To each there own opinion, but I didn't read any news reports and don't think I'm an expert in BitCoins.  Thanks for the whitepaper link!  I did read up the wiki article when it was mentioned that people could be traced, but they didn't go into it in enough detail.  I'll see if it fits the concept of a group over taking the public logs by creating their own mining pools larger than what's currently out there.   By branching, I mean extending upon so that a new currency (or version of) is created on top of the old.  A poor choice of words on my part.

As for encryption, I haven't ran into any articles detailing how the current methods can be improved upon.  If you can provide me with links, that would be swell.