Not sure if anyone is familiar with the RICO act but if I'm correct it potentially puts the entire Bitcoin community under investigation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_ActOne way the government would bust Mafia members is by using "marked" bills. Agents would engage in illegal business transactions with criminal organizations and since the top members weren't at the buy they would bust those higher members when they were in possession of the marked bills which linked them to the crime. In the case of BTC - transactions and dealing on the silkroad extend into every possible aspect of bitcoin as all the Bitcoins from that ever went in and out of the Silkroad are essentially marked. What does this mean? It means that anyone operating a bitcoin related business is subject to investigation and arrest under the RICO act. Essentially the entire bitcoin network is operating as an illegal criminal organization from the miners who supported the the transactions to the pools that support the miners.
The arrest of Charlie Shrem is the beginning of the end for Bitcoin. What's even more odd is Lead Bitcoin developer Gavin meets with the CIA/NSA/CFR and then all of a sudden these arrests happen. Seems a bit odd. If you don't think this forum is also crawling with feds than you are gravely mistaken.
Anoncoin, Stablecoin and Zerocoin represent the future of cryptocurrency because those developers are working to protect the users/operators/miners from being implicated in a RICO investigation by making the transactions completely anonymous. Something bitcoin developers like Gavin could care less about. You can't have marked bills if the currency is anonymous. One needs to protect free currency through anonymity just like free speech protects both hate and praise speech.
