Once the domain of hackers, libertarian activists, and drug dealers, bitcoin has been adopted by a growing number of mainstream businesses. You can use it to buy a mattress on Overstock.com or a laptop from electronics seller TigerDirect; Zynga will soon begin accepting it for in-game payments. Last year more than $100 million in bitcoin transactions was processed and the value of bitcoins shot up from $13 to $1,200, despite the fact that regulators in China were cracking down. Even when one of the world’s best-known bitcoin businesses, a Japanese exchange called Mt. Gox, closed after being hacked—customers lost currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars—new exchanges launched, the value climbed back up, and the mainstreaming of bitcoin rolled on. Regulators are taking a hard look at the bitcoin economy, but investors and entrepreneurs keep coming.
Hey, have all the hackers, libertarian activists, and drug dealers left us alone now?
