In another forum where I post, the bitcoin is seen as a threat to the working class. It's the working classes and the poor that mainly benefit from taxes in the west (well, theoretically) and for any economy the gobernment is Customer #1, so government spending of tax revenues pay for alot of the jobs in an economy. If people start turning stuff over in BTC then this starves the government of funds and they will no longer be able to provide public goods like schools and sidewalks and traffic lights, in the UK they will no longer be able to pay nurses and doctors or send dole-money or money for unemployed single mothers of small children. For me this is a bad thing.

On the upside they won't be able to bail out inept and corrupt banks or buy million dollar bombs to bomb the peasants of weak countries on the basis of lies anymore.

I think though it's true the working man and woman in the West might suffer from bitcoin, on the other hand in the 3rd world working men and women often don't pay tax anyway, in Nigeria for instance the democracy is not so accountable to the people as the government is paid for by the Shell oil company and Russian mobsters anyway, so the people wouldn't have to deal with a loss of services from the government with a currency like bitcoin, so one drawback they don't have to worry about

Another thing about bitcoin is the indterest rate can't be controlled, I know this is a key feature, but isn't that something you need to be able to do? Assuming that you're some sort of democratically elected body accountable to the people, you might want to be aqble to accelerate or break the economy every now and then when it's over-heating or to ecourage it to move around more... Ireland could't raizer their interest rates and they came off the road due to the reckless DUI of their banks... and having no breaks.