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The goal of bitcoin is laudable: Provide a digital equivalent to cash. The problem is, nobody wants cash. Cash isn't traceable. It comes and goes without surveillance. It's a manageable problem in the physical world, but in the electronic one, an action that may take seconds, minutes, or days to happen can happen millions of times in less than a second. Needless to say, law enforcement doesn't like that idea, and neither does anyone who wants to know about who's getting paid, for what, and where.
We're now in an era where there is a digital 'land grab' -- but for our private data. Everyone is selling to everyone else, trading around your viewing habits, buying habits, political orientation, sexual orientation, and if there were a pig-related orientation they'd track that too. Corporate and government interests have aligned here because they both want mostly the same information and benefit from its lack of protection. Unfortunately, that lack of protection legally carries over electronically.
Bitcoin provides a partial solution to part of that problem: It tries to obfusciate who's paying for what, breaking that chain. Which is precisely why both corporations and governments have been keen to kill it off. It's also why criminals use it. Which is unfortunate, because there are very many good uses for a digital currency for the average, law abiding, citizen. It's the same with Tor: Both block the bulk collection of data -- and the IETF has gone on record as saying pervasive surveillance is, in itself, an attack, irrespective of motivation.
It's the sad truth that the people most motivated to use these technologies are the ones with the most to gain by breaking that chain, and thus there has been a heavy push to criminalize or legislate-away the solutions; Using Tor is now "probable cause" for any search warrant, anywhere, ever. "They aren't giving up their juicy personal data -- THEY MUST BE CRIMINALS." We needed more average people to get in, but average people don't recognize the risks of the system, and so they aren't apt to start using new technology that would mitigate them.
And so it goes... another high profile bitcoin-related crime that has as much to do with 'bitcoin' as Jack Daniels does with drunk driving... which is to say, that bottle wasn't at the wheel when the car plowed down a bunch of people. And El Reg, like all the other media outlets, will throw a little more gas on the fire with this story to give corporations and governments justification for killing off a necessary thing. Mind you, Bitcoin isn't the solution we needed... it's just the one we have right now. Rather like the world governments... mostly they aren't something we want, and broken in so many ways, but... there they are.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
