Posted on 06/16/2011 4:25:45 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
In the first Bitcoin theft of its size, a user has lost 25,000 BTC — or nearly $487,749 at today’s market rates — to an unknown thief.
While the Bitcoin community has always been quick to point out that it’s harder to forge a Bitcoin than to forge a dollar, it’s quite easy to take someone else’s Bitcoins: all you have to do is gain access to their computer’s hard drive. Once you’re in, stealing Bitcoins is easier than taking a wallet in the real world, and there’s no recourse for getting them back.
That said, it is possible to verify the movement of funds to ensure complainants are telling the truth due to Bitcoin’s public nature — services such as BlockExplorer allow users to see every transaction that has ever occurred through the network. The receiving account in this case, for instance, can be seen here.
As a decentralized network with no authority and no identities attached to the addresses used to send and receive Bitcoins, once Bitcoins are stolen they’re as good as gone.
While at the time of this writing the BTC is trading at $19.51, I wouldn’t be surprised to see their value drop over the course of the day as this news spreads.
The whole BitCoin thing sounds like a total scam only a complete fool would put money into.
This is why I deal exclusively in Quatloos
And the fiat currencies aren’t? Governments take more money through inflation and hidden taxes than one could ever lose through Bitcoin.
I’m pretty senior at a VERY large marketing/e-com technology company and I’ve never even heard of this...
But from what I can find, you’d have to be close to brain dead to even think this is half a good idea.
I’ll stick with my gold-pressed latinum thank you very much
It’s a great idea except that it’s based on the internet and is non-existent in a physical form. If it existed in a physical form, it could be a solution to the worlds money woes because of its decentralized property.
Stealing Bitcoins? Isn’t that like stealing someone’s imagination?
It is, these things pop up every few years then just disappear with a lot of suckers out of real dollars.
Well yeah, but that’s not what it is.
That’s like saying “this piece of dirt would be great if it was made of gold.”
bitcoin is a ponzi scheme
I think 1,000,000,000 Bitcoins has an actual value of 1 Nigerian Dollar.
Just because fiat currencies are flawed doesn’t mean we should jump into another currency worst than it. The only thing that give currency with no physical backing is confidence, no matter howlimited in supply there is of it
Of course, but the idea is solid. At least someone recognized the problem and tried a solution which is better than kicking the can down the road by printing more money than God.
You Gamester you!
>> you’d have to be close to brain dead to even think this is half a good idea.
In this country at this moment, that’s not a terribly high bar to clear.
Bitcoins miners are essentially the Federal Reserve of bitcoins. They generate bitcoins out of thin air then fool enough ppl to give them real stuff that they got for free
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