Bitcoin Under Attack, a Lesson in Discretion, and Getting Rich Quick

It’s been a rum old week for bitcoin. Legislators are gunning their engines to bring it within regulatory control, the mighty voice of JPMorgan has said that it’s “not very good”, and there seems to be a concerted and multi-pronged attack on exchanges by anonymous hackers.

This last one is the most interesting. It combines a curious and complex flaw in some bitcoin software implementations with a classic denial of service (DoS) attack – having found a weak spot in how bitcoin is transferred, the hackers are pounding away.