By the way, forum moderators, are you going to leave Hiraghm ostracized forever or does this auto-hide on his posts have an end date?

I think he's got it almost exactly right - only missing the mark when describing the motivation for BitCoin. He is spot on with the analysis of the cable companies - the shift to low cost/free is happening in a big way right now with NetFlix, Amazon Prime, and VuDu, and half a dozen others. The technologies also exist to do the same thing in the cell phone voice/text area, and when people wake up to the possibilities of Skype / Talkatone / etc, the era of $100/month phone bills will come rushing to an end as well. I've already done the economic analysis on the electric car he mentions - and my motivation is exactly what he describes - not out of "save the environment" at all, but rather "reduce the spending".