Thank you,@jrcornel for posting such an important question.
I think that if a government issues its own coin, it will not affect btc. What attracts people to btc and other cryptocurrencies is not that they are digital. We already have digital money with PayPal and credit cards. In best case, it would be something like TUSD.
What makes btc attractive is that it is decentralized, borderless, and wild. We are sick of central banks and governments dictating what we can or can not do with our own money. We are sick of all those middlemen. We want to be in control.
My opinion here is if goverment does issue a fiat cryto and force people to use it. It would only affect citizen of that country and it would be less popular than Bitcoin. Value of a US govt backed cryto would be tied to the US dollar. So it would just be a FED back Tether (USDT). If you see USDT now. It does not grow much and used mostly as hedge when Bitcoins and the altcoins are down.
But I do see a plus if government does adopt a cryto. I think adoption of one cryto would make other crytos popular because we can easily covert 1 to another.
Agreed, great question @jrcornel. I think we will see a lot of oscillation in government policy fueled by governments not wanting to have their banking systems usurped by cryptos, yet also not wanting to lose out on potential economic growth and boom that cryptos may promise. Interesting post from @thehutchreport on how governments may react: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@thehutchreport/cryptocurrencies-the-revolution-will-not-be-televised-it-will-be-steemed
Bravo! Well said!
It's the Wild Wild West law dogs don't go down around here
That's interesting, but what drives the value of a coin is the people using it, and the value of Bitcoin will depend on many factors that for sure do not guarantee its future value.
States can issue a coin that takes advantage of the decentralization (to some or big extend), and borderless. They can have multiple locations running the mining rigs that run and provide the descentralized secuirity across the states, and will allow them to move funds easily from one jurisdiction to another.
Thinking that Bitcoin is bulletproof is very naive. It's current technological hedge can be challenged by many technologies and players, and if something is clear from previous experiences is that technology tends to be rendered obsolete even if had great advantages at some point . (ie from Betamax, to horse transport, four engine planes, electronic valves, etc).
so how to you stabilise price when that value is being decided globally by potentially billions of people? It's actually going to be better for Bitcoin (and the others) long term if we don't all have our eggs in the one basket. A currency that can be so different one day to the next is useless for daily spending.