[tinco]

The private key idea is a catastrophe practically begging to happen ;) They'd base their entire economy on the idea that at no point in the future a meager kb of data will not leak from a government or bank in a historically rather unstable country.

Bitcoin's designed to be decentralized, and I don't think it's possible to force Bitcoin into centralized control. If they are going with a virtual currency that's in their control their best bet is going to be a Ripple like currency, like the one Stripe backed last week.

[jordigh]

Yeah, I know, it's just a stupid suggestion. :-)

There were many other online currencies proposed before bitcoins. The real innovation in bitcoins is decentralisation, so I suppose if you want to centralise it again, you can just throw out the whole blockchain idea.