The PRC, which is the largest political entity in the world, and oversees the largest country and the second largest economy on Earth already tried that. The Chicoms banned all financial institutions from facilitating bitcoin trading and from holding any bitcoin on their own. Bitcoin exchanges and platforms were banned and shut down nearly six years ago.
In 2021 the Chinese banned all bitcoin trading and mining.
It barely made a dent in Bitcoin. Most the mining facilities moved to Kazakhstan within a few months, and when political turmoil engulf Kazakstan, most mining moved to the US.
The bitcoin ecosystem can essentially be uprooted on a whim if needed and moved elsewhere. And on top of that, China is STILL the second largest bitcoin mining hub in the world, even with a totalitarian police state enforcing the national ban.
How competent do you think every other government will be in banning it? Not very is the correct answer.
A crackdown on bitcoin by the US government simply isn't likely, but if it were to happen, the most likely form would take is a 6102 attack, which was the Executive Order that FDR used to seize gold and ban it from private use.
But gold did not cease to be a useful store of value and commodity simply because the US banned it.
It outlasted FDR, as bitcoin will outlast any tyrant, and there are some very simple steps you can take to protect yourself if a 6102 attack were to come.
But a 6102 attack will happen BECAUSE of bitcoin's value, not in spite of it.
Add to that the belief that scarcity is also simply contrived.
Your second paragraph is just repeated the tautology of "valuable things are valuable until they're not valuable", and I don't find this to be a compelling reason to doubt bitcoin.
The scarcity isn't contrived, it's built right into the code itself and can't be changed.
Right now, it is the most valuable digital asset in the world because of its potential. It is 9th most valuable asset of any type, and will likely overtake silver this month. It will probably be in the top 3 by the end of the year, and overtaking gold will likely come in the next 5-10 years, maybe sooner.
The bitcoin network has the potential to have entire sub-chains built on top of it, including card payment and cross-border payment networks (Lightning was just the beginning). SWIFT handles something like $50 trillion in funds transfers annually. If an off chain bitcoin network could overtake just 1% of that, you would see bitcoin be the most valuable asset in the world by a factor of 10x and beyond.
Understanding it requires retiring old ways of thinking about fiat, assets, and wealth, and trying to pigeonhole it into a financial system that is outdated by hundreds of years (compared to what's possible) is why so many people claim to not understand it.
The concepts of bitcoin of easy to understand, and I could explain it to you in 10 minutes with a pencil and notepad and some back and forth.
It looks like we’re going to have to agree to disagree. I understand that you feel pretty strongly about this and you’re willing to put a lot of time into your argument. But for me it’s more something I’m just casually interested in and I’m just waiting for the day when I can say,”I told you so.”
But I could be wrong. After all, I’ve never played the stock market because I see that as gambling as well. So it just goes against my personality type and my sensibilities about risk. I actually hope for the sake of those that are really tied into it that I am wrong. Time will tell. I think it’s already lasted longer than tulips did, right?😁