Surely, if a government wants the people in the country to use a novel cryptocurrency, it has a lot of levers of control which some distributed libertarian minded community simply doesn't.
Surely, if a government wants the people in the country to use a novel cryptocurrency, it has a lot of levers of control which some distributed libertarian minded community simply doesn't.
Any new thing needs to be better than the current thing at least in one domain, if it wants to grow users. Fiat currencies work so well, that the only niches cryptocurrencies can find is crimes really, avoiding financial sanctions, etc.
Like China for example bans their citizens to trade the chinese currency for foreign currency (above small limits). Then buying bitcoin domestically makes sense if they don't trust the chinese government to keep their own currency valuable.
Of course, all the exchanges operating in countries where there is reasonable laws require KYC to be in place. Cryptocurrencies are also in many ways more trackable than non-crypto currencies. So for crime it makes no real sense to use most crypto currencies.
For instance, my native country, in an effort to digitize the economy has passed a law that if you pay digitally or with a card at a restaurant you pay only 5% sales tax instead of 16% if you pay via cash. Some government wanting to encourage the adoption of a cryptocurrency can take similar measures. Governments have options that Vitalik Buterin does not.