FBI fumbles with Internet and $ 80 million

Closing down the Silk Road and arresting its alleged operator has left the FBI in uncharted territory. After shuttering the site, law enforcement went to work confiscating the money and materials belonging to supposed drug king Ross Ulbricht, but this usually routine procedure is proving especially troublesome in this case. The cache of more than 600,000 bitcoins in Ulbricht’s personal fortune are still inaccessible to the FBI.

The nearly 600,000 thought to be worth around $80 millions worth that Ulbricht had, was held separately and is encrypted. At current exchange rates, that represents slightly more than 5% of all bitcoins in circulation.

The U.S. federal government transferred 26,000 BTC to a private wallet that has become a target for pranksters who have turned it into a sort of anti-government graffiti wall. And an increasing number of payments to the tune of 0.00000001 BTC are coming in to FBI's private wallet with messages attached as a so-called "public note."

You can check out the comments as they come in by watching the FBI’s wallet.

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virtual currency worth half a billion $

BitCoin the virtual currency that is independent of any central bank or authority, does not stop rising in value. It has recently reached the record level of $ 47.

It was introduced in 2009, bitcoins can be exchanged by personal computer directly through a wallet file or a website without an intermediate financial institution. The processes of maturation of a Bitcoin community spread through several countries, although mainly concentrated in Europe and the US.

During the course of 2012 the first significant investments of VC capital in Bitcoin-oriented startups started to pop up. BitPay.com and Coinbase.com, two Bitcoin payments processor respectively secured $500,000 and $600,000 investments.

Even the first Bitcoin Hedge Fund was launches recently. 

And a venture capitalist backed Bitcoin, they want to make it safe for U.S. and Canadian investors to do large block trades of Bitcoins. The Silicon Valley-based company will take over exchange transactions for all U.S. and Canada clients meaning your money will get moved to a U.S. bank and Coinlab will now be the clearing pool for all peer-to-peer transaction on the Mt.Gox exchange.

What will the Bitcoin technology social implications be with a market cap bigger than $ 500 M outside the establishment and governments?

More information on http://www.weusecoins.com This video is a short animated introduction to Bitcoin, made possible with donations from the Bitcoin community.