In the case of Syria, internet connectivity was very limited in the first place, making it very easy to isolate.

In the case of the Ukraine, when I last looked at the backbone map, Kiev is a relatively busy node.   It connects to the internet through several minor backbones to west, and a major backbone connection to Moscow.  A few parts of Russia are dependent on backbone connections in Kiev.  Due to the multiple connections to western countries, it would be hard for Russia to isolate the Ukraine from the internet.   In fact, most of Russia's traffic could be isolated by cutting the backbones from Kiev, Stockholm and Helsinki.

A merchant is also hindered in that the CC is soft, a customer can dispute and possibly reverse the transaction in the future.  It requires that the merchant have a credit relationship with the payment processor.  The merchant also pays a significant fee not traditionally passed on to the CC customers, but to all customers.

Customers may prefer the CC, because it provides reversible transactions and hidden fees not directly paid by the CC user.  Using the collected fees, the CC company gets to play silly games with points and cash-back programs to attract customers that are paid by all customers of the merchants.

Merchants will be the one to drive adoption, due to the advantage of much lower fees and irreversible transactions, and a merchant can accept payments without establishing credit with a payment processor.

Why is this a problem?   Consumer flash memory devices that can hold 16G can be found for less than $10.  This eventually gets cheaper.   Mass produced devices can hold a ROM of the current history of the blockchain for even cheaper.

Consider your "51% benevolent protocol takeover" another way.  Say you convince the US government that it needs to take control of the bitcoin protocol because there's too much stealing and illegal business being conducted with bitcoin.   The US starts to require that the purchase of ASIC mining rigs requires a license and regulation such that if you are a US citizen, you are legally required to mine according to US government rules.   Then the US government requires submitting all transactions to US government servers to be approved before adding to the block chain, just to make sure blacklisted money isn't being moved. 

If the US government were actual able to make a "51% benevolent protocol takeover" in this way, then usage of bitcoins would probably be sharply diminished, especially by those that don't live in this country.

IMHO,  what you is seek is no different.

It should be called an "emergency 51% attack."   Bitcoin will be safer once miners don't use the current reference implementation as a majority.

I can't vouch for any statistical analysis, but when I last looked at my router logs, I'd see an average of 5 probes (A single IP addresses looking for open ports) a day.  About 40% are Chinese, usually attached to a university, followed by probes from Russia, then other European and US addresses in number.   It's a little unnerving when you are aware that random people checking the lock on your door several times a day.

The goal of any 51% attack is to control the protocol, for evil, for good, it doesn't matter.  To change the protocol, you just need 51% control of the mining.  You are hypothetically executing a 51% attack by getting 51% of the miner's power to follow the "BTC 2.0" protocol.  If it can be done for "BTC 2.0", then it could be done by a government or criminal organization.

It just means somebody who has your email address submitted it to coinbase.  If they compromised your email, then you would have a problem.

The problem with making any kind of exchange is that both things being exchanged have to be transmitted electronically.   It's not a problem for bitcoin or an alternate cryptocurrency.  (it would be easy to trade between them electronically)

The problem is converting fiat currency into an electronic form.  You would have to trade electronic tokens that are pegged to the fiat currency being used.   This requires that some authority that issues the tokens will guarantee that it can be converted back to fiat.   Right now, this is done with wire transfers, and a system of banks that says it will pay you in fiat currency for the value that is electronically transmitted, or an exchange that holds your fiat currency tokens and promises to give it back to you.

I'm just saying that you can't create a fiat/cryptocurrency trading system without trusting somebody to pay back your fiat currency tokens into fiat currency.  It can't be done with math.

Technically, the organization distributing the change would be the one attempting the 51% attack.  If it succeeds, then it demonstrates the protocol is weak in the first place and that 51% can be done by a small group of individuals.

Most likely a future update to OpenSSL

Whoever is in charge of reorganization definitely did not do due diligence and take exclusive control of the company's servers, where ever they may be.  That should have been obvious once the nature of mtGox's business was understood.

It wouldn't work that way.  Bitcoins are only worth something because there are buyers and sellers.  If the bitcoin protocol was compromised in some way (such as a cartel controlling the majority of mining, or practical quantum computer attacks), then there would be more sellers and buyers and the price would go down until there were no buyers. 

Low-cost hardware wallets that connect to the public network cheaply and allow peer to peer transfers, seperate from your possibly malware-infested smartphone.

Hardware wallets could be "certified" and come with a guarantee of repayment if the funds (up to a certain limit) are stolen without the hardware being compromised or if the hardware failed due to manufacturing defect.  Private keys would never leave the hardware wallet.

Banks can play a role as "trusted" institutions where you store your bitcoins instead of keeping your private keys in your mattress.

Is your implication that corrupt people with other continental identities don't use bitcoin to launder money?  The supposition is laughable.

Bitcoin's killer app is simply taking Paypal's and VISA/Mastercard's business by being cheaper and more reliable.

Illegal immigrants exist because there is demand by American businesses to use illegal labor.  If the government was serious about stopping illegal immigration, then it would enact laws that allow the seizure of houses built with illegal labor, or seizing factories and farms that employ illegal immigrants.   It would sharply reduce demand.  It would be much more effective that building an expensive, stupid fence.  But it is not going to happen.

Western Union currently profits quite nicely from the transfer of wages of illegal labor.  They are not currently fucked.   Bitcoin could compete with Western Union's business of transferring wages of illegal labor, which only helps with the international adoption of bitcoin.

The risk is that if a private key to one or more addresses is reused on a shared machine, such as in cloud computing, it is possible to determine the private key.  The researchers were able to determine the private key after 200 signings.

I would think that using disposable addresses where a private key is used to sign a transaction only once, should minimize or eliminate the risk.

It is linked to demographics with access to technology.  Pale-skinned people that live in poor, rural communities and trailer parks will be slow to adopt bitcoin as well.

For large amounts, probably not.  If it is known that you possess a brain wallet with a large amount of funds, then an abduction with an appropriate amount of cruelty would get you give it up. (How many fingers would you sacrifice before you decide that it's not worth it to hold out?)