re: Bitcoins were hacked yesterday?

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I disagree. If I figure out how to build a machine that converts air into food, that idea has value wether I patent it or not. It will help people regardless of what patent laws exist.

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Is the idea valuable, or the implementation? The implementation is clearly valuable, but the "idea man" only gets paid if he implements it himself, or collects royalties forced by law. Anyway, the point of bringing up IP was to show that non-physical or virtual "things" can have value. I think that fact is self-evident.

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But a bitcoin doesn't necessarily have to be scarce or finite. The person(s) who developed it could have just as easily said that every prime number is a bitcoin. It may be math but its still arbitrary.

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The rules placed on it make them necessarily scarce. And the rules are necessarily arbitrary. Neither of those change the fact that bitcoins are scarce. Whether it's by design or "natural" doesn't matter.