The article certainly illustrates why Satoshi chooses to remain anonymous.
This quote from the article was interesting:
When authorities monitored the criminals’ communications, they discovered that E-Gold was among the carders’ preferred money-transfer methods, because the system allowed users to open accounts and transfer funds anonymously anywhere in the world.
This is why bitcoin will eventually be a target...assuming the user-volume rises above its current noise floor.
and how would they hurt us? just asking... freeze all bitcoins?
There are a myriad of ways an entity with the resources of a nation-state can hurt bitcoin, even destroy it for all practical purposes. Will they? I think they will if it gets on their radar as anything other than a momentary blip. To what extent will they go after it? To whatever extent is necessary to remove the threat they think it poses to them.
From the article:
When the Shadowcrew investigation wrapped in October 2004 with the shuttering of the site — and the arrest of more than a dozen members — the Justice Department turned its sights on E-Gold. Its goal was to force the service to comply with regulations governing money-transmitting services like Western Union and Travelex. Federal regulations required those businesses to register with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), to be licensed in states that required it, to diligently authenticate the identity of customers and to file suspicious activity reports on shady-looking customers. But E-Gold wasn’t doing this.
This represents the nut of it.
so they will just say: bitcoins are illegal.
know what i would say: FUCK YOU. i live in europe, you can't touch me, im behind 5 proxys.
the main diffrences between bitcoin and e-gold is that bitcoin is decentralized, and backed by nothing.
They could do exactly that, and other things as well. They could get the EU to pass similar laws, and EU would do it; they have anti-money-laundering interests too. They can target the BTC/$ interfaces (the exchanges). They can devote very significant CPU time to screwing with the bitcoin validation process. These are just a few of the things
they could do. I'm sure their are tons more.
In short, while they can't really kill the underlying bitcoin algorithm, they can certainly apply enough leverage to destroy it's perceived value; destroy the 'general' confidence in the system, thus making the trade value zilch...or close enough to zilch so its not a threat.