Governments certainly will attempt to issue IOUs backed by bitcoin. And some people will accept them. If you are willing to trust your bitcoin to an exchange,

Governments certainly will attempt to issue IOUs backed by bitcoin. And some people will accept them. If you are willing to trust your bitcoin to an exchange, as many people are, you should certainly be willing to trust your government. But a lot of people hold their bitcoin offline, in hardware wallets, in cold storage. It's not that hard. Another feature that bitcoin has, that gold does not, is proof of reserves. Barely any exchanges do this, but this will change with time. Proof of reserves pretty much makes bitcoin IOUs for the government useless. You can't cheat by printing more. I think far fewer people will trust their government with bitcoin under a bitcoin standard, than trusted their government with gold under a gold standard. Particularly after a few governments default. I discuss this more in depth at https://web.archive.org/web/20210116135412/https://taaalk.co/t/bitcoin-maxima-other-crypto-things https://web.archive.org/web/20210116135412/https://taaalk.co... (long)