Just had a thought. With all this interest in bitcoin, people all over the world will be looking to sign up to bitcoin exchanges. These exchanges take investors cash and settles bitcoin trades on their behalf. But they're also, for the most part, unregulated. When you do business with a bitcoin exchange, you are basically handing over your cash to this business and saying "I trust you".
Surely, this must be a scammer's dream. You start a business (a bitcoin exchange) and people will throw money at you, while you have virtually nil accountability. You could take advantage of naive customers who leave custody of purchased bitcoins with your exchange, by stealing the bitcoins then pretend you got hacked by some unknown thief.
There's been the occasional bitcoin exchange hack in the past. If these hacks steps up in frequency, I wonder what the government response will be like? Especially considering as well now that bitcoin is beginning to draw in ordinary folk, rather than just enthusiasts in the past.
