My attempt to right that crooked ship is below:
Mencius, your first point regarding a DOJ indictment on an edge-exchange seems to ignore the fact that any kind of prosecution on a decentralized system ever results in long-term harm to that system. Big media companies using collective suits against bitorrent users, for example.
This has hardly stopped any use of the protocol. To the contrary, it has only increased its popularity as people who have never had an inclination such things were going on became informed through various articles on the subject.
Then you assert that because one edge exchange is impacted, and for the sake of the argument lets just assume there was one successful shutdown, that the overall valuation of bitcoin would fall to zero.
While the users of that exchange would certainly be hurt by such an action, the rest of the network would shrug and move on. There are other avenues besides edge-exchanges, and when bitcoin reaches its full potential, they won't be relevant anymore.
You then invoke the general fear-mongering strategy of suggesting a major government would ban the use of bitcoin - again ignoring that it would most likely encourage its use.
As for the rest of your article, you touch on the usual debunked myths such as "hoarding will kill bitcoin", and some rather long rambling about how well the shutdown would kill the network. (It won't, as I described earlier.)
The crowning jewel on the entire affair is how at the end you advocate gold being resistant to government prosecution and seizure, which is laughable in light of its density and material qualities that lend it to detection when carried in refined form.
I'm afraid that suitcase of gold in the lining won't be making it through the airport, while the transfer of wealth across the internet using bitcoin won't even weigh down the traveler using it.
Then again, that is all this piece is - a lot of hyperbolic reasoning sewn together with a rather unrealistic view of government efficiency.
Good luck, you'll need it with that cognitive bias dragging you down.
