Re:Ask HN: Could ISPs Stop Bitcoin?
by ghosts_ on Sunday November 10, 2019 @10:13AM
(#21498223)
ISP's could easily stop Bitcoin, I don't really think anyone claims they can't? Bitcoin isn't mean to be an impossible to kill hydra of economic power, but a decentralized, peer-to-peer, trustworthy ledger of transactions.
ISP's could block the common ports Bitcoin uses (but that would likely break a lot of other applications), they could potentially blacklist certain IP's, but because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin this would likely only affect discovery in a minimal manner. ISP's could also inspect packets to determine if the traffic is Bitcoin related, but potentially something like TOR could prevent that inspection, if enough ISP's inspect & block Bitcoin TOR would likely not be of help (as it simply protects the transit of data, not the entry/exit).
Definitely a lot of ways BTC could be affected. Governments could also outright ban it and that would destroy the network as it would lose a huge amount of value as a serious asset.
Re:Ask HN: Could ISPs Stop Bitcoin?
by ghosts_ on Sunday November 10, 2019 @10:14AM
(#21498235)
Adding to this - ISPs likely would never try any of the above, simply because it would hurt their public perception, isn't worth the time, and is potentially illegal depending on the area.
ISP's could block the common ports Bitcoin uses (but that would likely break a lot of other applications), they could potentially blacklist certain IP's, but because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin this would likely only affect discovery in a minimal manner. ISP's could also inspect packets to determine if the traffic is Bitcoin related, but potentially something like TOR could prevent that inspection, if enough ISP's inspect & block Bitcoin TOR would likely not be of help (as it simply protects the transit of data, not the entry/exit).
BGP is also a pretty serious vector for a bad actor ISP to utilize, check out the following article: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/11/evil_isps_could_dis...
Definitely a lot of ways BTC could be affected. Governments could also outright ban it and that would destroy the network as it would lose a huge amount of value as a serious asset.