Propaganda. Have you followed what Larry Summers said? They want digital currency so they can easily confiscate. The establishment is supporting Bitcoin because they can more easily track where all the money is.
I have not, but will look for it when I have time. I think the overall reaction of the government towards cryptos is going to turn out to be very complex. And fascinating. And one thing to keep in mind, is that there will be no unified reaction, because "the government" is run by lots of people with conflicting agendas. With campaigns funded by more people with different agendas. And varying degrees of technical sophistication.
They have nothing to fear from Bitcoin, because one pool already controls 50% of the mining. They could easily blacklist coins tomorrow if they needed to.
Now they just to manage their baby well to keep you all supporting their desired outcome of slavery.
Proof is in the facts. Bitcoin is not decentralized. You all are controlled by propaganda. The mining is already controllable by the government.
The key now is to manage it so you all don't wake up and move to an anonymous coin. To keep you all locked in by your greed and the thought the largest market size is best.
I have contemplated what sort of technical battle would ensue if the government decided to take explicit control of the blockchain.
For the sake of argument, suppose the government announced that all miners had to be "licensed" or "approved" or some such thing. How could the crypto community fight this? I suppose the community could fork the blockchain to make a branch run only by miners that were not government sponsored. Perhaps, there could be some underground network of anarcho-miners who are required to pledge their allegiance to the Ghost of Satoshi to become part of the network. There would ALWAYS be people willing to risk their lives to run this network. So I don't think the government could kill the network. What they could do, is prosecute people who are caught using the "unapproved" bitcoin blockchain. They'd probably have to crack down pretty hard. And whether they would be successful, I dunno.
Another question: what if two (or more) governments battle for control of the blockchain, so no one gets 51%? Does that mean Satoshi wins?
The U.S. government moves very slowly. If Bitcoin succeeds, the time in which that will happen will be too short for the government to fully recognize the threat and issue an effective policy to oppose it before it (Bitcoin) becomes deeply entrenched in the economy and its benefits are widely perceived. At the point, the political opposition to such a move would be too great.
The govt isn't reacting. The govt (by proxy) invented bitcoin.