I think this is an excellent idea in principle. But who is zaphod? How do I know he's trustworthy and not two-faced?
I know that this is the fundamental problem with this right now.
What I can say is, I'm trustworthy, I'm a bit of a nerd (starting with an Apple II+ in the 2nd grade through working for Creative Labs in college and watching friends move to the valley, but I stuck with aerospace engineering and did something else), and I'm basically doing this to play around at present. I had never heard of BTC until a week ago and have been reading up. I don't have a lot of BTC (waiting on Dwolla) but have some US fiat currency (greenbacks) and want to play around and see if a real market could exist. Someone take a leap and buy something small and we'll see how this works...