[betterunix]

Wrong. You can have a central authority that issues money and still have a censorship resistant system -- this is what paper cash is, and this is what is possible with the digital cash systems academic cryptographers have been studying since the 1980s.

[sickpig]

Really? So what happens if I shut down the central authority?

[betterunix]

This was already addressed by the research comminuty:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.105...

In other words, you can set things up so that no single authority can fail in a way that would cause the entire system to fail. You can have N authorities such that a minimum of K are needed to keep the system working.