What are some ways that the powerful elite can thwart cryptocurrencies? What are some ways that the powerful elite can thwart cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrencies appear to be not susceptible to most forms of power, regulation, or control. Due to their decentralized and anonymous nature, they are often touted as an antidote to government, Wall Street, etc manipulation through currency and money. 

How accurate is this? What are some ways that an actor who has an interest in say the dominance of Wall Street or just any old reason for using their power to control otherwise free actors could do so through cryptocurrency economies?
Here are a few ways Bitcoin can be affected by the decisions of a wealthy investor:


Value manipulation: A wealthy investor can sell coins or purchase coins in such a rapid pace that the market sinks or rises to an unrecoverable level.  In real exchanges, the SEC protects investors from these hostile trades.  There is no SEC protection with Bitcoin.  Update: there apparently is now SEC prosecution for Bitcoin matters
Negative press / word of mouth: Part of the success of Bitcoin rests on it being freely exchanged for goods and services.  If Bitcoin becomes overly associated with the darker parts of the internet, then some businesses will become risk adverse and not want the additional scrutiny on their private ledgers (tax, audit, etc).  However if BTC is associated with "good" things then the inverse is likely to happen.
Protocol hacks: If an elite person discovered, or a team is funded to discover protocol issues with the Bitcoin network, and a flaw is found, that will undermine investor confidence in the system. (e.g. Malleable Transactions)
Laws on M1, M2, M3 transfers: Bitcoin is unique in that it can be purchased with USD and sold back to Bitcoin and back to USD.  This feature is different than other items such as a calling card, gift card, Amazon coins don't have this two way feature.  The less isolated a currency is, then the more likely it will have regulations apply to it.  Regulations are supposed to protect the merchant and consumer, and these regulations will likely be placed on all exchanges.  It has already started with the recent FinCEN announcement. 
Manipulate or create a Internet outage, a massive sustained power outage, like the 2003 Northeast blackout, covering an area with a heavy miner concentration.
An over dependence on a single exchange, with no auditing or external oversight, could manipulate the currency value with a double set of books.


Any player in the Bitcoin system who also needs to use the value of Bitcoin in a local currency will likely have most regulations placed where the BTC &harr; currency conversion is done.  Identification "checkpoints" and other analysis will eventually be done on trades to identify the good guys from the bad.   Depending on which side you're on, this could be thwarting one's intentions.