Luckily for their most passionate evangelists, the head of the state's financial regulatory body believes they could hold great promise, despite their evident potential for facilitating crimes.

Following the first of two days' worth of hearings on how state law might treat Bitcoin, Litecoin and their digital cousins, New York Department of Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky admitted to reporters he'd initially been quite wary of them, but that he's since come around to their possible usefulness.

"You start to get your mind around the potential future applications of these currencies, many of which I think  even the people in this room can't yet fully predict, but that there is potentially a lot of promise," he said. "If we can get a handle and put some of the guardrails in place to prevent crimes from happening, then we can feel more comfortable in sit back and looking at the promise and future of this."