Bitcoin in this sense is NOT a threat to US govt interests, it's more of a blessing. A reason for more economic activity (more hardware sold, exchange fees paid etc.) and therefore more taxes paid.
You could theoretically get away with paying no sales tax with using Bitcoin. You most definitely can get away with not filing mining earnings as federal and state tax.
In that case you would be breaking the law, so it's another issue altogether and the government would go after the tax revenue, nut bitcoin itself. Same thing with any tax evasion case.
The government involvement was mainly icing on the cake - the most profitable route still exists with nearly the same negative effects: pump and dump the value, deliver the hardware as promised, and walk away with no civil/criminal liability.
That being said, I would say Bitcoin is one of the best tax evasion strategies ever created if/when the volatility is negated.
The dataset may not be useful precisely for the purpose of prosecuting right now (although I am positive that purchasing ANY sort of mining hardware is an indictable offense - the intent is what matters and that's an open-and-shut case given the specific purpose of an ASIC [unless you want to try arguing to a jury that you bought a SHA256 hasher for something else - be my guest]). However, that dataset is unarguably a master list of the points I mentioned in my first post:
intelligent folks with financial resources and proven intent to participate in aforementioned activities.But again, divorcing the government angle from this argument, you still have tons of incentive + opportunity for a ASIC hardware company to run a pretty big ruin on individuals and the network alike.
I agree on the last point, but why is purchasing mining hardware an indictable offence provided that you report all the revenues to the tax authorities and you comply with the law? It seems to me that you assume that miners are tax evaders.