Are there any reasons why the US government (and/or departments thereof) couldn't retask the government supercomputers to mint huge quantities of Bitcoin?

It isn’t cost effective, because the resources to “mine” additional coins is too much. And, it is all part of a ponzi scheme anyway.

Lots and lots of actual bitcoin would greatly devalue it’s worth, just like real money. And bitcoin is virtual money, not real money.

It would be like printing paper money. It would lead to inflation.

I would think that one massive computer attack or crash and trillions of bitcoins gone since it really isn’t actual cash.

There are only like 2 million bitcoins left to be mined. There will only be 21 million total.

Because there are about a billion better uses for those computing resources.

The energy and resources wasted on this crypto currency thing is an absolute tragedy.

I saw a recent report that said that about 20% of the worlds electrical power was being used to drive the cooling fans for electronic calculators that work to compute the value of Bitcoin. What does all that extra heat do for climate change?

And have some colonial states not recently enacted regulations concerning PC power efficiency, because they are projecting that power demands by computing will some day exceed available power generation?
Why would you want to exacerbate that problem by wasting super computers to “mine” this ridiciulous internet money, that exists solely to enrich speculators?

China has recently kicked out most of the crypto currency miners. They’re looking to setup shop in places like the U.S. where they can pay off local politicians and setup cheap facilities. During summer and winter peaks the grid won’t be able to sustain those operations.

State backed crypto is a thing. China is way ahead of the rest of the world in implementing it, though. My understanding is that the computing requirements are a lot lower with centralization.