You don't seem to know much about gov financial regulation.

1. Gov didn't embrace bitcoin, they regulated it. The exchanges have to do KYC and AML monitoring and report activity.

2. If you think FB doesn't 100% control it, I have a bridge to sell you.

3. This doesn't really mean much at the end of the day. It's a tactical decision with low impact on regulations.

What you're failing to appreciate is how important it is for governments to control their financial operations. They don't make it hard just to make it hard. They make it hard because if they don't criminal activity will flourish.

They tax your holdings.

The thing is, money is an iou from the government. If people start using other ious, the influence and power of the government will fade. Result is that libra will control a country.

Bitcoin does not have an "office" that governments can raid. Governments never embraced Bitcoin, they have no choice. It is not within reach of their usual methods of control (law enforcement, diplomacy, warfare).

It would be very easy for the government to shut down Bitcoin:

- Shut down all bitcoin exchanges hosted in the United States

- Make it illegal for banks, credit unions, and other commercial financial institutions to allow their clients to make transactions with a crypto exchange (regardless of the countries where the exchange is hosted), or a blockchain

This would not shut down bitcoin.

If you can't convert your bitcoin into fiat, then your only option is to use your btcs to purchase goods and services directly, which would further disincentivize businesses from accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. And if you can't send fiat to an exchange, you can't increase your holdings.

You can always buy and sell them in person for cash. Like how you buy drugs.

The point is the government can severely hurt Bitcoin adoption by making it illegal, but it cannot completely shut it down.

You could simply convert bitcoin into fiat in the 200+ other countries that are not the United States.

This would require you to open a foreign bank account, which you must tell the U.S. government about. Not telling them is a serious crime. See the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

If that doesn't kill it, they could further make any bitcoin transactions illegal.

I am not sure this would work unless they ban incoming telegraphic transfers.

MtGox and BTC-e are somewhat examples to the contrary.

And what happened to MtGox?

About #1 Bitcoin is decentralized, there is no "office to raid", so whoever said that doesn't know what they are talking about in the least bit.

1. Where are Bitcoin's offices?

Bitcoin mining is actually quite centralized in a few players; and the exchanges have established offices. The gov.s could have done some serious damage.

edit: nice try Satoshi!

They're only centralized because free markets tend to favor centralization. Should the big mining operations be shut down, it would become instantly profitable for smaller miners to switch on again

So what you're saying is we will go raid unrelated folks? Where would you stop, would you also seize assets of people running non-mining nodes?

You forgot to add that many of us suspect Google and Facebook are outsourced DoD projects.

That would be the best kept secret of all time

In the beginning...1993 or so, before Altavista, everyone I knew doing web search came from TLA contractors where they had been long working on similar projects.