How will the gov. regulate those and take taxes on their earned profits?
Clearly by hitting up the exchanges. If you keep your coins IN the bitcoin economy they'll never be able to detect it.
The only question is, how far will the gov go?
Now that I'm so invested, I think about this constantly.
My best estimation at the moment looks like:
Now - $10 Billion Market Cap:
Propaganda stage only, but no laws passed. Every time they mention bitcoin they risk legitimizing it, so every step is either carefully planned propaganda or a clear victory for us.
$10 Billion Cap - $500 Billion Cap:
Heightened propaganda, pressure on the Exchanges. At this point we'll see tons of articles in the MSM constantly talking about how only scammers and the Mafia would dare touch bitcoin, meanwhile the IRS and possibly FTC will both be doing whatever they can to make the moneychangers' lives difficult, such as constant auditing.
This stage will separate the faithful from the sheep... But SO many more people will have been exposed to it by then it'll be too late for this tactic to deal a fatal blow to bitcoin.
Ever Afterwards:
After bitcoin has stolen a considerable chunk of the USD economy, (don't forget that the petrodollar is now dead!) I fully expect congress to do their best to try to illegalize bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies. I can just see the act's title now: "The cyberterrorism funding act."
It'll backfire on them. At this point MOST of the nation, and easily most of the world at large, will have bitcoin and use P2P 3D Printing... And know what they're real purposes are for... For stopping government tyranny.
It'll make
shitloads of Anarchists. I welcome that day.
So right now is the time for you to get some knowledge on botnets, how to properly stay anonymous without getting fucked and opening one to mine bitcoins. One of the people I know is making around $5k a day.
In case you missed
this thread, we've already examined the idea of botnets 4 bitcoins; but the new ASIC hardware coming out right now makes those hashrates look pathetic. (And will drive up the difficulty rating on all hashing so that those hashrates won't pay but a few bucks a week.)