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BITCOIN Bitcoin [BTC] cannot be stopped by the governments, says Andreas M AntonopoulosPriya Published 19 hours ago on September 7, 2018 By Priya
Bitcoin [BTC] cannot be stopped by the governments, says Andreas M Antonopoulos Source: Unsplash
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Andreas M Antonopoulos, a Bitcoin advocate, during a Question and Answer session on whether Bitcoin is testing governments, explains the role of Bitcoin and the critical impact it has on governments worldwide.
After speaking about his views on Bitcoin and the very first message imprinted on the Bitcoin block, Andreas was questioned about the people’s responsibility towards the currency and the government.
He response started with the power of ideas and the idea of Bitcoin. He said:
“Ideas are powerful and ideas change the future money effectively than any other thing in the history of humanity. Not people, ideas. And the good news is that Bitcoin isn’t people, its ideas.”
Andreas said that although there were a lot of people behind Bitcoin, fundamentally it is an idea. He continued to say:
“… and in one really beautiful way, it’s an idea that has been distilled into some mathematical formulas and put together as software. So that idea now runs on the internet and it doesn’t run in one place on the internet.”
According to him, the idea of Bitcoin has been set free and runs everywhere, when better understood, its simple to implement. He further adds that out of the 100 people who have contributed to the code, there are people who have picked up this idea and recreated the whole code in a weekend. This was followed by the people writing the whole code a new, leading to the creation of a variety of codes that have not been seen before. However, this also makes the idea dangerous as it is ‘unstoppable’.
Since the idea itself is unstoppable, the government considers it their authority to stop cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, and Bitcoin. This is mainly the government’s general application of power is to stop things. Andreas said:
“… and when you talk to people in government’s there is something funny that happens, which is, they assume that you are questioning their authority, they assume that you are questioning whether they are duly authorized, that they have the moral authority to stop cryptocurrencies, to stop blockchain, to stop Bitcoin.”
Andreas clarifies that he is not questioning the authority of the governments but their ability to act on their authority. He stated that the governments can have ‘all the authority in the world’ but have zero ability to act on it.
He further stated that governments are being tested by Bitcoin. According to him, Bitcoin forces the governments to reveal their true color. Andreas said that countries which respect individual’s freedom support Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies or at least allow cryptocurrencies to continue, opposed to countries which do not respect individual’s freedom of their own citizens.
The Bitcoin Advocate continued to state that governments which appear to be free will also be challenged by this test. According to him, these governments are eventually going to fail Bitcoin, when things are ‘hunky-dorky’ and because the country’s own currency is suffering.
Andreas stated that people who use Bitcoin are called terrorists by the Government of Turkey, Government of India and the Government of Venezuela. He considers this ironic because, to him, some of these countries sponsor terrorism. After which, these governments propagate that Bitcoin is used to fund terrorism, criminal activities and buy drugs.
He said:
“as if there’s any form of money that is not used to do those things, and this is a great irony because money is a tool to convey value and if you’re conveying value, of course, you’re going to use it to convey value on things that are not strictly legal or at least in this country or that country. They’re not strictly legal, all money has been used to do that forever. the illeg