I do agree that the inception of bitcoin is probably more interesting than we realize, but there are a few premises here I'm questioning: 1. That the sophistic

I do agree that the inception of bitcoin is probably more interesting than we realize, but there are a few premises here I'm questioning: 1. That the sophistication of bitcoin implies a government effort. I'd actually argue it's just as likely to be a corporate effort. This is more of a gut feeling, but modern government seems much more reactive than proactive, and so if they were to have created this, my suspicion would be that it was in response to something. But since I don't see an obvious "something", I'd imagine some sort of corporate entity is more likely to be proactive about an effort like this. Or, maybe even more likely than that, some sort of organized crime effort. I mean the classic stereotype of the "mafia" makes that seem funny, but I imagine modern organized crime entities would be very interested in something like bitcoin. Especially since, outside of idealistic libertarians, I imagine the only reason right now to spend bitcoins is if you want to buy something that can't be tracked back to you. 2. I don't quite buy the premise that bitcoin is a bulletproof protocol. For instance: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses . Some of these are sophisticated problems, but a lot of these things are exactly the kind of problems that could have been caught if there had been a proper peer review.