Bitcoin has been around the borders of financial markets for less than a decade, but is slowly gaining importance as an alternative asset class.
Can the government of any major country step in and do the unlikely?
Any government can declare bitcoin an illegal payment method in their respective country. While they can hardly prevent people from trading their coins, they certainly can make sure no merchant and no store is allowed to officially accept Bitcoin. Since governments are desperate to be in charge of creation of their locale FIAT money via their respective central banks, it is highly likely that some sort of ban might be coming up. The only reason this hasn't already happened is that it makes a government look really, really bad. Especially in the western world politicians keep talking about how "free" their countries are compared to other non-western nations. Outlawing Bitcoin simply doesn't fit all that well with this sort of propaganda. The best excuse they can come up with is that Bitcoin can be used for criminal purposes. Following this logic we would have to ban just about everything since pretty much all kinds of devices, items and technologies can be misused.