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More than three-quarters of the digital coins in the Bitcoin digital currency scheme aren't circulating because they remain dormant in user accounts that have never participated in outgoing transactions, a recently published study has found.

Users and fans of the open-source, digital currency Bitcoin should feel a little less secure today, after leaders of the Bitcoin project confirmed to a British newspaper they have no way to confirm a user's claim that almost $500,000 worth of the digital currency disappeared from his hard drive overnight.

A few weeks ago the Royal Canadian Mint rolled out MintChip, a digital currency that is “better than cash.” It isn’t an alternative currency in that it’s a digital representation of the sovereign currency — the Canadian dollar.

Lawmakers want DEA to crack down on digital currency claims companies such as Bitcoin are funding illegal drugs.

What is the bitcoin backed by? As in gold itself is backed by itself and works GREAT but once again doesn't happen instantly like digital transactions and those wanting them need/want.I guess since most who would be interested in bitcoins are also aware of the current economy, where our government ( and others ) are trying to take us AND if they succeed I don't see the point in a digital currency but rather something that can be locally traded like shire silver or other "physical" goods.

OKCupid announced on Tuesday via Coinbase, a "bitcoin wallet" where people can buy and sell the digital currency, that it would begin taking payments in Bitcoin for its "A-List" features.

The site joins dozens of other sites, including WordPress and Reddit, in accepting the digital currency.

Bitcoin sounds like something from science fiction: A purely digital currency, created by an anonymous hacker, that operates outside the world's traditional banking systems. The four-year-old currency is very real, though, and it's trading an all-time high, tripling in value in the last two months alone. One bitcoin is was worth about $40 U.S. dollars on Tuesday, and surged on Wednesday to nearly $49. That's up from around $13 in January, and 5 cents in 2010, according to Mt. Gox, the bitcoin market's main exchange.

"How's this for a disruptive technology? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network. Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government."

A growing list of merchants accept bitcoins.

I maintain that a government ban on bitcoin would be about as effective as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s. Government prohibition doesn’t even do a good job of keeping drugs out of prisons. The demand for an item, in this case digital cash with user-defined levels of privacy, does not simply evaporate in the face of a jurisdictional ban. One could even make the case that it becomes stronger because an official recognition that Bitcoin is not only a “renegade” currency but a “so-effective-it-had-to-be-banned” currency would imbue the cryptographic money with larger than life qualities.