It's hard to create and distribute a new currency, and convince people that it's worth something. Bitcoin has done that, and it will be hard for even governments to convince people that there's a better option.
[1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/19418/bitcoin-friendly-bills-unv...
2. States don't have their own currencies, so other than the ease of use of US Dollars, they really wouldn't care what you pay your taxes in, so long as they can use it.
So yes, a government could set up an e-currency and make us use it, but there's no way a government could (intentionally) set up a currency like bitcoin. Truly algorithmic e-currency is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of governing. Anything by a government would allow reversals, currency injections, invisible transactions, etc.
(1) What difference does "direct lineage" have? They aren't gold, and they aren't backed by gold. Unless you arguing that they have sentimental value from a historical association that hasn't been real for generations, this is meaningless.
(2) Also, this is more true of silver than it is of gold. the gold standard was sort of a brief fad (in long-term historical terms) in the final centuries of commodity currency standards as the dominant model, while silver had dominated for a much longer time previously. Pretty much all of the extant currencies that have a "direct lineage from gold" also have a direct lineage from silver, and the ones that aren't themselves relatively new have a much longer history under silver.
I don't buy this premise. Lots of online games have also done this. They do this by finding a target audience and hooking them in, and then saying "If you want more you have to pay."
BitCoin just targeted libertarians. People have made other BitCoin forks for other audiences. Granted none of them took off like BitCoin, but that's because they were all pretty much jokes targeted at a small niche.
No one buys game currencies to hold. They buy them to spend. If you don't understand why people are excited about Bitcoin, you should go find out. It's a trustless database in the sky, and that sort of thing wasn't possible before 2009. New technologies make old analogies misleading.
Ironically, this means that the game currencies are much closer to functioning as an actual currency than bitcoin.
This is actually not true. But I'm not going to get into it since you don't think BitCoin's political alignments are relevant, and you are talking down to me at the same time.
Personally I do think the creator should be unmasked. This person stands to profit hugely from BitCoin's adoption and continued use. I want to know if they really are doing it for eventual personal financial gain or not. And what kind of person they are, how the massive amount of money they gain will be used. Maybe Satoshi was a secret CIA project all along and the government will use the huge BitCoin stash to fund black ops that we'd rather not have happen. Maybe it was similar but the KGB instead. Maybe it was some lone hacker or group of hackers like Mr. Szabo, and they threw away the keys. Or maybe they didn't throw away the keys but they will just eventually split it up and give the money to their children. There's lots of good and bad possibilities, none of which we know until the identity of Satoshi is revealed.
Personally, I have always been skeptical of BitCoin. There's no reason why it should be the crypto currency. If cryptocurrencies do take off as more than just a toy for libertarians and rich technophiles, then governments will start their own fork and decree that these are the official cryptocurrencies of their nations, and all others are junk. Over night the value of BitCoin will plummet, because the wider population will choose the government backed one.