, Columnist
Uncle Sam Takes a Bite Out of Bitcoin
If a significant minority of Bitcoin users are on the wrong side of the law, governments will move quickly to curtail its use.
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News broke yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested the proprietor of Silk Road, a Bitcoin-based market that seems to have been most widely used for the purchase of drugs and other contraband. The details are lurid and theatrical, including $150,000 that Silk Road's proprietor allegedly paid someone to murder a user who was blackmailing him:
But that's not how the proprietor was caught; he was caught because he attached his e-mail address to the account that made the first mention of Silk Road online. It's a good lesson for folks on the Internet: Anonymity is really, really hard.