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Hypothetically, if it were a well coordinated NSA-type shut down and ALL ISP's suddenly blocked port 8332 (major ones anyway), how would the Bitcoin system immediately handle it?
What if ISP's block port 8332?
Answers
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Bitcoin can be configured to handle any port for both peer-to-peer communication, as well as JSON RPCs. However, as Bitcoin clients do not encrypt their messages, it would still be fairly easy to filter out Bitcoin-related activities. One could then switch to using Bitcoin through TOR, or the developers could implement message encryption if needed be.
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We would all switch to port 80.
Port 80 is HTTP standard; many servers running Bitcoin are also running websites, so I doubt that would work. AFAIK, though, just switching ports in the client software would work. – BinaryMage – 2012-05-16T05:40:41.940
2Yes, mostly my answer was to illustrate the futility of trying to kill Bitcoin by port blocking. – Tuxavant – 2012-05-16T11:34:45.120