Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. Your position appears to be unsupported by legislation. 31 U.S.C. 5103: (from http://www.treas

Note that it is illegal in the US to use an alternate currency. Your position appears to be unsupported by legislation. 31 U.S.C. 5103: (from http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/... ) United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. As I wrote three months ago, ( http://bbot.org/blog/archives/2010/12/11/encrypting_a_better_tomorrow/ http://bbot.org/blog/archives/2010/12/11/encrypting_a_better... ) the Americans may make it hard on Bitcoin to operate for a variety of other reasons, (for one, it's inherently hard to track the movement of money in the Bitcoin network, making it great for laundering money) but Bitcoin does not appear to be prima facie illegal, on the basis of being an alternative currency. You have to pay taxes in USD, but simply doing business in another currency is not illegal. As for "raiding and shutting it down"; difficult, but not entirely impossible. There's only one primary developer, and the network is coordinated through a single irc channel. (#bitcoin @ irc.lfnet.org) You could order him to shut down bitcoin.org, and close the irc channel; but Bitcoin is open source, and a more censorship-resistant client could be hacked together.