With all the hacks over the years I'm wondering how the black hat community thinks about this era with regards to the amount of money that's available for the taking without consequence.
I would imagine it's been a boon to the scene since I can't really imagine a better way for hackers to gain immediate results from their skills. Before I suspect a lot of those black hats dealt mostly in selling information and access to resources such as botnets, but now they can just directly steal value from their targets.
Bitcoin is the perfect incentive for black hats and hopefully and one point we might see some resistance from white hats attempting to protect the community by helping to secure bitcoin businesses before they're hacked. But until that happens we'll probably continue to see sites fall prey to hackers.
I think in a way, it's become easier for them to get money - as it became easier for anyone to get money. I'm not sure if you would call it 'Golden Age', as there have been pretty big digital fiat robberies recently. Resources as information, botnets etc are still being sold (for btc or other things).
