Making Bitcoin accepted by legislation and policy makers (and it therefore being legislated etc.) is hugely relevant to Bitcoin users.
I would call that begging the question.
Bitcoin has achieved a signifigant amount of momentum without any recognition from legislators and policy makers, and I am unaware of any evidence that their participation is required to continue Bitcoin's present trajectory. There is a distinct possibility that Bitcoin represents a paragigm shift which renders those individuals you are referring to and their acceptance irrelevant in the same way that online publishing made old media business models irrelevant.
Hi,
I'm aware it has a significant amount of momentum and there is a possibility of a paradigm shift as a result. However, most organizations at the moment, are at the mercy of their banks, which are in turn (supposedly) at the mercy of the policy and legislations. I personally believe the majority of corporations that use a bank, and have a legal team and legitimately declare their money and tax will not accept Bitcoin without some form of legislation change. I have no evidence to backup this claim, although the EFF is an example instance. So there maybe a paradigm shift, but for large scale adoption (e.g. your local tesco's accepting it) there's going to have to be a legislation change.
It's definitely possible that a potential paradigm shift created by Bitcoin could lead to a change in legislation, which could then lead to larger scale adoption. But that would still require a legislation change, which I personally believe should be informed by academic research. Most large corporations should (an typically do) do what the law says and the law says very little about Bitcoin, so I believe they will do very little about it.
When online publishing changed the media business, when legislation and policy making was attempted without any academic input or evidence, the US government came up with SOPA... I'd like to do research into Bitcoin to stop something like that happening.
Thanks,
Dom.