Most if not all governments believe a fixed money supply leads to deflation. They also believe that deflation is a bad thing that should be avoided. (Whether yo

Most if not all governments believe a fixed money supply leads to deflation. They also believe that deflation is a bad thing that should be avoided. (Whether you believe this is completely irrelevant. What matters for this argument is what the government believes.) Since Bitcoin's supply is fixed, Bitcoin is inherently deflationary. A government that creates and releases Bitcoin is a government that creates and releases something it believes is seriously flawed. Why would a government release something it believes is seriously flawed? (The most likely answer is 'it doesn't', but let's play along.) Perhaps that government believes the adoption of Bitcoin would damage its rivals more than itself. Perhaps that government fears the adoption of truly-effective digital currency, and therefore chose to release and publicize one with inherent problems that will prevent its widespread adoption - delaying the onset of a truly-effective currency. (Again, dear reader, you might think Bitcoin is fine - but I suspect most government economists are more in line with Paul Krugman.) Finally, perhaps the government truly thinks Bitcoin is a bad idea - but not everyone who works for the government agrees with the government. It only takes one person to leak something. Perhaps the group who created and reviewed Bitcoin were hired during one administration, and then, being unhappy with a future administration, someone decided to leak their what they were working on. Note, for those of you who enjoy tinfoil hats, that the first paper on Bitcoin came out just days before the 2008 presidential election, when the polling was almost uniformly predicting a Barack Obama victory. Is Bitcoin a release from someone who believed both in the project they were working on and that they were about to be unemployed?