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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.

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.

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.

Online theft is a fact of life nowadays, but yesterday a BitCoin user woke to find his haul of virtual currency had been plundered. A user with the handle allinvain found 25,000 BitCoins had been stolen. If the thief were to cash-out he or she would net just about $500,000 at current BitCoin-US Dollar exchange rates.

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.

'Zerocoin' Add-on For Bitcoin Could Make It Truly Anonymous And Untraceable.

The issue is whether Bitcoin will ever be so widely adopted that it acts like a real, stable currency. Right now, it’s more like a commodity with wild price swings on rumors, articles, anonymous chat-board postings, and well-publicized problems with theft. Most people should wait at least until those issues are resolved. Generally, however, average folks shouldn’t be making direct forays into currency trading; Bitcoin feels a bit like online investing, but it’s more like diving into foreign exchange with even less information on which to make currency calls.

The unregulated digital world of Bitcoins suffered another flash-crash last night. According to Ars Technica, the 23% plungefest in the value of the digital currency (the second in a week) was due not to Waddel & Reed, not HFT algos, but 'forking' Cryptographic algos gone wild agreeing on different (legacy) keys as being correct - akin to finding Tungsten in your Gold bars (and hence the drop in the value). This latest glitch is different from the problem that caused Bitcoin prices to briefly crash to zero in June of 2011.

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.