bitcoins 4
so shortly after i bought some bitcoins, the community had a crisis of faith. two things happened to mt gox more/less simultaneously. i don't know if they're related or not. first, an early bitcoin adopter had his wallet stolen. with like 25k coins in it. worth some half million dollars. bitcoins are kinda like cash. if you keep cash in your computer box, it can be stolen. and it's gone. it'd be insane to keep $500k cash in a shoebox. dang. encryption is pretty easy. and a good idea. especially if you have obvious indicators your computer has been compromised. sheehs. anywho. the other thing that happened is the mt gox exchange database of user names logins and hashed passwords was stolen and published. the price of bitcoins went from $14 when i first saw them. peaked around $30. went back down to $15 when i bought. then dropped as low as $1 when this shit hit the fan. mt gox is on its way back up. i had a whole $7 in my account. and i don't reuse passwords. so it was no big deal to me. unless of course bitcoins go away. but that seems to not be the case. will bitcoins catch on? probably not. but they might make a pretty nice proof of concept for the e-currency that does catch on.