I too am a Slashdotter who is pretty neutral about BitCoin!

Like Libertarianism itself Bitcoin is going through a transition from elegant theory to brutal reality.

To put that another way: "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is!"

The Goddess of Libertarianism and "Objectivism" (Ayn Rand) was happy to collect her (gasp) government Social Security checks for many years. Her great prophet Alan Greenspan was the (government) person who Nationalized the US banking system in 2008.

Likewise the great and noble idea of a totally abstract form of money is starting to attract some serious crooks of various types. Up until a month ago all we saw were amateurs, now there is enough money (however you define it) to attract some serious thieves - not just script kiddies and small time con artists.

Sorry folks "I calls them as I sees them".