumped 24,000BTC onto the market in August and the price dropped down about 5% for maybe half a day before recovering, and it's not going to be long until other countries follow El Salvador's lead and invite Bitcoin owners to live there tax free. If the USA bans Bitcoin there will be a massive brain drain of very intelligent people who will just move to those countries.
> If the USA bans Bitcoin there will be a massive brain drain of very intelligent people who will just move to those countries.
Is that really possible? Can we do this today?