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In terms of ensuring Bitcoin's survival in the face of hostile and well-resourced interests, I think a better model to look at is the Tor project. Why are they able to survive in spite of a lot of powerful interests who'd like to see otherwise?
Last I looked TOR survives with 80% of it's financing coming directly from the U.S. government and most knowledgeable people who I find credible (in addition to my own analysis) saying that it has limited usefulness against attackers with the capabilities of the NSA. Call me a skeptic, but the claims that TOR is funded by the govt to help Iranian dissidents avoid persecution and what-not I have a hard time swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. That's but one of a long list of rather questionable observations as far as I am concerned.
I may use TOR for protection against certain privacy losses against certain classes of attacker, but I certainly would not trust such a solution with a great deal of my financial nest-egg. Or at least not against a situation where the government wanted me to use a different solution for wealth preservation and transmission than I wished to.
Onion routing was created by the US Navy.