Guns & Dollars vs. Bitcoin or Gold
"When I was pitching PayPal back in the early days," Thiel told Ezra Klein at Vox, "I would hold up a $100 bill in front of an audience. It was this hypnotic effect; everyone paid attention to me immediately. Money is a very mysterious thing...so how does it work?"
"You will not be able to pay your taxes in Bitcoin. You have to pay them in Dollars. If you don't pay them with Dollars, there will be people who will show up with guns to make you pay them."
"Normally...coins would circulate at the higher nominal value set by the sovereign and enforced by the court and the threat of severe penalties for refusing to accept the coins at that value [rather than the value of the metal content of the coins]."
"The government does not 'need' the public's money in order to spend; rather, the public needs the government's money in order to pay taxes."
"Because the public will normally wish to hold some extra money, the government will normally have to spend more than it taxes; in other words, the normal requirement is for a government deficit."