North Dakota is the very definition of a red state. It voted 58 percent to 39 percent for Romney over Obama, and its statehouse and senate have a total of 104 Republicans and only 47 Democrats. The Republican super-majority is so conservative it recently passed the nation’s most severe anti-abortion resolution – a measure that declares a fertilized human egg has the same right to life as a fully formed person. But North Dakota is also red in another sense: it fully supports its state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND), a socialist relic that exists nowhere else in America.

Recently a 16 year old was killed in the Bronx by police officers in plain clothes. Witnesses swear that the man had no gun. People take to the streets in protest. Police officers challenge stop and frisk laws. "Roughly 4.4 million people have been stopped by the NYPD during the joint tenure of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to official government data. Nearly nine out of ten have been released without an arrest or summons. About 86 percent of those stopped have been black or Latino. "

Just in case you weren't already, you might want to re-think joking about your future plans for a terrorist attack over Gchat or Xbox LIVE. That is, unless you'd like to get "intimately acquainted" with the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the agency has made real time spying on email platforms like GMail, and cloud computing services a "top priority."

Tradehill is a U.S-based exchange that falls within the definition of FinCEN’s regulations for virtual currency exchange operators. “Bitcoin’s primary use is value transmission and financial technology in the U.S. is a very regulated space,” according to Tradehill COO Ryan Singer. The company has anticipated this regulation and the recent guidance from FinCEN “really helps the startups in the space build a compliance game plan,” he added.

That’s where Bitcoin thrives: where people would prefer to throw in their lot with anonymous strangers instead of the world economy. It’s gold-bug thinking reinvented for an age of fluid transparency and instantaneous transactions. And as such it’s an excellent indicator of anxiety. Where you see Bitcoins in action you find a weird and heady mix of speculative angst, a fear of being left behind, and people who appear to have lost faith in institutions, who feel most left behind.