I've pondered this one for a while too, mainly from the ECB's point of view. From a tinfoil hat perspective bitcoin could well be a creation of the world banks as a potential way of eradicating national debts. From a more realistic perspective something like bitcoin is both inevitable and predictable and allowing it to become established prior to the coming flood of online and mobile payment services could help prevent an awful lot of teething problems and security breaches in these systems as well as preventing any of them from gaining a monopoly on digital payments.
Clever point, ECB is clearly interested also in following the lessons learned with Bitcoin.
Yesterday there was an announcement of a new central agency for all computer related crime in the EU, including hacking, phishing and credit card fraud. It is to be headded by the Danish computer crime department in the first period.
