Realistically, if any alternative currency starts giving a sovereign currency any real competition inside a sovereign controlled market, it will get shut down more or less immediately.
If X% of Americans or [insert nation] are doing their transactions with bitcoin and the Treasury is losing a measurable percentage of income stream it's game over. Best case, it gets nationalized and [new currency] will be mandated to be pegged to the sovereign currency and taxed appropriately.
The existential political aspect is what these folks seem to not understand.
Bitcoin is a commodity, not a currency. Bartering commodities is already a taxable event and the IRS handles that just fine. There's nothing really new here.
While it's true that Federal courts have ruled that cryptocurrencies are commodities, I'm addressing what the coinbase founder and team are stating as their desired goal.
If you read the foundational paper from Satoshi, stateless decentralized currency was always the end goal. Philosophical proponents, like the coinbase founder, continue to state that it's still the goal which is what I'm addressing.
If X% of Americans or [insert nation] are doing their transactions with bitcoin and the Treasury is losing a measurable percentage of income stream it's game over. Best case, it gets nationalized and [new currency] will be mandated to be pegged to the sovereign currency and taxed appropriately.
The existential political aspect is what these folks seem to not understand.