I don't think it's possible to write a good introductory story about VXX without discussing the historical contango tendency in VIX futures prices. Maybe I'm just remembering my own learning about VXX and being biased here, but I just don't think it's appropriate to assume a new audience would be familiar with the unique dynamics of VIX term structure (which is what the author does in this story, since he doesn't mention VIX term structure. Either that or he doesn't think it's relevant.).

If I am going to understand "How VXX Works", I need some background in the historical relationship between the 1 month and 2 month VIX futures prices, something like Figure 4 and Table 3 here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1886429

Also, I just have to address this quote:

"So even in the short term, the constant time decay, the sometimes hard-to-understand movements, and the complex structure make it very hard to use the VXX as a trading tool."

What is the author trying to say here? I heard, "derivatives are evil, stay away noobs!"

Reeling in my sarcasm a bit, the author is right that VXX is really hard to understand. But it's not impossible to understand.