Early Bitcoin Adopters Facing Extortion Threats

An anonymous reader writes Wired recounts the story of Hal Finney, one of the very first adopters of Bitcoin. Finney died earlier this year after a long fight with Lou Gehrig's disease. But for months before his death, he was a victim of constant harassment from somebody trying to extort his Bitcoins. He and his family faced a variety of threats, and had a SWAT team called on their residence. And it turns out Finney is not alone — other early adopters are being targeted with similar threats. "That's when someone using the names Nitrous and Savaged hacked into [early adopter Roger Ver's] email accounts and demanded that he cough up 37 bitcoins—about $20,000 at the time—in order to prevent his private information from being published online. Ver refused, and the hacker apparently backed off after Ver put a 37 bitcoin bounty on his head. Ver, who was himself sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for illegally shipping explosive across state lines, believes that Savaged is not only the same person who swatted Hal Finney, but also the person who gained access to Satoshi Nakamoto's email account earlier this year."

Comments

Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Unregulated currency FTW

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Like what?

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ass.

Re: Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, nobody has ever faced extortion threats for real regulated dollars.........

Re:Told you so

[NotDrWho]

The only currency more corrupt, sleazy, and propped-up-by-bullshit more than Bitcoin is the U.S. Dollar.

Re: Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

GP never claimed that. On the other hand, the police will actually get involved in such a case of real money. They couldn't care less about your Monopoly coins.

Re:Told you so

[itzly]

Yeah, because nobody ever got extorted for US dollars, or other currencies.

Re:Told you so

[nosfucious]

Really? US dollar? Swiss Franc is much more stable. Euro, is very spendable, mostly stable. Petro-Euro could easily replace Petro-Dollar (but ask Saddam Hussien how that turned out).

US Dollar is not worth its weight in paper.

China holds vast amount of US Dollars and the moment they decide to sell some or all of these, the currency will start to look like the Zimbabwe Dollar.

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure his ass is that safe.

Re:Told you so

[Lunix Nutcase]

Euro, is very spendable, mostly stable.

Then you've never watched it's 25%+ fluctuations up and down over the last 10 years.

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have said the same thing at the beginning, but now I have nothing but applause to give to those who made millions from BitCoins.

Re: Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Real currencies are backed by military might. It's the only thing that makes them valuable. Otherwise, someone will just come and take it away from you.

Re:Told you so

[Shakrai]

Petro-Euro could easily replace Petro-Dollar (but ask Saddam Hussien how that turned out).

Only when the EU decides to try its hand at keeping the Middle East stable. You might wish to keep the Brits (and French) out of it though, I hear they like to draw borders with no regards to ethic or tribal history. :)

Re: Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed on that one

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

In the history of bad IT ideas, bitcoin is near the top of the list. The nerd factor is the only thing going for it.

Re:Told you so

[sanvila]

Euro, is very spendable, mostly stable.

Then you've never watched it's 25%+ fluctuations up and down over the last 10 years.

You can't measure the stability of a currency just by comparing it to your own currency. If we followed that line of reasoning, the only stable currency to you would be one which is pegged to the US Dollar. The price of one Euro fluctuates if you measure it in Dollars, yes, but that does not speak against the stability of the Euro more than it does against the stability of the Dollar.

Re:Told you so

[njnnja]

The only reason CHF is stable is because there are so many Europeans who want to get our of EUR denominated assets that the SNB needs to actively intervene to defend its currency. Neither capital flight (from the Euro) nor currency manipulation (from the CHF) is a particularly enviable position to be in. And Petro-Euro will replace Petro-Dollar when CDG ensures free transit around the Persian Gulf instead of the Fifth Fleet.

Lastly, a weaker US dollar (due to sales from China) would make foreign goods more expensive in America, but would not lead to massive inflation, because 1) the US is a large, diversified economy that, despite a persistent current account deficit, produces enough that it could largely sustain itself on entirely dollar denominated goods and 2) to the extent that the dollar depreciates and imports become more expensive, no one is hurt by that more than China. So even if China could flood the market with USD (which it can't without the Fed simultaneously running an incompetent monetary policy), it wouldn't want to.

Re:Told you so

[Iconoclysm]

Nothing like a little bigotry in your financial discussion, eh?!

Re:Told you so

[ultranova]

Unregulated currency FTW

Bitcoin's not unregulated. Its regulations are simply enforced by technical rather than legal means. Or are you perhaps confusing currency regulations with regulations against extortion?

Re:Told you so

[ultranova]

US Dollar is not worth its weight in paper.

According to Wikipedia, a dollar bill weights around 1g. According to Alibaba, a ton of offset printing paper costs around $600 per ton. That means paper costs around 0.06 cents per gram, or put another way, a dollar bill is about 16 times its weight in paper.

Re:Told you so

[Baron_Yam]

In the history of bad IT ideas, bitcoin is near the top of the list. The nerd factor is the only thing going for it.

I don't think that's true. It's an incomplete, awful implementation with a community made of a bunch of sometime technically-adept, usually socially-inept, often blinded by greed fanatics.

That doesn't mean the idea of a trustless distributed ledger isn't completely useless, just that none of the current implementations are ever going to be successful in the long term. They've done pretty well at transferring money from 'little people' to Chinese mining operations and scammers around the world, though. They're so good at it, the victims keep cheering the effort on and recruiting new victims.

Re:Told you so

[Baron_Yam]

And... yeah, read that the way I meant it, and not with the error in the second paragraph that totally reversed my intended meaning. Damnit.

Re:Told you so

[Richard_at_work]

Similar then to the huge fluctuations of the dollar to the GBP then?

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Or 1600 times its weight in paper, if you remember that a cent is not a dollar :p

Re:Told you so

[gwolf]

Right, I see what you did there...

I am Mexican. We have been told the peso has been mostly stable for almost two decades... Well, lets say, a decade and a half. When Vicente Fox was appointed president (2000), one dollar was at about MX$10, and it has very slowly slided. This year started with the dollar at ~MX$13. (Our last couple of months notwithstanding, as we are now at about 15). You can look at the last 10 years' graph

However, when the Euro started circulating (2002), one Euro was at about 7 pesos. It has since gone up to 17, then down a little. That is, it has moved from ~US$0.80 to ~US$1.40; it has peaked at US$1.60, and in the last 10 years, had valleys of US$1.20. (you can see the last ten years exchange levels history)

So, in short: There's quite a bit more to it if you dig into the whole world of currencies :)

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

Is that fluctuation in comparison to oil in Germany or bread in France? Or in comparison to some unrelated arbitrary currency? OMG, it fluctuates wildly compared to the BHT !!11!!

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

What happens there is that the peso is unofficially tied to the dollar, and both the US and Mexico work to keep the rates stable, because that improves trade. So they are not independent currencies. They just fluctuate together, within reason.

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

The thing I rarely seen pointed out is that it's anti-environment. The "value" is measured in damage to the environment. It's not like they are basing assigning value from useful work. Perhaps a SETI@Home (of folding, or whatever you like) block completion. But arbitrary and useless math calculations. Burn fuel to solve a useless equation, and get rewarded.

I think that a government-issued and controlled crypto-currency would be much better. The central issuer would lose control when they "spend" it. And the mechanism for issuing new currency could be mathematically trivial, so as to not be environment damaging.

But the bitcoin bakers see such a proposal as anti-bitcoin. If you aren't destroying the environment, you are a fascist.

Re:Told you so

[Kaenneth]

DRM is enforced by 'technical' means; Bitcoin is enforced by mathematical means.

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to be an asinine POS. So the laws of mathematics define software to mine bitcoins and process transactions? It is all technical means. There may be math behind those means, but the mathematical rules are carried out most definitely by technical means.

Re:Told you so

[david_thornley]

How do you avoid essentially useless computation with a trustless distributed ledger? If it's computationally easy to verify the ledger, it's computationally easy to verify a fake, and if not many computrons are spent on verification it's easy to outspend the honest folks.

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is enforced by 'technical' means; Bitcoin is enforced by mathematical means.

This is CS we're dealing with; there's very little difference between the two.

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

Did you not read? If you add trust, then you get trivial computations. The system for bitcoin is no more secure. The network can be attacked with "fake" transactions relatively easily. Any nation-state could take over and collapse bitcoin for liss than 1/100th the "value" of all the bitcoins on the planet. Sure, there'd be a fork and things would "change" but the damage would be done.

If the US really wanted to take down bitcoin, they should build $10B of mining gear. Then push through piles of fraudulent transactions stealing all the bitcoins they can. The only problem with that is if they get sued for illegal taking.

Re:Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Said the American. Oh what a grand job you've done keeping the lid on that.

Re:Told you so

[NitroWolf]

You do realize that it takes much more energy to create and distribute the US dollar than it does to create and distribute bitcoins, right? So if Bitcoin is anti-environment, then the US Dollar is super-anti-I-fucking-hate-all-living-things environment.

So why are you using USD, since that is so anti-environment?

Re:Told you so

[NitroWolf]

Oh, so the US Government can be trusted to not fuck up a monetary system? I mean, it's worked so well with USD, why wouldn't it work with another version of it?

You are the reason there is a problem. You don't even understand what the problem is, so how can you be expected to form an viable opinion on it?

Re:Told you so

[gwolf]

Nope. The peso floats freely; twice in the last five years there has been economic unstability, and the central bank "intervened" by selling a chunk of its reserves in order to keep the peso from falling further. It has worked: In the 2008-2010 period (remember, global economic recession), stable exchange levels jumped from 10 to 12, but we did at some point reach (for just a couple of days) 16, then went back to 12. And a similar thing seems to be happening now, as the dollar jumped from ~12.50 to ~15, and seems to have stabilized.

But no, the Mexican peso is not tied to the dollar, or to any other currency.

Re:Told you so

[gwolf]

Oh - Sorry, I jumped to answering. You did say unoficiallyUS and Mexico work to keep the rates stable.

That's exactly true. It's not that the peso is artificially held at a fixed per-dollar level (as it happened in the past), but that it is kept in a relatively stable value through "real" action.

But, of course, this is because the USA is not only Mexico's closest economic partner but its neighbour country. But anyway, the reason I sent here my original comment is that in the 2002-2014 period, the Euro went to over double of its original value against the US Dollar, then down a bit.

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

No, I didn't know that. How much energy does it take to print and distribute a paper bill?

I buy and earn in USD, but haven't seen paper money in 7 years, aside from a $2 bill I keep around as a curiosity. So your assertion that paper (or coin) is required for the USD to be useful is provably false.

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

Where did I advocate the USD? Oh, I didn't, and you are lying? Try again when you are willing to read what's written, and not what's convenient for you to strawman.

Re:Told you so

[AK Marc]

my original comment is that in the 2002-2014 period, the Euro went to over double of its original value against the US Dollar, then down a bit.

And how did the Euro perform against the AUD and GBP? Comparing two things doesn't prove one is more stable than the other. The USD fell against the Euro, then rose. It's the USD that's unstable. Compare them to the price of commodities.

Re: Told you so

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf? I live in Canada and see usd paper money all the time.

If you use usd and haven't SEEN paper money in 7 years, YOU are the odd man out.

You must live in a perfect area where credit and debit machines never fail. I can recall 3 times in last few months where I had to pay for my dinner with cash.

I think you over exaggerated and have no credibility now.

Re: Told you so

[AK Marc]

I move $40,000 USD a year. But I don't live in the US. One can survive electronically. And when I lived in the US, I never saw debit fail that left the store open. I've seen Wal-Marts close because their machines were down. They can't do customer service, gift cards, refunds, or anything else. When debit is down, they close stores, not go back to cash, which many people don't carry anymore.

Lookit, an intarwebz bogeyman

[Anonymous Coward]

haxxin with bounty on head

Still can't believe

[Kobun]

That swatting is a thing. How can it be that a single, anonymous phone call is all it takes to deploy a militarized police team to your front door? It blows my mind. That it keeps happening over and over ... ugh.

Re:Still can't believe

[Cigarra]

Because police departments have all this budget and military gear and they're itching to use it?

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if someone calls in and they don't break your house and kill your dogs, someone will sue them?

Whereas if they follow procedure, heed the call, break your house and kill your dogs, they're in the clear.

Doing this creates wealth (jobs).

It's Capitalism 101.

Captcha: misuses

Re:Still can't believe

[taxman_10m]

It applies to lots of things. In this instance here someone filed a fake claim of child abuse.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/met...

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the flip side:
Because the one time that it is actually a crazy person killing people and they don't act on the single phone call?

Re:Still can't believe

[Translation Error]

Because if someone calls in and they don't break your house and kill your dogs, someone will sue them?

Suing the police for not responding to actual violent crimes has been tried. The courts ruled that the police have no obligation.

Re:Still can't believe

[TheCarp]

That assumes they even are "departments". Here in MA swat teams are private companies, which seems to have gone unnoticed until someone tried to file FOIA requests for information about how often they are deployed; and they refused to answer.

Because of course, knowing how often and why they are deployed is only reporting to the public on exactly what we pay them for, its not something the public has any right to know or anything.

Re:Still can't believe

[wisnoskij]

Because in this day and age, people expect the government to do everything for them, and protect them from everything. Imagine if hundreds die, after the FBI gets a call that they ignore. Heads would role, major important people would get fired. So they have to treat every single suggestion of law breaking as true, as the voters do not care one wit is rights are routinely trodden on, of their police are militarized and budgets soar, they do care if there is a shooting or a bomb important enough to get news coverage.
when you give people the simplified choice of, should this tragedy have happened, or do we prevent it in the future, they will always pick the "lets prevent this in the future option". Because they are not writing the budges, they are not directly taking money out of schools or medical care. They are not deciding exactly what rights to trampled on.

Re:Still can't believe

[Sperbels]

There are reasonable responses, and there are unreasonable responses. The police usually lean toward the unreasonable responses these days. They smash in the door with guns blazing when the only indication that something is amiss is a single phone call from an anonymous source.

Re:Still can't believe

[ultranova]

when you give people the simplified choice of, should this tragedy have happened, or do we prevent it in the future, they will always pick the "lets prevent this in the future option". Because they are not writing the budges, they are not directly taking money out of schools or medical care. They are not deciding exactly what rights to trampled on.

Yes, it's the dumb public who's at fault. Except... for some strange reason the police don't behave this way in, say, Nordic countries, despite them being openly and officially huge-government welfare nanny states straight from Ayn Rand's worst nightmares. So perhaps, just perhaps, the problem behind the police acting like an occupying force is not the public but the police themselves?

Re:Still can't believe

[VGPowerlord]

What happens when you file a FOIA against the police/911 office that dispatched them?

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

America is a feminist police state.
If you don't like it leave or fight fire with fire.

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

America is a feminist police state.
If you don't like it leave or fight fire with fire.

Males are in strong majority in all positions of power, including lawmakers and law enforcement, so it is a male-run feminist state?

Re:Still can't believe

[liquid_schwartz]

Oddly enough yes. Don't believe me, check with the family court system and see the lopsided numbers and seemingly infinite stories of how bad a deal a dad gets.

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you marry a young female child?
No. An accusation gets your door kicked down and maybe you killed.
Could you in the past? Yes (in Delaware a 9 year old girl up till 1870, in the south later than that). (Also allowed in the Old Testament)

What changed? Women gained power and influence, with help from supplicant males.

A reactive solution is needed.

Re:Still can't believe

[FooAtWFU]

It's Capitalism 101.

While the general snark in this comment is evident, I have to protest about conflating private ownership of the means of production with government agencies wasting money doing useless tasks (to say nothing of the risks associated with it).

Perhaps the inability to differentiate these two is actually something that's common these days, though, which would explain a lot about modern discourse on the topic -- likewise the conflation of "jobs" and "wealth" (the former being a means to an end).

Re:Still can't believe

[rtaylor]

It's still not up to the private company to tell you that. In fact, disclosing those details might be a violation of their contract with their employer.

Ask the public office that hires and pays the team how often they are deployed and what for.

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame television. Since the 1970's, American TV has been full of police "action" series, painting the life of a police officer as one of fast cars, gunfights and explosions. The older police dramas from the 1950's and 1960's that focused more on the investigative work had died out by the mid 1970's, and have only recently returned. Contrast with the UK, where shows like The Bill show a greater variety of police work, none of which involves mass carnage at the tip of a police issued weapon.

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly enough yes. Don't believe me, check with the family court system and see the lopsided numbers and seemingly infinite stories of how bad a deal a dad gets.

But with the oppression of men being done by men, not women, shouldn't more of the anger and frustration be directed at men, not women? Because it isn't the women doing the oppression, it is just you disagreeing with your fellow men in power about how things should be. Like many other issues. So if you really want change it might be more productive to engage politically based on that premise, not on fighting "feminists".

Re:Still can't believe

[ebvwfbw]

.... Here in MA swat teams are private companies, ...

Not gone un-noticed. I know about it clear down in Maryland. So do others. Last I knew they did that so they wouldn't have to answer FOIA requests. You know, try to hide their stupidity. I thought there was legislation to remove their ability to do that. MA is way out of my zone to care about, other than it could spread. Look into it and get it outlawed if that's not already under way. Understand that your life if you live in MA may depend on it. Less Rambo, more Sheriff Taylor.

The end point to this police/racial hoaxes recently is the crazy left wants to nationalize the police. Then we're all screwed.

Re:Still can't believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yes. It's the favourite tactic of radical feminists online groups actually.

Fireworks

[Orgasmatron]

http://dailyanarchist.com/2012...

http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroo...

He was charged for selling agricultural fireworks (to scare away pests) on ebay. Turns out that the manufacturer was making them too powerful and/or not following regulations that limit their sale to farmers, ranchers, and growers.

He was also the only person prosecuted over the incident, despite the same fireworks being sold all over, including Cabelas. (Ken Shearer is mentioned in the CPSC press release, but his case is unrelated.)

Re:Fireworks

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying he's a farmer.

No "Bounty On His Head": Timmy Fails Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Ver refused, and the hacker apparently backed off after Ver put a 37 bitcoin bounty on his head.

From TFA: "Then Ver responded with a link to a Facebook post offering that 37-bitcoin bounty for information leading to Nitrous’s arrest, and Nitrous immediately backed down. To be clear, Ver didn’t put a bounty on Nitrous’s head. He merely said he’ll pay out the money when Nitrous is arrested for hacking his accounts."

Re:No "Bounty On His Head": Timmy Fails Again

[Richard_at_work]

Its a perfectly reasonable modern use of the term.

Ten months?

[AndyKron]

10 months in federal prison for illegally shipping explosive across state lines? That's it? Ten months?

Re:Ten months?

[nedlohs]

The "explosives" in question were firecrackers designed to scare birds sold on ebay...

Re:Ten months?

[Anonymous Coward]

10 months in federal prison for illegally shipping explosive across state lines? That's it? Ten months?

It's pretty hard to convince a sane judge that 80 years to life is a suitable punishment for the unholy crime of "having a firework"

Unless you honestly are trying to argue that a person such as yourself who may have had to, I dunno, drive to the corner store to refill the tank to your BBQ or something - A much much worse crime since the explosive power in a tank of BBQ fuel would be thousands of times more destructive than a little firework.

10 months X 1000 multitude more powerful == 10000 months = 833 years = ~10 human life times
Yet I don't see you jumping up and turning yourself in for YOUR crimes, so why should this guy get worse than you?

Cojones

[puddingebola]

I don't know, extortion is evil but you've got some cojones to try and squeeze somebody who ships explosives across state lines. Maybe you're 37 bitcoins will include a special package delivery from Hal Finney. That's odd, this box is ticking.

Re:"Bounty On His Head": I Fail Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoops! I fail this time.

From TFA: "Ver refused, and the hacker apparently backed off after Ver put a 37 bitcoin bounty on his head."

However, that statement links to this article which states that: "Then Ver responded with a link to a Facebook post offering that 37-bitcoin bounty for information leading to Nitrous’s arrest, and Nitrous immediately backed down. To be clear, Ver didn’t put a bounty on Nitrous’s head. He merely said he’ll pay out the money when Nitrous is arrested for hacking his accounts."

I suck. Apologies to Timmy.

Take a pack of Black Cats camping

[raymorris]

If you go camping and take a pack of Black Cats with you, you may have just illegally transported explosives. Details matter.

Re:Take a pack of Black Cats camping

[Anonymous Coward]

We ordinary people who follow the rules aren't sympathetic to the plight of your stupid dangerous cousin. If his kind won't reform, we want them locked up.

Re:Take a pack of Black Cats camping

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you claim to be a "following the rules" you might want to take into account that people have been arrested and charged for merely standing on a sidewalk. There was even a case in my state where someone was arrested and charged for a crime that doesn't exist in my state (the "charges" were of course dropped after they found out). These days unfortunately you're a law abiding citizen right up until the point where someone in authority decides they don't like you and sees to it that your tried & convicted of something (mostly deserved, but quite often undeserved or at least excessive punishment).

anonymous!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Aren't bitcoins supposed to be anonymous? So anonymous no government jack booted thugs can find you? So great you could pay off goons in bitcoins to knock off spouses with inconvenient pre-nuptial agreements?

If random hackers find you and shake you down, your imagined immunity from FBI is just imaginary, isn't it? Shows without a legal government backing it up and providing for a non-violent conflict resolution options and contract enforcement options, all these "digital anonymous currencies" are just jokes, created by folks unconnected with reality creating castles in the air.

Re:anonymous!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Aren't bitcoins supposed to be anonymous?"

No, they aren't. This has been covered many times already.

Re:anonymous!

[GuldKalle]

He might not have tried to be anonymous, though. No amount of obfuscation or anonymity can stop you from proclaiming who you are.

Re:anonymous!

[koan]

They can be, however people keeping their mouths shut is another thing all together.

Re:anonymous!

[Anonymous Coward]

BitCoins are not anonymous. Wallets are.

It isn't tough to guard your BitCoin stash from the bad guys:

1: Keep it offline. Buy a cheapie netbook, slap Linux on it, create and do your wallet stuff on that. Make sure to back the wallet up. This can be done in a number of ways.

2: If you have a real stash of BTC, go with a paper wallet. If you want a proper "currency" feeling, go to bitcoinpaperwallet.com, and buy some pieces of paper, seals, bags, and even a Ubuntu live CD with the wallet software on it for use offline. then treat said wallet as you do valuable currency and stash it as such. [1]

3: If afraid of the guy with the wrench (XKCD panel 538), you can split a wallet among friends in a "need x out of y pieces." That way, if people know you got hauled off in Lower Elbonia since the 1 BTC will double the GDP there, people in the US or Latveria don't have to give up their pieces, keeping the wallet secure, and no amount of rubber hose action can do anything about it.

4: There are always cast-off Android phones or tablets and BTC wallet software. I've wondered why someone doesn't make an Android PDA whose main interface is via a USB port. It would not have 3G, nor Wi-Fi, nor BlueTooth, but when not connected, would be completely air-gapped, similar to my old Palm V. That would be a nice combination of offline security with online ease of use.

All and all, BitCoins are not anonymous. FinCen can still fry someone quite easily with the blockchain records to convict. However, BitCoins can be a secure currency if one knows what they are doing, and once someone is paid, they stay paid.

[1]: A few years back, there were "gold consultants" who would make customized storage systems for people, where one part would be a stash of metal in a safe to appease thieves, while the rest was put away in a stash, be it in drywall, buried underground with tin cans scattered about to throw off metal detectors, or many other spots. Right now, even though metals had a price hike today, the market is pretty sluggish with silver in the mid $16 range. However, the problem with precious metals is that they do nothing. I can buy stock, get dividends. I can buy chickens, get eggs. I can buy real estate, lease the land out. Precious metals do nothing but just sit there, so all the profit has to come from the sale.

Re:anonymous!

[AK Marc]

They are, so long as you create an infinite number of wallets, and transfer them randomly around them to "launder" them.

Hmm

[koan]

but also the person who gained access to Satoshi Nakamoto's email account earlier this year."

Wait... now we know who Satoshi Nakamoto is? Or rather he has an email account.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Satoshi always had an email account (satoshin@gmx.com) that he used to post messages on the P2P Foundation forum (at least from his first posting in 2009 until he disappeared in 2011). You don't have to associate a real name with an email address. I never do.

Take a pack of Black Cats camping

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a cousin convicted and spent time in jail under a "manufacturing explosives" charge for putting drain cleaner & tin foil in a pop bottle. Our "justice" system is certifiably insane these days.

Bitcoin

[Dunbal]

Anonymous and secure. LOL.

Re:Bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

The first rule of bitcoin. Don't talk about bitcoin.

Re:Bitcoin

[serviscope_minor]

Anonymous

The creators of bitcoin never claimed that.

and secure. LOL.

That's more or less equivalent to saying "lol RSA 4096 isn't secure because someone can beat you up and force you to reveal the password lol". Bitcoin is secure.

Re:Bitcoin

[SuricouRaven]

Bitcoin is precisely as secure as the computer on which the wallet is stored. No more, no less.

Re:Bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

It is MORE secure then computer on which you store the wallet with it.

You can create 2-of-3 vote address, and you need 2 separate computer systems with own private wallets to send a transaction - with a cryptographic vote.

Re:Bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin is precisely as secure as the computer on which the wallet is stored. No more, no less.

Trezor is pretty secure https://www.bitcointrezor.com/

An hour or a month?

[raymorris]

How much time? If he spent a day in jail and that nipped it in the bud, so he didn't make acetone peroxide without a license, I'm okay with that. If he spent a month, probably meaning nobody bailed him out, that sucks.

Re:An hour or a month?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to be killed, traitor.

Re:An hour or a month?

[Anonymous Coward]

You going to get revenge?
This will keep happening until one side or the other is dead.

Re:"Bounty On His Head": I Fail Again

[Anonymous Coward]

Timmah!!

Euro debuted at parity with dollar

[peter303]

Then gradually lost about 25% to the price you quote. Then up over 50% on the dollar. Currently just 20% over dollar.

China owns 8% of US debt. Just 8%

[sjbe]

Really? US dollar?

Absolutely.

Swiss Franc is much more stable.

The Swiss Franc is the currency of a relatively small country with a GDP around $350 billion. That is not big enough to protect itself against heavy currency speculation and certainly isn't big enough to be as safe as the dollar, yuan or euro. The Swiss economy is increasingly dependent on foreign investment and that should be worrisome if you think it is some sort of safe haven.

Euro, is very spendable, mostly stable

The Euro may not even exist in 10 years and it is anything but stable. Have you paid NO attention to the currency crises in Europe for the last 5 years?

US Dollar is not worth its weight in paper.

Really? Because the people who actually put their money where their mouth is completely disagree with you. If the dollar wasn't considered safe then interest rates should be going through the roof. Instead interest rates are near all time lows meaning that investors consider the dollar to be among the safest places to invest.

China holds vast amount of US Dollars and the moment they decide to sell some or all of these, the currency will start to look like the Zimbabwe Dollar.

Who do you think China is going to sell them to? Seriously, who? The answer is no one. There isn't another buyer that can buy or wants to buy $1 Trillion in US debt. China owns that US debt so that they can keep their currency cheap and thereby support their export driven economy. The moment they sell a substantial portion of their US debt holdings, the yuan will appreciate in value and every single export from China will immediately become more expensive overseas. There is NOTHING China can do to dump their US debt holdings that will not hurt China worse than it will hurt the US. China only holds about 8% of US debt. It's a nice sound bite but the notion that they somehow now "own" the US is absurd to anyone who isn't clueless.

An hour or a month?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe he got out after around 5 months for good behavior on a year sentence. Extremely excessive for what was basically a foolish prank in which no one was harmed and no property was destroyed. He had been in some minor trouble with the law before (stealing from family members) which may have made the prosecution/judge a bit tougher on him but an explosives charge? A criminal mischief charge with a healthy amount of community service would have been more than enough.

Would that be "butt-coin"?

[knorthern knight]

> Your ass

Paying with your ass... would that be "butt-coin"?

damn. Nobody read the law

[raymorris]

That sucks. It sounds like nobody on his side read the law he was charged under, probably, because with zero property damage it would be a class C misdemeanor (ticket) in most states. You didn't mention which state, but it sounds like the prosecutor, the defendant, and perhaps failed to read the law.

Federal charges for manufacturing explosives involved in interstate commerce are serious, but I don't think that type of device would qualify as an explosive under federal law, since there is no explosive composition; it's just a slow build-up of hydrogen gas.

Re:China owns 8% of US debt. Just 8%

[Anonymous Coward]

China's only interest in selling US Dollars "en masse", would be to destabilise the US. It doesn't necessarily have to have buyers - it just needs to push it down to the "valueless" category.