Tesla, you are right. But the ideological allure of a "crypto" currency, i.e.  the anarcho-libertarian wet dream of decentralization, is the one aspect that most assuredly won't be part of the digital currency that ultimately becomes successful. That's why so many folks are butthurt. Infrastructure is necessary and the deep pockets necessary to maintain it - the kind that can only come from state sponsorship of some sort or shape - is becoming more and more obvious. Without it Bitcoin remains a fringe speculation game with two-bit exchanges seasonally arising and dying and wild-west-style robberies remaining the norm. The only paradigm-shift I see coming from "crypto" currency, is that the state sponsorship needed to maintain viability and confidence in the currency may shift from that of the nation-state to a corporate entity. It will serve to make direct the dynamic that is, in effect, already in place.

Don't any of you find it ironic that the results of Bitcoin debacles (like Bitcoinica and others) has been for the victims to seek the courts' help for redress? Is that begging for oversight and regulation, or what?!