To address the original point on its own terms (i.e. the idea that if the government ends cash, there will be no anonymity in trading Bitcoin:)
We can take a lesson from major events in history. During the postwar Bretton Woods period, Western countries had free trade with each other, but there were tight capital controls (to keep exchange rates constant.) So an American could buy German goods, but couldn't buy German currency (marks) or bonds, for example.
What import/export traders did was to build personal relationships, and then, say, sell something worth $20,000 at the price of $25,000. The extra $5000 the American paid was used by his German friend to buy German marks for him. (The German could legally exchange all the dollars he got for marks, as part of the free trade system.) And they would of course do this for themselves as well as wealthy people trying to bypass the capital controls.
The same thing has been happening with China. So China's attempts to control capital flight is also leaky. And I'm pretty sure many poor countries who trade with the West would love to stop their citizens from buying dollars and euros with their own currencies, but can't, because an importer can legally buy just a little more dollars than is really needed, after his American exporter friend increases the invoice price a little.
Take this to the personal level -- when all money is electronic, I pay my friend the shopkeeper $25 to buy something really worth $20. For the extra $5, my friend will move some Bitcoin from an (already anonymous) Bitcoin address to my own anonymous address. Thus, a market and price system for Bitcoin is born.
(This is a big topic in monetary economics. The economists have basically concluded that 'if countries open up their current accounts, it's impossible to keep their capital accounts closed for long.')
So what I think if the world stops using cash and go back to the old days just like you said, is that everyone will race to get as much as the y can with any way possible to get the current way to pay for things just to dominate the world and become the most powerful, and that is going to create a conflict which will lead to war, kind of what is happening to oil right now, countries rush to get as much as they can from it. We can take a lesson from major events in history. During the postwar Bretton Woods period, Western countries had free trade with each other, but there were tight capital controls (to keep exchange rates constant.) So an American could buy German goods, but couldn't buy German currency (marks) or bonds, for example.
What import/export traders did was to build personal relationships, and then, say, sell something worth $20,000 at the price of $25,000. The extra $5000 the American paid was used by his German friend to buy German marks for him. (The German could legally exchange all the dollars he got for marks, as part of the free trade system.) And they would of course do this for themselves as well as wealthy people trying to bypass the capital controls.
The same thing has been happening with China. So China's attempts to control capital flight is also leaky. And I'm pretty sure many poor countries who trade with the West would love to stop their citizens from buying dollars and euros with their own currencies, but can't, because an importer can legally buy just a little more dollars than is really needed, after his American exporter friend increases the invoice price a little.
Take this to the personal level -- when all money is electronic, I pay my friend the shopkeeper $25 to buy something really worth $20. For the extra $5, my friend will move some Bitcoin from an (already anonymous) Bitcoin address to my own anonymous address. Thus, a market and price system for Bitcoin is born.
(This is a big topic in monetary economics. The economists have basically concluded that 'if countries open up their current accounts, it's impossible to keep their capital accounts closed for long.')
