Nice. I was going to post my own 'rant' on hubski about why bitcoins should be avoided by everyone, but this guy hit my main beefs with it - being that is is meant for nefarious purposes (large drug deals, slavery, etc) and all the 'innocent' investors and legitimate uses only make it harder to nab the bad guys, and two - the carbon footprint thing. I'd describe bitcoins as "a representation of value destruction." Whereas dollars/Euros/Yuan/etc are representations of value creation (GDP.) Bitcoins are created by using electricity and valuable computing power (lost opportunity to fold proteins, predict weather, whatever.) Any argument about how digital coins are great for commerce are moot with respect to bitcoins. You all know that you can do e-commerce of all sorts with pretty much any national currency. Bitcoin adds a layer of complexity to transactions. So, yes, I also hope Bitcoin dies in a fire, and I will never help to legitimize it as a currency.