I don't see how its possible to support that statement. Bitcoin is under review by U.S. regulatory agencies (and probably in the E.U. as well), and the folks I've spoken to who work in and around the U.S. government expect to drop the hammer before the year is out, or by 2014 at the latest if a determination is made that new legislation will be required.
What mostly have been taking flack (when governments actually try and understand things rather than like Thailand just passing random laws) isn't BitCoin itself, but some of the business practices surrounding this.
E.g. Mt Gox acts as an exchange & bank, which should be subject to banking rules but which they don't comply with. A little bit more regulation in banking level areas isn't a bad thing. There should be guarantees between the time you send off your coins to a central party and the time you get it back. So where financial services are involved, regulation is prudent. Nobody wants BitCoin to be littered with ponzi schemes and scams.
Contrast Thailand to Germany, where BitCoin is now an official unit of accounting.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100971898
For that matter, even Texas declared it an official currency:
http://rt.com/usa/bitcoin-sec-shavers-texas-231/
Frankly, its just a modern version of the gold standard, economically speaking. The only advantage that I see is that it might be a handy tool if you want to break the law. But I think it is fairly overrated even in that capacity.
I'm glad that you say it's akin to a gold standard. At least it's backed by something real, which is the tremendous amount of computational power provided by the BitCoin mines, which exists to keep the integrity of the transaction system alive. I believe we're now at a stage that even the largest worldwide BotNet can't create a fake transaction anymore. Now compare that to how easily cash is forged.
The huge advantage of BitCoin is that it provides the only secure form of payment on the internet where the customer is in real control of his money. Any centralized system is subject to central vulnerabilities and get their information leaked all the time. How many times have you received a new credit card just because some or other way your previous one was compromised?
So now we have to guard our credit card numbers for dear life, and even then you get screwed every now and again because of someone else's fault. I've once left for a 14 day trip to Europe only to have my credit card revoked while I was on the flight over as a precautionary measure about a web site that was cracked 3 months prior! Not fun trying to get a new card issued from 5000 miles away when you move countries every 2 days.
In contrast, here's my BitCoin wallet address. Knock yourself out. You aint getting a penny (or a satoshi) out of it that I don't want you to have.
19KBY9fAGRfbZ9r2GCnSSYf2pgYyqBQ45N
And if the U.S. decides to regulate it out of existence, I'll bet on the NSA before I bet on Bitcoin.
The NSA can archive every transaction in the blockchain if they want. Doing so would give them much better traceability than a cash transaction would
ever get them. If you have a bitcoin address, try the following. Click on:
http://whatismyipaddress.com/
Then find your IP address, and type it into blockchain.info:
http://blockchain.info
It's a bit muddled, but essentially most of your transactions are there.
Or alternatively, look at this test example. The following is 'BTC Guild', a mining pool, sending some BTC to me (green arrow), followed by me sending it somewhere else (red arrow). In 2 transactions, you have found my exact IP and approximate address, complete with map and everything, by starting from either 'BTC Guild', linking forward, or the guy I sent the money to, linking backwards.
Sure you need to start SOMEWHERE first (like finding someone's wallet and work backwards from there, or hey, just start from the IP address - something easily obtainable by law enforcement). But this is not an untraceable currency by any means. It provides MORE transparency than you would ever be able to get with case or even with wire transfers. The NSA will love it.
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