Because you're talking about bitcoin effectively replacing the dollar, the yen, the yuan, etc throughout the world. Governments aren't going to give up control over their currency without a fight. I am bullish about bitcoin, but not that bullish. Yes, it's peer to peer, the government can't just shut it down like they could with, Ripple for example, but my bet is that one or several governments would execute a 51% attack against bitcoin if it truly got to the point where it would be threatening their control over their own currency. Even if it gets to the point where it would cost $1 billion to execute such an attack, I think the government would do it if that's their only way of controlling bitcoin.
But a government is not an abstract entity sitting somewhere in a capital city and making plans how to hold onto its power. Governments are made up by people and if these people find it more profitable to use bitcoin than to destroy it, they will do exactly that.
I think most people underestimate how many people there are out there, who like to use bitcoin for things they can't even imagine. And most people also understimate how long it takes for someone who does not have the right background on cryptography, comp sci and economics to truly understand the power of bitcoin.
Profit is exactly the reason I think governments would want to eventually take down bitcoin. By profit, I mean taxes.
It's much harder to tax people with a completely bitcoin based economy than it is with a dollar, yen, etc based economy, at least with the case of income taxes. Sales taxes wouldn't really be much, if at all, more difficult than the current system. I actually would prefer a sales-tax based economy over an income tax system, except for the fact that it's regressive.
It is really easy.
- gov says: If you want to use Bitcoin then you must register public key of your deterministic wallet. (gov will know every your address)
- then gov will know about every transaction who is sender, who is recipient and amount. (unregistered addresses will become illegal)
