There's another concern here. Given the general US government history of strongly not liking things like Bitcoin, (see for example what happened to e-dollar) I'm not sure being involved with bitcoin is a good idea for the long-term success of the Singularity Institute. This is activity that is possibly illegal and it may seriously damage the SI's status in the general public if it becomes associated with it.
Why would the US government go after Bitcoin? Indicting the directors of e-gold was one of the greatest accomplishments of Bush's Department of Justice and hopefully we will never again see such an insane justice department.
Also, there is no US entity to even prosecute, just an IRC channel to gain control of. Some cyberpunk future where the world governments are trying to hack Bitcoin is almost more likely than any of the users being sued for things for things other than committing crimes while happening to be using Bitcoin at the same time.
Your link doesn't indicate that users of e-gold were found to have been in any violation of the law -- the only thing that I saw happened to people who had not been violating the law in some other manner was that 56 accounts were locked/blocked (though I'm not sure why these were blocked, since it looks like they were just e-gold/money traders.)
Do you see any specific legal hazard for users that I don't?
14Wei Dai
EFF accepts donations in Bitcoin, so their lawyers must have decided that it's not clearly illegal or bad PR. On the other hand it makes sense for EFF to signal support of Bitcoin, even at some legal/PR risk, since that fits into their core mission, whereas it's much less clear what accepting donations in Bitcoin now buys SIAI. It seems unlikely to be a significant source of revenue at least in the short term.
Now you can donate to Singularity Institute using Bitcoin.
Currently Bitcoin mining appears to be profitable as only bubble economics can be. Already some Less Wrong users have purchased GPUs and started mining Bitcoin. Please consider sending some Bitcoins to SI at address 1HUrNJfVFwQkbuMXwiPxSQcpyr3ktn1wc9
2014 Edit: Please donate Bitcoin by using the Bitpay link on MIRI's donate page. Thanks!