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An unidentified 36-year-old man who owns a Bitcoin account has lost more than 100,000 euros ($117,000) worth of Bitcoins while he was logged in on a public wireless network in a restaurant in Vienna, Austria.
The Austrian police, however, claimed that they are still investigating whether the victim's account was already hacked before he opened his account on the unsecured network, CBS reports.
This latest case reflects the growing concern over the security of digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum amidst their growing popularity as a mode of payment.
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Bitcoin Account Holder Loses $100K Over Public Wireless Network
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 26 2017, @03:44PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 26 2017, @04:28PM (2 children)
The government has decreed that its money must be used or accepted by court order, and the government manipulates the supply to establish certain benefits for itself.
Given that nothing has intrinsic value, it must be the case that a money is "real" only when its value has been found through voluntary interaction.
That's what makes Bitcoin real; it's value is constantly being found by voluntary interaction—people are willfully exchanging it for something else. Its value isn't imposed; nobody has to pretend that a certain value is justified. In the very moment of exchange, it is exactly as valuable as the participants in the transaction make it.
Also, the rules of Bitcoin have been established in advance, and an attempt to change those rules is naturally a very public, nasty affair that is hard to miss. Thus, the clarity of the rules that define BTC as a money is another reason why BTC is "real".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 26 2017, @11:30PM
That's not the definition of "fake" either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday November 27 2017, @03:12PM
I'm not American, I don't live in America, I don't have any plans to go to America, and I don't owe the US government anything.
However I still have 100USD in my wallet in various denominations. That's more than I have in GBP or EUR. The reason for this is it's globally accepted, in both shady and non-shady situations. Fly into Egypt, and $25 gets you in. Kenya needs something similar. The guy with the AK47 stops your car, it's amazing how much paying a $5 'environmental tax' will fix the 'problem' with your car.
So the USD is real, it has value thanks to voluntary interaction (that said it's value is highest in the situation where the interaction isn't exactly voluntary, but doesn't involve the US government)