Well, there's already a massive consolidation happening with the big institutions, who are all government controlled at the end of the day.

If, for example, the govt wanted to make Bitcoin illegal or extremely regulated to the point that it's being strangled, there would be nothing to stop it from happening.

In the hands of 10's of millions of users, it would be virtually improve l impossible to enforce anything.

Plus, the govt currently confiscates Bitcoin and sells it off cheap to push the price down. Even with that, Bitcoin is resilient. I'd probably bet on BTC regardless of what manipulation the govt was doing.