I think many of us are amazed at how genius, from a computer science point of view, the bitcoin system is. Fom the high-level design solutions, like using a computational/mathematical property (difficult reversebility of hash functions) to produce proof of work and secure the blockchain, down to the low-level implementation details (personally I don't know about that, but I'm confident that at least bitcoin-qt's code is well audited and doesn't contain any major bug).

So, if you're skeptical like me, this, plus the fact that it's creator has put so much effort in remaining anonymous (and even there, he hasn't made ONE error), automatically raises a question: isn't it too perfect? I mean, it's so well enginereed, and all by the same unknown person (or group of persons) - from the concept down to the software, and no one in all these years, despite the huge incentive, has found any flaw in it (all coins lost have come from human error, never from a bug in the protocol or in bitcoin-qt). Such astonishingly well-enginereed software, at least for me, brings Stuxnet up to mind, and IIRC we know that it was very likely made by some secret government agency, and probably LOTS of funds and research went into it (and that is a good explanation for a software that has no bugs).

So, while I'm long on bitcoin and I see the great benefits it could bring, it has my skeptical-senses tingling. Am I the only one?

A more detailed fact contributes to my skepticism: are we so sure that having *every* transaction recorded and public is really a good thing? If in the future bitcoin will completely take over other payment systems (like everyone here hopes, and it very well could given its immense advantages), including cash, we will live in NSA's heaven: you recieve your wage on a certain address, which very likely will be tied by law to your identity, and you can't do anything anonymously with that money. You can't not pay taxes, buy drugs or anything the government decides it's illegal, have privacy on how much money you hold. Probably the only way to have "unwatched" bitcoins would be to buy them with gold or silver (which you would have to have purchased earlier than this supposed big-brother regime) on the black market, but you would then have two separate stream of coins, which could never interact if you wanted to preserve anonymity. So bitcoin would actually be the exact opposite of anonymity.

I think we all agree this scenario looks very bad - do you think we could ever get there? Or is there some logical flaw in my reasoning?

I'm very interested in hearing opinions and a serious discussion on this. I hope this doesn't come out as trolling, I'm truly just skeptical, in a genuine and scientific way (i.e. I'd be very happy of being proven wrong)