[ExI] bitcoin again

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mar 31, 2016 12:45 PM, "spike" <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Imagine a hospital is hacked with ransomware.  News agency reports it.
Some yahoo demands 10k in bitcoins, hospital pays, nothing happens, so it
was a phony offer to unlock.  Now will the Feds even bother trying to go
after the bad guy?  Would they shrug and claim that no money changed hands,
that the Fed doesn’t recognize bitcoin as currency?

The Feds recognize it as something of value, whether or not it is
"currency" for all definitions thereof.

Once again you falsely assume there is anything special about bitcoins,
where there really isn't.

That said, this is one of the reasons paying ransoms is discouraged: the
demanders hold all the power, so they can renege on delivering what the
ransom purchased without consequence (barring law enforcement, or
equivalent actions).  Unlike normal merchants, they have no honor or trust
to build value on, given what they did.
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