<story><title>Bitcoin Is Being Monitored by an Increasingly Wary U.S. Government</title><url>http://www.newsweek.com/2016/12/23/virtual-currencies-bitcoin-being-monitored-us-government-532063.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wheelerwj</author><text>In 2013, HSBC was fined for failing to appropriately monitor nearly $700B(B as in BILLION) in transactions between Mexico and the US alone. [1]  Yet we&amp;#x27;re supposed to be more worried about digital currency because of $600 (dollars, not millions or billions, just dollars) worth of bitcoin found its way to the Gaza strip? [2]&lt;p&gt;The only interesting part of this article is that post publication, the bitcoin numbers were updated by a source from the Dept. of Treasury.&lt;p&gt;This article is just FUD and nonsense during a slow news cycle.  Banks and wire transfers will continue to be the primary vehicle for money laundering and terrorism financing for the foreseeable future.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2013-07-02&amp;#x2F;hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2013-07-02&amp;#x2F;hsbc-judg...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thecipherbrief.com&amp;#x2F;column&amp;#x2F;private-sector&amp;#x2F;new-frontier-terror-fundraising-bitcoin-1089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thecipherbrief.com&amp;#x2F;column&amp;#x2F;private-sector&amp;#x2F;new-fro...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Bitcoin Is Being Monitored by an Increasingly Wary U.S. Government</title><url>http://www.newsweek.com/2016/12/23/virtual-currencies-bitcoin-being-monitored-us-government-532063.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>blorgle</author><text>This is some serious FUD, pretty standard for Newsweeks bitcoin reporting, which included harassment of Dorian Nakomoto.&lt;p&gt;This is probably an unpopular opinion on HN, but let&amp;#x27;s face it, P2P protocols like bitcoin are relatively easy to disrupt for nation state actors, especially the US!&lt;p&gt;For a relatively small cost, the blockchain could be flooded with bogus junk to DoS. The bootstrap mechanism could easily be MITMd to netsplit new nodes. Those are just technological mechanisms off the top of my head, which assume a perfect hypothetical cryptocurrency with none of the teething problems that all of the actual cryptocurrencies have.&lt;p&gt;ISIS could come up with &amp;quot;Terrorcoin&amp;quot; (which is the underlying vague threat of the article) but without any mechanism to transfer those coins to a fungible real world currency, it&amp;#x27;s useless anyway.&lt;p&gt;Go home Newsweek, you&amp;#x27;re drunk.</text></comment>