Bitcoin can't be stopped! Despite thefts, bankruptcies, the suicide of an American business executive in Singapore, rapidly fluctuating exchange rates, and a California man being chased around for possibly being the mysterious creator behind this virtual currency, the value of Bitcoin holds strong.
How strong? The exchange rate as of this morning has 1 Bitcoin equaling $647. That's why that despite all the nay-sayers claiming that Bitcoin is doomed, the people using it can laugh it off.
"Bitcoin works really well," said Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins University cryptographer, to The Washington Post. "All this craziness around Bitcoin isn't around Bitcoin itself. It's around the people."
Many people don't even know how the currency works, since no bank or government issues new Bitcoins. To get them you have to "mine" them in batches of 25, by utilizing your computer to do payment processing work. It's not an easy thing that just any computer can do- it requires heavy processing work. It does pay off, though, considering that exchange rate.
The currency was created by a man who called himself Satoshi Nakamoto, although no one knows who he is or if he's even a real person. Recently a Newsweek reporter found a man who had gone by that name and a horde of journalists descended upon him, even though he denied it. It's rumored that his personal stash of bitcoins would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, too much to be traded in without his identity being revealed.
As far as thefts, well, they've happened, sometimes in the millions of dollars. The latest is the infamous Mt. Gox theft, in which astonishing amounts of money were lost due to theft, including 750,000 bitcoins belonging to their customers. (That's a whole other controversy, though, since the company apparently kept trading even after knowledge of the theft, collecting transaction fees all the way.)
But despite all this investors still believe in it, and judging from how strong the currency remains, they may have the last laugh. One thing's for sure- all this drama sure makes for fascinating reading. More as we hear it.
