Bitcoin comes under scrutiny of US government as the distributed crypto currency gains momentum

international | anti-capitalism | news report Friday May 17, 2013 07:19 by lefty

Homeland security in the US has frozen the account of one of the largest Bitcoin traders "Dwolla"

Homeland security in the US has frozen the account of one of the largest Bitcoin traders "Dwolla"

This is not the first time the decentralised alternative cryptocurrency has come under attack. There was also the massive DDos attack on "MtGox" recently.

It's clear that the financial terrorists and governments are starting to worry that bitcoin will get real traction and if this happens on a large scale, they may lose their iron grip on the currency market and interest rate regulation.

http://mashable.com/2013/05/14/dwolla-homeland-security/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57584511-38/homeland-...fers/

What is bitcoin?

For those who don't already know, Bitcoin is a crypto currency which can easily be transported and can change hands virtually (with appropriate precautions!) anonymously without incurring the large fees currently required. It has a fixed upper limit of 21 million on the total number of Bitcoins (or BTC) allowed to be in circulation, so money printing is not an option.

Bitcoin transactions are verified by a decentralised peer network of bitcoin miners, which invites comparisons with the bittorrent network. Bitcoin miners "mine" for bitcoins by running high powered computers to crunch difficult mathematical problems. Essentially trading electricity for money. While doing this, the software they are running also helps to validate bitcoin transactions across the network. The incentive they have for this activity is the "discovery" of new bitcoins, and a small fee for processing.

Some useful links:

http://bitcoin.org/en/
https://mtgox.com/
https://www.dwolla.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin