[Ari]

None of this helps my feeling that BC is a scam using crypto libertarians as targets that legitimize and promote it. The original scammers are long gone and this is just another generation of thefts in a poorly thought out currency. I haven't kept close watch on it so this might all be talking out of my ass but in the early days of BC there were at least a few cases that appeared to be market manipulation inflating the currency and then vanishing. The whole concept around mining coins and giving early adopters more advantages seems fishy to me.

What's known for certain is that for being a crypto currency everyone is very trusting proving PT Barnum right. Silk Road and similar dark markets are a great example where more than a few markets made people put money into an exchange and then ran off with the coins claiming hackers. Even after the FBI nailed the creator of Silk Road people just kept dumping money into its offshoots as if the FBI never had access to large amounts of their data.

ETA: for those not in the know Silk Road was a darknet site built around connecting sellers of anything to buyers. Mostly grey or black market items especially drugs. It became known as a place to get extremely pure drugs sometimes in bulk but at a hefty price compared to street prices. Which does go to show that people are willing to pay for quality.