It's really important to understand that bitcoin is not anonymous by default, and it might well be less anonymous than cash by default. I know there are solutions to anonymizing BTC, but for the average person who bought some BTC from a service online and used it to send a transaction to a political campaign or TPB or wherever, I wouldn't call it any more anonymous than paypal.
Exactly right but these buyers & sellers don't care about anonymity too much. It is the banks who are worried.
If governments were really devious they would replace their cash with a non-anonymous cryptocurrency like BitCoins. That would make it hate for the underground economy to avoid the police or taxation.
The services online aren't broadcasting the names of the people using their addresses- so it's basically anonymous to the common person.
It's true that without using a mixer (aka "money launderer") Big Government could seize the service to get your name... but what about https://localbitcoins.com/ ?
