South African Bitcoin traders and merchants have played down the latest high-profile security breach of the digital currency as “no big deal”.
It was revealed earlier this month a rogue employee at United States games company ESEA had managed to illegally “mine” around US$2,400 in Bitcoins.
The scam only lasted around two weeks as the respective employee used code, previously developed by ESEA to experiment with Bitcoin mining, for personal gain.
Speaking to HumanIPO Francois Harris, who’s search engine optimisation company gotaclick.com accepts Bitcoin as payment, said: “Stories like this don’t worry me. Essentially the Bitcoin network and system is working fine, the coins mined are not counterfeit.
“What is wrong is the unethical method they were mined, but they are still legitimate in the system and real Bitcoins.
“I don’t think it is damaging to Bitcoin in the long term. In the short term that story might make people lose some confidence in Bitcons, but over time its not a big deal.”
Gershon Davidse, a former Mxit employee and founder of AphroData.com, is an enthusiastic Bitcoin trader, said when he initially failed to secure a Bitcoin miner he did consider “alternative means of mining”, but decided to go down the trading route.
He said by focusing on trading he can turn his business into a “truly African company”, as opposed to just a South African one, and if there was illegal mining happening it simply meant there were more Bitcoins out there for him to trade.
Other examples of “illegal mining” are the spread of viruses which when reaching a victim’s computer run for the benefit for the author of the virus. The virus can then spread onto multiple machines.
Employees in internet cafes and big offices have also been reported to install mining programmes on the PCs for their own benefit.
