Can Bitcoin be Stopped?

The simplest answer to this question is it depends. Stopping Bitcoin is no easy task. Trying to do it with technology is not easy, because the design harnesses the combined resources of all miners on the network. A successful attacker would need to control at least as much resources on their own, which gives significant cost and possible repercussions to anybody intent on trying it. As Bitcoin grows so does the protection. Imagine taking on millions or even billions of people around the world with interest in Bitcoin succeeding. Even governments would find that problematic.

Even this attack vector, called a successful 51% attack, wouldn't stop Bitcoin, only cause damage to a certain time period of transactions. It's also not possible to stop bitcoin transactions from happening without shutting down the entire Internet.

In other words, at a certain point if enough people support Bitcoin there is no stopping it either by technical or legal means.

back to homepage