You are being very naive, governments can not only create high friction on the interchange of fiat/btc, but ultimately they WILL adapt to the threat and legislate to slow BTC down (look at china if you don't think thats possible), and then finally when capitulation comes (as it must eventually) they WILL legislate to survive.
LOL; Legislating math. What a swell idea!
"Senate house joint bill restricting the use of 2 plus 2 to only equal 5 has been passed in bipartisan committee."-And _I'm_ the naive one?
They might try of course, but it hasn't been working out so well for them with bittorrent and cryptography in general. All legislation attempts in those two areas, which are not coincidentally also pioneered by fellow cypherpunks, have been easily ignored.
So if that means fully adopting BTC, paying your taxes in BTC thats what will happen. These people that dream the dollar and US government are just going to vanish in a puff of BTC smoke, are just that, dreamers.
So you still don't have a clue how to use bitcoin yet? It works person to person with no middleman bro. There's nothing they can do to change that.
Bitcoin cannot be limited in any shape or fashion. Dollars can; Bitcoin cannot. You can write more code, but I won't decide to download your code. That's all there is to it. Once you decide to use only bitcoins, and start Earning bitcoins instead of dollars, your finances cannot be controlled, period. It's literally impossible without some kind of global mind control ray gun.
They can 'fully adopt' it all they want and I'll thank them for doing so. That means they'll pump the price of a single bitcoin up beyond $100,000 or more and I'll gain wealth while they lose it. Thanks government!
Full government adoption doesn't have any downsides for us at all; they might think they're in control of it, but they can't touch the code that people use and therefore can't gain control. When they decide to dump all their holdings? Yes! More cheap coins for us, and they've already legitimized it to the world. Simply no downsides at all.
What I don't fully understand at the moment is why key governments are not hedging their bets by accumulating BTC before their fiat crash comes.
Because they know if that the more they buy, the faster the price goes up, and the sooner they lose control of their fiat monopoly. If I were in charge of preserving the fiat empire right now, (and I wanted to do so) then I'd do exactly what they are doing... Downplaying it as much as they can in the media... That's their best possible weapon despite the fact it has no chance of winning long-term.
Your arrogance is breathtaking 'bro', so much so that I hardly know where to begin, or even whether to bother arguing back.
It's a common simplistic (and patronising) argument to say "you can't legislate math", it's a mask of bravado that seeks to downplay alternative views by belittling them.
Of course it's patently obvious you cannot legislate math, but an economy is not just made up of math, it's real people, and they CAN be controlled.
If (say) the Chinese government makes it a capital crime for an individual to hold bitcoin, you can guarentee 99.99% of the chinese population will say it's not worth the risk.
As far as bitcoin having no middleman, so what? middlemen (banks etc) have been the constructs of control that past governments have used to control the flow of money. But you really believe they are not capable of introducing new control points?? So what happens if US government legislates that all bitcoin addresses must have registered ownership like bank accounts (say at some government website) and that it is hereby illegal for a US citizen or legal entity to transmit BTC to or from any address that is not registered?? Tell me why they can't do that "bro"! Just because software supports bypassing the law, does not mean the majority of people would be willing to do so!
With regard to your reasoning on why governments are not buying bitcoin, it seems to completely miss the point I was making.
When BTC reaches critical mass/tipping point there is going to be a
very very sudden and massive shift of world wealth from fiat to bitcoin (this is basic chaos theory), where those still holding fiat cannot get out fast enough, and those holding bitcoin wont sell. No matter how likely or remote you view that scenario,
as a government you must acknowlege that the risk exists and take steps to protect the nations wealth if that day arrives. I was merely suggesting that as a chancellor of exchequer I would probably be thinking that a billion or two dropped into bitcoin at this stage would be a nice hedge agaist a total devaluation of my native fiat £.
As to why it actually doesn't seem to be happening, I suspect it's more that forward looking governments, (US/Canada/Germany/UK/Sweden etc) realise they can ensure that wealth transfer happens to their countries by making sure their countries are the first adopters of bitcoin. They simply realise that backward thinking countries who try to slow it down (China, Russia etc) will be the bag holders when tipping point is achieved, and thus a seismic shift of world wealth will be kept in the west.
