I do hate bitcoin and for exactly that reason. But I'm conflicted about it - if I could make a huge amount of money and know, for a fact, that it was caused by me being in the right place to take money off people who actually earned it... is this a bad thing to do?

It's a confidence trick - is it bad to be a con artist? Or is relieving the gullible of their hard earned cash a noble pastime? There certainly isn't any actual value being created.

But if a bunch of greedy bastards wanted to pay off my mortgage, I can't see I'd have a problem with it.