One of the core developers of Bitcoin has left the project and written extensively about how it has unfolded (via Matt Mullenweg). I felt relief when I read this.
I am uncomfortable with Bitcoin. I have done some inquiry into its nature and I believe it is in some ways an interesting experiment. But I have and continue to feel that one of its greatests faults is that it is designed to bypass the need for trust … if we are going to move into sustainable communal future we are going to need to learn to trust (ourselves and others), to nourish trust, to create human processes that uncover and heal mistrust … we are going to need technologies that enable us to build trust … not to bypass the need for it.
The above mentioned article demonstrates how diverse and subtly related human processes have undermined the Bitcoin effort. To me this seemed inevitable. The techological challenges Bitcoin faced are, in my mind, correlated to faults in its inception.