But here’s another scary prospect: If the government goes overboard with a hard-line approach on bitcoin and other emerging digital currencies, it may merely push them overseas, where they will surely flourish outside of its control.

On Monday, in a hearing held by the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, various federal regulators and law enforcement agencies said that digital currencies and internet anonymity presented serious challenges, but no one is interested in regulating them to the point where they wither here in the U.S.

That’s good news not only for bitcoin, but for the future health of the U.S. economy. Bitcoin is thriving across the internet, particularly overseas, and it could become as important to everyday life as the internet itself.

When the Senate Committee’s chairman, Tom Carper (D-Del.), compared digital currencies to the internet in its earliest days, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, the director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN, said the analogy was an apt one.