Online poker is not a fundamental threat to the government's ability to collect taxes like Bitcoin is.
Anecdotally - I've seen multiple British people (including geeks at Dorkbots, who I would have thought more open to libertarianism without necessarily conflating it with conservatism - admittedly, the two correlate pretty closely in the UK) utterly outraged at the prospect of various schemes for alternate currencies, open currencies, etc. Their objection? They see the possibility this stuff can't be taxed, and get outraged at the idea, because they have a keen appreciation of just what taxes buy.
I haven't seen Australians get anywhere near as outraged at such ideas as the British do, for example. Many British people seem to consider taxability a strong feature of a financial system. I predict they won't like Bitcoin at all and so it won't gain traction in the UK unless the government pushes it heavily, which isn't going to happen.
Bitcoin doesn't do anything to prevent taxation of real estate or otherwise conspicuous property (which, incidentally, I find to be superior forms of taxation anyway). The government says, "this land is worth X GBP, pay y% of that or be evicted". It doesn't need to follow trillions of transactions to get that to work. It only has to follow transactions related to transfers of such conspicuous items, which (unlike with other valuables) it has significant control over due to people's need for government to recognize that ownership.
For example, i...
Tangential, but a subject of some local interest:
Why Bitcoin will fail by Avery Pennarun. "The sky isn't red." Thesis:
I'm not sure I buy these and am not competent to evaluate his claims on 3., but would like others' critique.
L019: Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen by Jason Calacanis. A rather more enthusiastic viewpoint of the project:
The actual text contains many more caveats than the eye-catching selection of points above.