They had an easy kill with e-gold.  Completely centralized.  The resources they'll need to take down bitcoin are something else altogether.  But what you say has truth to it - without Silkroad, they would find other excuses to demonize Bitcoin.  It might be an impossible task to keep our image clean in the public eye, but we have to try, don't we?

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And anisoptera?  Rather than continue to argue with you, I have a simple question for you.

If you had to choose one service to survive, dooming the other one to failure, would it be Bitcoin, or Silkroad?