The future of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin and beyond

In it's current form, with current regulations, it may be used by some for regulatory arbitrage, but I don't think it's fair to say that's what the technology sets out to achieve. Bitcoin is decentralized, programmable money, obviating the need for traditional financial institutional intermediation, as stated in the first line of the original bitcoin whitepaper (I'm paraphrasing), and what many, many users and supporters would like to use it for.

>the suggestion that 'theft' is an issue demonstrates a lack of understanding on how bitcoin works as property

Some of the common modes of 'theft' are described in the article (i.e. boils down to compromised private keys).

Yes, the author uses simplified descriptions, more for the layman, but I think the article does a decent job at summarizing some important aspects of the technology.