"No leftist, or even middle-of-the-road, government will accept that."<p>It is funny that the author equates left-leaning with freedom limiter. In reality, a left-leaning government limits economic freedoms, and a right-leaning government limits social freedoms. A virtual currency is not only a threat to economic control but, since economics underpin the rest of social interactions, it is a direct threat on social policy monopoly. So it is also a threat to right-leaning governments.<p>So it is not the entitlement state which will fight bitcoin but, quite simply, "The State". It doesn't follow the state will succeed.<p>"When men are free to choose, they choose gold."<p>Ha! Those men who are free to choose, pay as little a wage as possible to some other poor bastard who will sell his time in order to perform all tasks related to arcane metal verification, so that he can be halfway certain that their gold is really gold, that it is properly stored, and that it is properly handled during transfers (to pay for things, otherwise what is the point?). They will also pay journalists to write articles about how great gold is.<p>For <i>any</i> men to choose freely, technology must come helping, to lower the costs of handling the value storage. Bitcoin is here for that. Maybe rich men will continue to hoard gold, but the cost of doing so will be much higher than those of handling bitcoins. So, one would assume, at some point rich men will do their math and switch to bitcoin. Of course, not before all risks associated with bitcoin have been cleared - rich men are very conservative with regards of where to put their savings, prefering high fees (which they make up for with their multiple businesses, or government association) to uncertainty. Later, when they move to bitcoin, they will sing the "I-knew-this-bitcoing-thing-would-fly-and-was-there-since-the-beginning" song.