My hope is that this will play out in the same way as the RIAA law suits: Since law suits are expensive, they have to ask for 5K+ at a minimum in each law suit

My hope is that this will play out in the same way as the RIAA law suits: Since law suits are expensive, they have to ask for 5K+ at a minimum in each law suit (or if they do criminal suits, 6 months plus of jail time) However, the only people they can charge are P2P participants, so in the case of bitcoin, mainly a bunch of college students trying to be entrepreneurial. (Charging exchanges is another issue... in this post I'm talking about trying to directly go after the core bitcoin system.) Charging a bunch of nice college kids with 6 months jail time for buying a bitcoin is the worst PR disaster imaginable. So I'm hoping this kind of crackdown is untenable, from a political standpoint, and that bitcoins remain effectively unregulated.