By The Coinist
We start with the following quote from Jason Bloomberg over at Forbes: “If we could flip a switch and eliminate all illegal uses of Bitcoin, there would be nothing left of the cybercurrency.”
Well, well, well.
Mr. Bloomberg titled his article Bitcoin: ‘Blood Diamonds’ Of The Digital Era, in what is presumably a reference either to the hit Hollywood film or the conflict diamonds that were mined in places like Sierra Leone in the 1990s to exchange for weapons fueling endless civil strife and bloodshed. The comparison, it would seem, is a little harsh.
Though Bitcoin has matured over the past eight or so years, its reputation as a currency for hackers and would-be contract killers looms like a dark shadow portending rain. This is not without reason. Much of Bitcoin’s early notoriety blossomed from its use as the preferred payment method on a now defunct website called Silk Road. Silk Road, run on TOR (The Onion Router), boasted a market place for all sorts of… interesting goods: weed, meth, heroin, prescription opioids, cocaine, etc. Eventually, Silk Road expanded to include weapons. These items could be bought and shipped to a doorstep in Anytown, America. The payment system greasing the transactions? A “crypto-currency” from the mind of the mysterious (and possibly amalgamated) Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin had arrived in the public consciousness, and not for the best of reasons.
Read the entire article at https://www.thecoinist.com/newsletters/hardboiled-bitcoin
