The future of the up-and-coming Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor was thrown into question Tuesday when the company's founder reported that someone had compromised his servers and made off with about 24,000 Bitcoins, worth almost a quarter-million dollars. The exchange no longer has enough cash to cover all of its deposits, and it has suspended its operations while it considers its options.
Remember pirateat40, the e-currency banker we speculated could be the Bernie Madoff of Bitcoin? Well, it looks like he owes a lot of people money. On August 17, pirateat40 announced the closure of Bitcoin Savings & Trust, a virtual hedge fund that promised to pay high rewards to investors who parked their Bitcoins there. Ten days later, investors are still waiting to get paid and pirateat40 is on the defensive. "When I know, you will," says his away message in the fund's official chat room, an effort to quiet the loudening chorus of, "WHERE ARE MY BITCOINS?"
Those of you who have been around the Bitcoin block a time or two have probably heard of, and even used, BitInstant. BitInstant is a service that provides the ability to transfer funds between Bitcoin and governmental currencies much more quickly than would otherwise be possible.
They're also well known for certain transaction types not offered anywhere else, such as the ability to buy BTC with cash at thousands of locations across the United States, and the similarly unprecedented ability to withdraw bitcoins to scam-laden PayPal.
Four former customers have sued the virtual currency exchange Bitcoinica, claiming that it owes them $460,457 (£293,080) in funds they previously deposited.
Bitcoinica was hacked twice in 2012, with attackers stealing over $177,000 worth of BitCoins. The website ceased operation in May, but continues to accept claims for repayments.
BitCoins are an unregulated, untaxed and untraceable Internet currency that allows direct peer to peer transactions. Sites exchanging bitcoins have proved vulnerable, prompting a fall in value for the currency.
More than $87,000 worth of the virtual currency known as Bitcoin was stolen after online bandits penetrated servers belonging to Bitcoinica, prompting its operators to temporarily shutter the trading platform to contain the damage.
The FBI sees the anonymous Bitcoin payment network as an alarming haven for money laundering and other criminal activity — including as a tool for hackers to rip off fellow Bitcoin users.
Although we feel we know cash intimately, let's take a deeper look at some of its attributes. First of all, it's represented by a physical object: either a banknote or a coin.
If you buy something, you hand over that physical thing to the seller. It leaves your possession and enters theirs. Your net cash worth is reduced by the amount of cash you've handed over.
One of the latest trojan horse malware attempts on OS X is a bitcoin mining and data stealing bot called "DevilRobber" that uses the system's parallel processing capabilities of systems (the GPU and CPU) to run Bitcoin mining operations to rapidly generate Bitcoins (an experimental digital currency).
A new Trojan horse hidden in a Mac OS X application can steal sensitive user data and take control of the computer’s GPU to generate Bitcoins, a form of currency used online.
In a report released on Saturday, security firm Sophos said that DevilRobber, a Trojan horse that can steal sensitive user data, was found hidden inside copies of Graphic Converter 7.4 downloaded from bit-torrent file-sharing sites.
It's the perfect gift for the geek who has everything: 'real' Bitcoins you can hold in your hand, but which still function as legal tender for the online, open-source currency.
Bitcoins are familiar to many as the peer-to-peer 'cryptocurrency' that can be sent over the internet without the need for a bank or payment service - but until now, they didn't exist. At least, not physically. But thanks all changed thanks to an enterprising man from Utah.
