The betaCoin model is interesting, but I'd just make one import remark though: in this model, there's no financial incentive for people to migrate from bitcoin stable to bitcoin beta, since stable coins will always be more valuable than beta coins. This means that, from a monetary point of view, this beta risks being just a testnet++. Not many people will transfer their coins into it (it is not a reasonable investment strategy), and without much aggregated value, would it really have enough manpower behind it? If Gavin and Garzik are being fully employed to work on Bitcoin right now, it's precisely because bitcoins are valuable to lots of people. If there was a technical way to ensure people can get their beta coins converted back into stable coins at the same rate (i.e., pegging), then things could be different. But I don't see how could that be possible.
Anyways, I came here for another reason. I'm really interested in Zerocoin and I'd like to understand how it works. I can understand the basics of public key cryptography, and blind signature - although the math behind these algorithms are things I simply "trust to be true".

But Zerocoin... damn, is that complicated! I tried reading the paper once it got out, and I couldn't understand a thing.
Is there an easier explanation somewhere, that could help technical people without a background in cryptography research to grasp the concept?
Thanks