<Eleuthria> jgarzik:  I sent you credentials if you'd like to use: http://www.btcguild.com/avalon_verification.php  to show it off

Bitcoin addresses are binary data, they are often expressed in Base64 to make them human readable, and allow for easy cutting and pasting. Although Chinese characters could use a similar scheme, as Base64, I'm not aware of any that exists at the moment.

I think that people here are missing the point.  While they can't eliminate bitcoins themselves because of the peer-to-peer network and blockchain/wallet system, if the government (for the sake of argument let's say the US govt.) wants to stop the spread of Bitcoin they can "ban" them, and then prosecute any businesses that accept bitcoins and freeze their USD funds (like WordPress).

Then they go after Dwolla, BitInstant, etc..

They don't have to wipe Bitcoin out of existence, but if they are able to stop what is currently some decent momentum towards wider acceptance/adoption by forcing large scale legitimate businesses out of the market, then the value of BTC will drop, demand will fall, and it will go back to being something that hackers play with on Tor.

I'm not saying that this is about to happen, or that they have a huge interest in stamping out Bitcoin right now, but it is very naive to think that they can't do it.  If they provide a strong enough financial disincentive for merchants to accept bitcoins, they can strangle the movement in its cradle, so to speak.