"You can't ban crypto, you can just ban yourself from it"

We are witnessing significant steps being taken towards the regulation of crypto... all under the guise of protecting users. Whether it is to truly protect the users or to protect banking system from crypto nobody truly knows.

Here is the current map of crypto legality by country. Pretty green for now...

Crypto legality by country - image from Bitrawr

So.. crypto is pretty widespread by now. If big leaders want to slow down crypto the easiest way would be to cut it out from the banking system completely. You can tell banks to not allow people to send money to crypto exchanges etc. That's the big lever that can be pulled by USA, Europe and others... depending ofc on how shortsighted their politicians are.

Even if they somehow manage to shut it down in mentioned regions, other countries like Singapore/UAE etc could go and say - Come, build your business here. So in the long run this is simply a poor strategy.

In essence, you don't ban crypto... you just ban yourself from it.

At this stage crypto, and BTC especially is basically like a virus that is impossible to contain. And it all started in Satoshi's lab... and we can't even find the guy :p

Sources and ideas from: https://www.bitrawr.com/terminal/legality-map https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/why-governments-cant-ban-bitcoin