I'll try to provide some reasons here that I can think of or that I have found along the way. But first, let me put my tinfoil hat on. ;)For one, they won't because they can't. Buterin, V. (see link below) said that regulators are well-aware of the fundamental impossibility of fully regulating sufficiently advanced digital currency systems like Bitcoin. My guess is that an attempt to officially ban it would likely result in increased visibility for bitcoin, and potentially to a broader black market, similar to the banning of alcohol or the war on drugs. So an official stance against it would have exactly the opposite effect. The only viable way to crack down on it would be to quietly shut down one account after the other, while officially stating that “exchange providers that comply with the law have nothing to fear from Treasury” (FinCEN undersecretary David Cohen).But enough with the conspiracy theories.A more probable answer is that, as a new technology, the governments are "treading carefully to take a pragmatic, watchful approach to see just how much information they can gather". In a sense, nobody knows what bitcoin is capable of. As far as governments are concerned, it may be able to reduce their own costs and prove to be a profitable technology. Or perhaps through it's pseudonimous nature, it would even facilitate the tracking of big movements of money, more so than cash ever could. By obliging exchanges to gather personal data, the governments are doing the smartest thing they can, in my opinion. So why crack down on a new, potentially profitable technology before understanding it entirely? Until now, bitcoin has not done much harm, but I reckon its potential is not seen only by liberal hackers.Another possibility is that regulators deem the effort to crack down on it too high right now, seeing as (1) bitcoin's market cap is still tiny compared to financial institutions and (2) some may actually consider it a bubble that's going to go away on its own soon. From this stance, why even bother and spend money for nothing?Here's also good statement on the topic: "While the Bitcoin economy itself has grown by a factor of ten since last year, Silk Road, judging by the number of posts on its forum, has only doubled in size. This is similar to the growth of the internet; in 1995, scaremongering about the massive growth in online child pornography was all the rage. Now, however, we realize that as technologies mature more mainstream uses naturally take over, and the prosperity that resulted from having a platform for free and open worldwide communication may have done more to fight child pornography than stricter prohibition ever could." ( http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-is-not-losing-its-soul-or-why-the-regulation-hysteria-is-missing-the-point/

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