Might be a topic of interest of a company that rivalled Paypal: 'Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold' [0]. A guy had an ambition to have currency backed by gold rather than the Federal reserve. In his execution, he had also allowed anonymous accounts but soon had trouble with the FBI due to the anonymity.
The amount of use the US govt gets from the ability to create money out of thin air and exchange it for physical assets and services, means that any competing currency in whatever form will be attacked.
Yeah, that is actually a very relevant precedence. Anti-money laundering laws once created to control the mafia took on a whole new meaning with the war on drugs and then again with the war on terror.
Governments (rightly) understand that the flow of money is the best tracer bullet available to them.
I'm certainly no expert, but I suspect that anonymous transaction brokers (eg Bitcoin exchanges) probably do fall foul of some anti-money laundering law.
A lot of the U.S. power comes from our currency and its stability(relative to the rest of the world). To challenge this would mean an increased risk, both financially and militarily. That being said, I think instead of attacking this rising trend, maybe an open(more likely not-so-open) discussion is needed from many branches of the government and a lot of simulation to assess systemic risk.
Interesting, considering the #1 entity that's challenging the US Dollar is the government. You make it sound like Bitcoin is suddenly grounds to be concerned about the future of the dollar while the government has been pilfering its worth for decades.
[0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/