Just say you don't hold any bitcoins. It's not like they can be seized or anything.

Smart ASIC owners keep their GPU farm around the corner (actually my GPUs are still mining BTC), instead of reselling them. They might have a longer life cycle than expected, especially if scrypt and/or new hashing algorithms are used for successful altcoins and/or Bitcoin replacement, in your worst case scenario of a strong, evil entity taking over BTC.

That said, yes, they would lose their investment. Bitcoin is still VC, anything involving them is risky at this stage.

I see the Liberty Reserve closer as a good omen for BTC. It brings us that much closer to a decentralized exchange.

Remember, it took taking Napster down in order for Bit-torrent to surface. As these central points of failure are removed, decentralized (like) replacements will have to come. (Unless of course
we take the regulatory route, but I just don't see us doing that 100%. It is better for us to apply pressure on the regulators and for them to meet us half way than us meeting their demands.)

Liberty Reserve is nothing like Bitcoin. Bitcoin can't be stopped by governments and as long as exchanges pay for the proper licenses and behave according to them, then they won't raid those either. Everybody knew what LR was used for but they thought they couldn't be stopped because of being in Costa Rica. This shouldn't scare any bitcoiners.

Well, in a sense it's good for bitcoin, because people will start realizing that what happened to e-gold and liberty reserve can, and most likely will, happen to PM, EP, STP and so on, whatever payment processor takes the throne after LR will become a target of the US government.

This could make more people interested in and accepting bitcoin for their business, but there is a bootstrap problem here, in those industries where LR was king: hyip, autosurf & other grey areas. It would probably require some of the biggest actors to start using it and promoting bitcoin for it to really win this market. It needs a majority using bitcoin. In order to accomplish that it must be integrated with the infrastructure so that it's easy to setup etc, but for now I think the volatility may prevent it from happen. If I where to guess, these people will jump on to the second best e-currency after LR, which may be PM or STP now.

Indeed we are DOOMED!!

it's good news,

We are in the clear, they are regulating us for security, They caught and arrested the guy that made LR.
They have not done the same thing to the guys running MtGox... That is my assesment.
They want compliance, besides they can't stop bitcoin, one person with a copy of the BlockChain can rebuild the whole thing again, the laws are territorial so if it is blacked out in one place it can only be done in one sector of a global community.

A previous poster had some really good ideas on how to spread into the space that LR was inhabiting quickly. providing produce, shipping centers, etc.

Paypal does not cater to 60 countries!? Bonus! Bitcoin can go there.

But it is going to be bad news for us for a little while, most people will just say, hah! Bitcoins next, not realizing how resilient the system is, you'd have to knock out the power grid to take it down.
  We are unfortunately limited, we can only propagate our knowledge to people who bring up the argument about LR and only to our close circle, limited for large sectors of society.

To spread we have to find a sector of society to work on that current businesses that accept Bitcoin can help.. I don't think offering them food with foodler or electronics from the Bitcoin store are useful, we need manufacturers on board, shipping services, farmers, something and only the people with a lot of Bitcoins can help with that... or if the community began funding startups to begin constructing these alternate businesses then we can accelerate this.

WE need to bypass the gatekeepers to our success.

It's bad. Bitcoin needs to go mainstream to really be successful. Cracking down on virtual currencies does not help them go mainstream.

The dwolla, okpay, liberty reserve news in the past couple weeks is more than a coincidence. It is a sign the US govt is attacking bitcoin anyway it can.

+1

Well everyone knows bitcoin is getting used on deepweb for illegal things and if one day US govt decide to block bitcoin from america, they can do it easily. Although they won't be able to STOP bitcoin but they can bring bitcoin prices on it's knees anytime.