This is a really, truly weird way to defend Bitcoin, whose claim to fame is that its only value comes from its uptake. The argument goes, "governments can fiat

This is a really, truly weird way to defend Bitcoin, whose claim to fame is that its only value comes from its uptake. The argument goes, "governments can fiat money, so why can't we?" There is no unique creation of value anywhere in the Bitcoin life cycle. Any liquidity or anonymity externality that doesn't equally apply to USD is probably accruable only by criminals and traffickers. The transactions are slow and costly, and there's no guarantee that some governmental research agency hasn't already broken the cryptographic underpinnings.