Bitcoin Forum

How is it possible to "counterfeit" Bitcoin? "Illegally generating"? Hmm.

Wth?
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-bitcoin-counterfeit-germany-arrest-20131204,0,7896369.story (http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-bitcoin-counterfeit-germany-arrest-20131204,0,7896369.story)

This is a very poorly written article.  They most likely got caught stealing bitcoins by hacking, malware etc...

you cannot "counterfeit" bitcoins ... I smell BS ...

They have:


And


Both are stupid.

lol this is funny

Bad translation. Actually those guys used trojans to create a Botnet and mine Bitcoins.

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/bka-und-gsg-9-nehmen-mutmassliche-bitcoin-betrueger-fest-a-937236.html

I guess something got lost in translation. You could "counterfeit" paperwallets I suppose, or more specifically commit fraud/deception with them.

Yeah not buying this.

Explained as a bad translation here:

But they used electricity from victims worth how many million dollars...

I read once that it takes about $600,000 in stolen electricity to produce $2000 in BTC, that was a while ago so maybe $10,000 in BTC now.

With this translation its impossible to understand

This article seems to be the result of poor journalism.  How is it that those whose chosen role in life is to provide information to the public don't do the proper research and misrepresent what is really going.  Yes, the writer probably used a poor translation of an article from Germany, but hey, it's the LA TIMES, if you can't get it right, you shouldn't print it... the writer should have done a little research before printing a headline that suggested that bitcoins were being counterfeited.  Even if it was true, the writer then mentions that bitcoins are 'unregulated' virtual currency in the content of the article... now wait a sec, how does one counterfeit and get arrested for something that is unregulated... that sounds like regulation to me!  Even if this guy had his facts right, which he doesn't, his article simply doesn't make sense and shouldn't have been posted... doesn't anyone at the LA TIMES oversee what literature they allow to be posted with their name on it?

I just think 'journalists' have a responsibility to at least type something into google to check their facts before spreading information.  My thoughts upon reading this and all the other recent articles that contain 'facts' about bitcoin that are wrong, is how does this effect the average person or noob to bitcoin?  How many people might think 'oh, bitcoins can be counterfeited, better not get into that' and other such silly notions that are derived from bad news and media practices (like not fact checking...)

wtf la times.... how do you not know the difference between counterfeit and hack?

this is not really journalism if they are not spending the time to vet their stories to get the correct information out to the public. these are just lazy people who want to make a quick buck by posting any story.

It seems they were using software in order to steal real bitcoins. Counterfeit bitcoins is a kind of bad comparison from the author with real currencies problems.