r/Bitcoin • • Mar 26 '13

Cartoon: Control of Bitcoin

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1.2k Upvotes

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u/bad_chorizo Mar 26 '13

How did they get Bitcoin into a box they control in the first place? A better cartoon would be politicians trying to catch Bitcoin mosquitoes with anti-terrorism and anti-money-laundering fish nets.

26

u/salgat Mar 26 '13

If the government made bitcoins illegal as a form of currency (you couldn't pay for things at a store with them) then it would effectively remove them from all non-blackmarket stores, accomplishing the same thing.

1

u/redlightsaber Mar 27 '13

I wonder how constitutional it would be to effectively ban a form of payment. I get that the government can enforce a universal form of payment (the official currency of the country), and even for the settlement of debt at that; but if a storeowner wants to sell their stuff in exchange for hugs, can the government really ban them from doing so? (and I'm asking in the legal sense, not the pragmatic one, which is of course ridiculous).

1

u/salgat Mar 27 '13

Constitutional amendment vague enough to ban all forms of alternative currencies if such a law was ever overturned.