Pondering Bitcoin’s role in the 2016 election hack. Earlier this month we learned that the Russian agents accused of using cyberattacks to interfere in the last US presidential election allegedly used Bitcoin to help fund the operation. What does the episode say about Bitcoin? It shows how the same thing that draws criminals to Bitcoin—the nature of its transaction record allows them to circumvent governments and banks—can also be their undoing, argues Kevin Werbach, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, in a new op-ed in the New York Times. Indeed, he says, Bitcoin’s transaction records “helped” investigators track down the accused perpetrators, and the hackers “would have been better off using briefcases full of cash.” Is that true, though? The Bitcoin-related evidence certainly helped those of us trying to understand the conclusions in the indictment, but we don’t know how crucial it was to actually cracking the case. Also, maybe the hackers used Bitcoin for other reasons besides its money laundering feature, as Times reporter Nathaniel Popper noted yesterday via tweet: “Could they have paid for a Malaysian server and a VPN with cash? And did the Bitcoin really help prosecutors catch the crime? I'm skeptical.” | 
