Just last year at about this time, venture capitalist Chris Dixon predicted in Wired that the price of bitcoin could "easily" go as high as $100,000. Those were heady times!

As a small business owner, a very easy way to lose the trust of others is to not give them the things you promised when they handed you money. Another way is to take that money and waste it on craziness. These men did both, ArsTechnica reports.

Bitcoin crusader Charlie Shrem pled guilty in court yesterday to charges related to Silk Road, the Deep Web drug market. The 24-year-old sounded much less defiant than he had just earlier this week. "I knew that what I was doing was wrong," he told the court, "I am pleading guilty because I am guilty."

Here's something grotesquely unethical: Vox's Timothy B. Lee, rapidly becoming one of the internet's worst voices, is boasting today of how he's investing in Bitcoin, a cyber-currency propped up by media attention.

After facing federal money laundering charges, accused of aiding the notorious Silk Road drug market, bitcoin booster Charlie Shrem is taking a plea bargain. He seems very happy about it.

After making a bloody mess of Mt. Gox, the first and biggest name in Bitcoin trading, no one is expecting CEO Mark Karpeles to redeem himself and refund their missing cyber-money. A new report of Karpeles' criminal past won't help.

Tim Draper, who sincerely wants to divide California into six smaller states in order to help the aristocracy of Silicon Valley, has won the FBI's seized bitcoin auction. What a world!

Bitcoin is now legal in California. Gov. Brown signed AB 129 into law Saturday, legalizing cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. However, COINYE West—the Kanye West-branded cryptocoin—was not sanctioned over trademark concerns with the rapper.

The feds might've been clever enough to take down a shadowy internet drug ring, but it still hasn't mastered the email BCC: CoinDesk reports a list of people and companies interested in the US Marshals seized, $18 million Bitcoin auction is now out in the open.

Warm up the Reddit bus: ESPN reports the Beef O'Brady's Bowl now has a somehow even lamer corporate namesake, courtesy of the most exciting cyber-currency around. Football and Bitcoin, the two most volatile American activities, together at last.

On paper, Bitcoin is easy, decentralized, secure, and democratic. Doesn't that sound nice? Unfortunately, the real Bitcoin is currently threatened by a shadowy organization called GHash that's managed to control 51% of the currency's computing power, and could destabilize the entire thing.

The FBI doesn't care much for the future of cryptocurrency: over $17 million worth of wacky internet money, seized from internet drug barons on the Silk Road, will be dumped via auction. Now's your chance to buy some bargain Bitcoins and feel like you're in a cool crime thriller.

Tomorrow night marks the premiere of Winklevoss Radio, a new "an hour-long, limited-run" show on Sirius XM. Most of us only know Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss as Greenwich Ken dolls with opposable thumbs *litigation comes separately. So it will be great to introduce the element of sound at no additional cost.

The person on Oakland mayoral candidate and former tech exec Bryan Parker's staff who granted this interview made a very serious mistake. No one—you'd hope—is going to vote for a man who thinks the cure for American poverty is Bitcoin.

Last year, successful startup CEO and Bitcoin community hero Tony Gallippi testified before Congress on behalf of the oft-maligned crypto-libertarian dream currency. Gallippi, head of the virtual payment company Bitpay, explained to a subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee that he believed Bitcoin had the power to transform the way Americans live their financial lives—not just through secure transactions, but by creating an immense ledger of property exchange, "a public record forever, for pennies."

At the Bitcoin swap meet in SoMa, delusions are also for sale. One enthusiast shows off an app called Lambo Parity, "which tracks what percentage of a Lamborghini one Bitcoin can buy;" a 52-year-old bookkeeper thinks Bitcoin will "help fund her retirement."

Perhaps "secret bank vaults deep in the earth" can save Bitcoin. Benchmark just invested $20 million in Xapo, which stores bitcoin code on computer drives. If the vault is breached, Xapo says it will fully insure all deposits. A guarantee that you won't lose your shirt in cryptocurrency? How innovative!

If a breathless car chase wasn't cinematic enough to make you care about Bitcoin, how about a whistleblower threatening to publish an expose about corrupt elders and ominously signing off: "You have 72 hours"?

There was a time when news that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss just bought spaceship tickets using Bitcoin would have been completely surprising. That time is long, long gone.

Japan-based Mt.Gox CEO Mark Karpeles—who may or may not be Chris Farley reanimated with the soul of Reddit—just copped to some very bad news: yes, he lost all your money.