Seems this article is trying really hard to not mention bitcoin by name.

[KawalGrover]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/liberty-reserve-cybercrime_n_3346656.html

 

Its becoming easier and easier to see where the obfuscation happens in the news.

 

[jickMagger]

Could it be perhaps that Reuters just didn't feel it necessary to go into trying to explain bitcoin again, when the focus of the article was the company, not the currency? It might not be the worst thing that bitcoin wasn't explicitly named.

[KawalGrover]

Perhaps, that is the case.

But the reasons given for shutting them down could just as well apply to any digital currency, and right now I can't think of anything better than bitcoin.

Here's an article by WashingtonPost that makes a better comparison of the story (which I felt was missing in the Reuters piece that probably got distributed to 2000 other channels).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/28/feds-shut-down-payment-network-liberty-reserve-is-bitcoin-next/

"Another important difference is that if the authorities concluded that Bitcoin were a Liberty Reserve-style money laundering scheme, it’s not clear whom they’d prosecute. There’s no Budovsky for Bitcoin."

Just goes to show how good decentralization is.

I feel like this shut down of Liberty Reserve might just push people even more towards bitcoin. (And thats why I thought that the Reuters article was trying to obfuscate any comparison).

[JohannSummers]

Liberty Reserve had its own "digital currencies;" Liberty Reserve Dollars, and Liberty Reserve Euros. Bitcoin was just one option to fund your LR account. I doubt HuffPo was referring to btc when they said LR "provided a digital currency widely used around the world by cyber-criminals." Makes more sense that they would be talking about LR's own "proprietary" currency.