I posted this earlier today, and earlier than that as an Ask HN. I promise after this I won't post it again, at least for awhile. This seems sufficiently important that it's worth a slight annoyance.

What should we do about the destabilizing potential of Bitcoin?

There are two facts about Bitcoin worth worrying about:

1. There is no upper bound on the price

2. Everyone who thought the price won't continue to exponentially increase was wrong

Greed is a powerful motivator.

It's easy to smile at this[1] but it will only take a couple more 10x increases before people stop laughing.

What happens when governments start putting money into Bitcoin because they don't want their economy to be left out? It'll only make the price go up even further.

It might be a good idea to take a step back for a moment and stop thinking "Can I get rich?" and start thinking "Before this reaches a point where we should worry, what should we do?"

I'm aware that this has roughly a 0.1% chance of happening. But if you'll suspend your disbelief for a few minutes and accept "What if it might be true?" then you'll find it's an interesting question worth thinking about.

It's starting to feel like no one really has a plan for this contingency. It will be a relief if the price crashes back to $1k, but Bitcoin defies belief. How many of you have parents that are seriously talking about getting in? Everyone wants to become rich. And if that infectious mindset spreads to the whole population, we might get an uncontrolled upward spiral.

Is there a way to prevent that?

Now, to add to the discussion: Several people have voiced that there is no reason to worry, both because it's impossible for BTC to hit $1M/coin and because this is all conjecture. But there is every indication that the BTC craze could in fact spread to the entire world -- literally nobody will be able to escape thinking about it, because that is what the world values. This has low probability, but just like climate change, it's worth planning for it now rather than later. Can we please try to think of something? Look at this[2] and let that graph sink in.

Fiction is also worth taking seriously. Satellites were predicted by fiction long before they were deployed. Many of the most influential ideas start as works of art. The dystopian future as envisioned in [1] is a far cry from how things would turn out, but the underlying idea is that we will become subservient to a tiny few. It's only a matter of time before that money starts turning into real power.

So, if we could set aside our selfishness and try to snap out of the getting-rich craze, and ask "Can we possibly stop this?" it would probably be one of the most impactful ways you could spend a few minutes.

Making BTC illegal won't work. It'll just go to countries where it's not, and take the people with them.

I don't think it would be possible to sneak a backdoor into BTC. People would notice by now. And even if it works, they'd just fork and preserve the wealth.

Even if one were to theoretically become batshit insane and try to hunt down everyone who holds BTC, that won't work either, because it's easy to conceal. The price of mixing services will just rise to the point of taking transaction fees into account, and that's how much people will start to pay.

I can't think of anything else. Ideas?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_time...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7f3z8j/btc_price_a...