“I’ve been assured by Bitcoin enthusiasts on FreeRepublic that the cyber currency is essentially immune to fraud and theft!”
Don’t forget the “virtue” of the completely unregulated bitcoin “exchanges”; you know, the beauty of a so-called “digital” currency operated by “institutions” whose trustworthiness makes Egyptian camel dung bazaars look as virtuous as FDIC insured banks.
No reason to use a bitcoin exchange ever. You can earn them in the bitcoin network, spend them in the network and never go through an exchange. An exchange makes them easy to buy and you can quickly transfer them to the network with basically zero risk.
The risk comes from leaving them in an exchange to try to sell the peaks, buy the dips and cash in to dollars. That kind of greed is penalized severely by the obvious risks in the exchanges.