The virus is only a pretext for them to rush even more the digital fiat and to push it through successfully. However, there are some quite significant issues they have to think about:
1. PrivacyI think this is the most important issue I'd have with the cashless society. It's not about hiding anything, but would you like your government to be able to ask you why you gave $10 to a little boy's account, who happens to be your son's best friend? Would you like your government to know literally every single thing you have bought and to be able to interrogate you about the source of all that money? Would you like your state to know exactly what your habits, preferences, vices etc you have? I would not.
2. Some people would not be able to accomodate with itThink of old people who live right now in rural areas. There are a
lot of them in my country. In fact, in Moldova,
95% of the rural population do not have toilets. Think of Africans whose life is just an unfortunate mess. How are these people supposed to accomodate with a friggin' digital currency?
3. The digital currency will not be Bitcoin, nor will it be any close to what Bitcoin isThis is just logical. The governments want to control, not to give more freedom than ever before. By adopting a pseudonymous cryptocurrency they'd have no control over, they'd start losing ground against us. They need a currency they can seize, freeze and modify its supply at any given time.
Besides the control part, we have to think about it: even if the government EVER wants to push Bitcoin as a national currency, would the current Bitcoin network be able to sustain txs from a large country such as the USA? I don't think so, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. On the other hand, we have enough intelligent devs to think of a way to make Bitcoin fit the right requirements for mass adoption.
4. They cannot create a public ledger, which means everything would be hiddenIn other words, just imagine: if today we have money printers that are under supposed constant control and supervision, a digital currency under a government's control means the state could at any point inflate the currency within the click of a mouse. A matter of milliseconds until the supply multiplies. How do we know where each digital buck goes? At least the money they print today is
physical and requires real materials (and yeah, I know a hundred dollar bill probably takes a few cents to be produced) rather than a click and some coding.
There are more reasons, but these are just the first that come up in my mind. Bitcoin as a national currency is irrealistic. It'll most likely never be one. They'll come up with their own. Otherwise, banks working on digital currencies wouldn't have been a thing - they would've just adopted BTC right from the start.