Quote from: charlie1010 on September 22, 2014, 11:42:12 AM

Government leaders also realize that digital currency would solve the current monetary crises worldwide. For one thing, government leaders realize that digital currency would hold the same value globally.

With all due respect, this is total nonsense. There is no "worldwide monetary crisis". Do you even understand what this term means?

There is a worldwide economic crisis, which is something completely different. It is caused by the excess of debt world-wide. A currency with a relatively stable value and the ability to extinguish debt, like gold, would solve this problem in the long term, albeit by causing a very deep and sharp (short-lived) crisis (more like a collapse) in the short term. However, this is not the kind of "solution" any government would tolerate, let alone desire. Which is why the current status-quo will continue until the crisis becomes so acute that the governments become unable to function.

Again, the governments do not want a currency that keeps the same value globally. They want a currency that makes it easier for them to have more of it (with which to buy votes) - either via direct expropriation from the productive population or by indirect confiscation via inflation, since governments do not produce anything.

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The danger here is that world leaders can decide to come up with new digital currency of their own and do away with bitcoins and others-i hope not.

This, however, is correct. The governments do desire a universal electronic currency. If they could, they would eliminate the use of cash by law - only electronic transactions would be permitted. (The free use of large amounts of cash is already severely limited by law in most countries.) Such an electronic currency would solve (from the point of view of the governments) two major "problems" - tax evasion (you won't be able to conduct any business transaction in a way that cannot be monitored by the government) and bank runs (you won't be able to withdraw your money from the banking system - you'll be able only to transfer it from one bank to another).

Of course, such an electronic currency would be nothing like Bitcoin, although some ideas might be taken from there. It will be under government control. Either it will be 100% pre-mined (unlikely, because this will put a limit on how much currency can be created - something the governments do not want) or only the government would be allowed to mine it. Oh, and, of course, its use will be mandatory by law - because nobody in their right mind would accept it voluntarily. Whether it will be based on a public ledger - I don't have an opinion on that; it can be argued both ways.

But it most definitely will not be Bitcoin; it will be some kind of altcoin. The fundamental idea in Satoshi's paper, a trustless payment method, based on a distributed ledger, can be used by the banks and the government. The distributed ledger can be public but does not have to be (it is enough for it to be available to the "monetary authorities" - i.e., banks and government). The currency can be 100% pre-mined, or some rules can be implemented that define its unlimited increase.

If this happens - and I admit that there is a serious danger of it happening - the world will become an even less free place than it is now.