Bitcoin price halves as China clampdown escalates

[silicon_toad2000]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101281272#!

Just shows how much of the wealth held in our world economy is based on perceptions and how fragile the wealth ecosystem is.

The price of bitcoin has plummeted by 50 percent since record highs in late November, with selling accelerating on Wednesday after reports that the People's Bank of China (PBoC) has ordered third-party payment providers to stop using the virtual currency.

The price of a bitcoin fell to below $600 after stabilizing near $800 for the last couple of weeks after a price slump from $1,200 in late November. At 8 a.m. London time on Wednesday the currency was trading at $555 on major exchange Mt Gox and $550 on CoinDesk's index, which measures a basket of prices around the world.

[GhostShip]

Fresh news in on this topic

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/19/zeus_variant_specialises_in_bitcoin_china_account_hijacking/

Cybercrooks have developed a strain of malware that actively targets BTC China and other Bitcoin exchanges.

A Zeus P2P/Gameover variant discovered by Trusteer is designed to steal the passwords of traders in the virtual currency. A blog post by the IBM-owned transaction security firm (extract below) explains that the malware is specially designed to trick potential victims into supplying one time passwords that might be needed for successful account takeovers.

Perhaps they should simply use gold for their trading