The more they try to stop bitcoin, the more it will succeed. This depends on a lot of things. * Bitcoin, as a floating currency, depends on other currencies (

The more they try to stop bitcoin, the more it will succeed. This depends on a lot of things. * Bitcoin, as a floating currency, depends on other currencies (or they on it, depending on your perspective) for relative purchasing power * In order to arrive at that relative value, exchanges need to function--either explicitly, like MtGox, or implicitly through barter or private sale. * There's not much the governments can do about private barter, but there's hella lot they can do about controlling organised exchanges. And, well, they've already started doing it. In short, Bitcoin could well end up like flax or bags of flour or pigs or whatever else currency people want to use to get things from each other. But if you want to sell your pigs at market, you gotta pay the market fees or get out. And if they really want to stop Bitcoin, you simply won't sell them at market. Put another way, the government regulates their currency, and while you want your currency to have some value in their currency, you have to find a way to move it between you and them. Either you do it their way, or you find an unofficial alternative. In the criminal world, they call this money laundering, and that's not going to succeed in the mainstream, network effect or not.