Not to mention that it would be extremely easy for the FBI to just, like, find miners and tell them to shut stuff down (at least US miners). A coordinated worldwide effort and bitcoin dissapears overnight.
I think the only way to stop bitcoin is economically, like say Satoshi appears destabilizing the market.
There's also the issue that, if governments are seizing the mining hardware, if they gather enough of it they could perform 51% attacks against the chain to effectively prevent it from working.
That said, there is an early wallet that is attributed to Satoshi with a giant amount of early mined BTC in it. If it ever moves, people will flip out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto
"Nakamoto owns between 750,000 and 1,100,000 bitcoin. As of November 2021, that puts his net worth at up to 73 billion US dollars, which would make him the 15th richest person in the world.[21]"
Similarly, I've watched several retro-game preservation communities[1] I've been a part of disappear mysteriously overnight. Certain sets are still very difficult to find on public trackers and the private ones are difficult to get into.
In other words, they may not be able to eliminate it but they can make it very inconvenient.
[0] Yes, I know this isn't backed by bittorrent.
[1] Backed by bittorrent but having little to do with Hollywood.
[2] Actually I guess Exodus was first. I always forget which one was the fork.
In the end, it _is_ still illegal activity, where being "inconvenient" is typically par for the course.
BTC does a perfectly good job of this on its own, no state intervention needed.
The minute the fed considers Bitcoin and crypto to be a risk, they'll axe it. Coinbase or not.
I think the CIA likes having Bitcoin as a means for foreign nationals to exfiltrate money. That's harder to do now in certain countries, but still possible.
And the FBI likes being able to watch where the money flows.
Yes, but I thought the whole point of prohibition (unless you're living in that weird period between 18th amendment and 21st amendment) is that it was a terrible idea, never to be repeated again.
> The minute the fed considers Bitcoin and crypto to be a risk, they'll axe it. Coinbase or not.
This doesn't make sense, you presume that Fed has zero understanding of consequences of their actions.
Fed may consider something to be a risk and yet not act on it. Just because they haven't acted on it, doesn't mean they don't consider it to be a risk.
Alcohol you can drink
Part one would be a note of the laws establishing the Treasury Department's mandate to regulate financial instruments.
Part two would be a finding that cryptocurrencies are harmful to the interests of the USA.
Part three would be an order to the Secretary of the Treasury to determine what businesses are involved in cryptocurrencies, and to take the following sanctions: ...
prohibit any transfers of credit or payments between financial institutions, or by, through, or to any financial institution, to the extent that such transfers or payments are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and involve any interest of the sanctioned business;
prohibit any United States financial institution from making loans or providing credit to the sanctioned business;
(iv) prohibit any transactions in foreign exchange that are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and in which the sanctioned business has any interest;
(v) prohibit any United States person from investing in or purchasing significant amounts of equity or debt instruments of the sanctioned business;
Form and specific sanctions taken from EO 2021-27505, from December 17 2021.
"Untestedly" being the important part. There is no practical limit on the orders that can be issued but actually enforcing those rules on anyone outside the executive branch is a different matter. Also, you skipped over the parts of EO 2021-27505 where (a) it required declaring a (rather dubious IMHO) state of emergency, (b) the sanctions were previously authorized by Congress in the Fentanyl Sanctions Act, and (c) all the sanctions applied to "foreign persons", not citizens. There is no state of emergency, sanctions were not authorized by Congress, and you want to sanctions citizens of the United States and locally-owned businesses.
Also Japanese American internment camps.
You think shutting down Coinbase is bigger than that?