Isn't Trump banning immigration? (I'm only partially kidding)

Anyone know of the phrase "follow the money"? I love that it's ringing true with Bitcoin. Governments and corporations and general public can be skeptical...but where there is currency or asset value, people will follow. Quietly at first, and then very very publicly.

I bet a significant motivation for the BTC price run up has been the awareness it received among Wall Street investors through the ETF denial. Wall Street loves to make money and they don't need the SEC to do it!

One possible answer to this is, that they are using this to flag Bitcoin owners. You can expect them to look more closely at you the moment when you reveal that you are a Crypto currency user. You apply for a VISA and you pay for the application with Bitcoin and you are immediately added to "The List"

At this stage, they do not have a way to determine who is and who is not Crypto currency users. ^easy^

I don't know what you are talking about
all the exchanges that are accepting fiat are following the KYC AML and all that BS and your bank already knows and tells everyone you have made a deposit to a bitcoin exchange, so they already know you are a bitcoin user.
also exchanges like coinbase (One of the biggest exchanges currently) is working directly with the government, IRS and reports all the transactions that is made through them (I'm only partially kidding).

and these are the ways regular people use, and not-regular people who are using some other methods are not going to pay with bitcoin to go on "the list"

So we're all going to end up in concentration camps? I do enjoy the persecution complex of Bitcoiners. It's very cute but a little heavy on the self importance.

This is good.  We can all talk about being added to "the list", but the US government isn't openly targeting Bitcoin users.  Sure, if you're doing something illegal then by all means don't send Bitcoin to the US government.  In most cases though, you're pretty safe.

Especially if you're good at anonymous payments through methods like Shapeshift with Monero, sending through exchanges which don't take documents, mixers, changing addresses etc.

Well, if they want to. I don't know where they're going to benefit from a program like this, but if Homeland Security is going to try and make something like this work then I don't know if it's worth trying to make an argument in favor or against something like this.
If they make enough off of the program to justify trying to make some of these things a reality, then who am I to complain?

Just a small case, not for everything. But for visa application, which means they seem bitcoin is valid and legal payment.

this may be a start though! i wouldn't get my hopes up but i do believe that after what Japanese did and accepted bitcoin as a legal way of payment many countries have become softer towards bitcoin and a couple of them even are considering doing the same. so it wouldn't be such a strange thing if US finally did that someday too.

yeah, i am not saying bitcoin is going to get adopted because of this or i say they may even end up deciding against it.
but the fact that government is thinking about these stuff and "is considering bitcoin as a payment" is a good sign in my opinion.