This week, an internal FBI report was leaked, detailing the Bureau’s concern about the virtual currency Bitcoin and its potential to be exploited by criminals for money laundering and other scams.
At its core, Bitcoin is worthless. That people continue to trade the invented digital currency is understandable, because it’s possible to turn a quick, risky buck. It’s more gambling than economics. So, of course, the financial professionals who levelled the global economy love it.
Thieving hackers just raided the coffers of several prominent Bitcoin exchanges and made off with $US220,000 worth of digital bullion. Ouch. It turns out that a crapload of devalued Bitcoin still adds up to a lot of stolen cash.
Thanks to the exit of e-wallet service Paxum, and a $US100,000 fraud incident, trading has been suspended at TradeHill, a Bitcoin exchange site that mostly played second-fiddle to the more prominent Mt Gox.
Odd, I could have sworn Bitcoin was on the fast track towards technological irrelevance. So why is this new Mac malware harnessing infected GPUs to mine the digital dollars?
