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One of Bitcoin's largest trading exchanges shut down Tuesday, and you probably couldn't care less.

So what if rumors are circulating that millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin are stolen? If you don't understand Bitcoin in the first place, it's hard to figure out why this matters. So we're using this as an opportunity to go back to the basics: what this b-word means, where it came from and why it just might matter.

The Birth Of Bitcoin

This is the stuff of a Dan Brown novel.

Bitcoin emerged from the work of Satoshi Nakamoto. The hook is, no one actually knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. (It's inaccurate, of course to say "no one," but the people who do know aren't talking.) In 2008, he/she/they released a detailed concept for a self-regulating crypto-currency, wrote a whole bunch of incredible code to support it. Satoshi Nakamoto stopped responding to emails in 2011. It's been a wild goose chase ever since.

Satoshi Nakamoto's concept is that of a democratically organized currency: no government regulation, no centralized bank. It's been embraced by, among others, libertarians trying to undermine monetary regulation policies and entrepreneurs trying to avoid financial corruption in developing countries.

While it's a difficult concept to grasp — we'll get to that in a second — it's worth at least getting familiar with because Bitcoin will continue to be covered regardless of whether the media understands it, says Vili Lehdonvirta, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.

"It's the perfect story. It has the mysterious background, started by a pseudonymous character," he says. "As humans, we like to dream about how things could be different. ... I think that for many people Bitcoin allows them to dream those dreams."

Not to mention, there's a lot of money involved. After all, it fundamentally is about money. Think of this as a Hollywood "inspired by a true story" blockbuster waiting to happen.

We recommend: Motherboard's Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto, The Creator Of Bitcoin?

OK, I'm Hooked. So What Is It?

In the great words of Shrek, Bitcoin is like an onion: It has layers. At its most superficial, it's a virtual currency, allowing you to transfer money to other people anywhere in the world without any physical exchange of dollar bills — just as you can with, say, PayPal or online credit card payments.

But the system behind it is much different. There's no central organization, like a bank or government treasury, organizing and keeping track of it. The bookkeeping is completely decentralized and is supposedly impossible to bamboozle, the way a bank could cook its books without anyone else looking. There's no intrinsic value, the way you could make a necklace out of gold, or government backing, the way modern "fiat" money has. And it's completely anonymous — you never have to give anyone your name or Social Security number or credit card number.

The whole process is made much more complicated by the technical aspects of how it works on a molecular level. There's lot of encryption and computational power involved. I don't pretend to be an expert in it, so I'll refer you to the source: Satoshi Nakamoto's original whitepaper.

We recommend: Medium's Explain Bitcoin Like I'm Five and, once you've mastered that, Quartz's By reading this article, you're mining bitcoins. If you want to delve into the murky world of Bitcoin mining, check out the New York Times' Into The Bitcoin Mines.

Trials, Tribulation

Ready for more of the Hollywood blockbuster plot line? Bitcoin's intrinsic anonymity makes it a prime currency for shady dealings. A Texas man who allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme used Bitcoin. An online black market called Silk Road, which the FBI shut down in October, used Bitcoin.

Silk Road got back into business shortly after, but earlier this month, hackers allegedly exploited a Bitcoin glitch to steal millions from customers. The value of Bitcoin fluctuates wildly, at one point dropping from $1,200 to less than $600 per coin after the Chinese government denounced it.

On top of all these, the failure of one of its largest exchanges, MtGox, led some to speculate that this would ruin Bitcoin's legitimacy for good. But William Luther, an economics professor at Kenyon University in Ohio, says this might actually help Bitcoin in the long run because it forces people away from this first-generation business to more sophisticated exchanges.

"Now there will be an air of professionalism surrounding Bitcoin that wasn't there before," Luther says.

Bitcoin is also accepted by a growing number of businesses — including Overstock.com, two casinos in Las Vegas and a Subway sandwich shop in Allentown, Pa. Overstock's executive vice chairman, Jonathan Johnson, says the MtGox news won't affect whether the company continues to accept the currency.

In fact, he says, Bitcoin has been great for business. It brings in new customers and prevents online shopping fraud. And Overstock converts bitcoins to dollars immediately after payment, so the fluctuations don't really affect the company.

It also has cut Overstock's credit card transaction fees, Johnson says. That's a benefit that could very well appeal to everyday consumers, too.

We recommend: NPR reporter Alan Yu's How Virtual Currency Could Make It Easier To Move Money

The Bigger Benefit

This stumbling and growing revolution has done something remarkable: In order to truly wrap your head around the concept, you are forced to contemplate how money works.

Is assigning value to a piece of paper any different than assigning value to encrypted electronic signals? Can we have a sustainable currency without the backing of powerful people assuring us that our money's good? Are there ways to secure money outside of banks?

Luther, the economics professor, calls himself a "Bitcoin skeptic" — he's not convinced it will last — but he says questions like these are worth the ride.

"Bitcoin has brought the question of alternative currencies back to the table, and I think that's a good thing," he says. "Money is a very old concept, and it's difficult for me to think that there's not a better way to make transactions."

In a scene from the new season of the popular Netflix political drama House of Cards, the elegant Claire Underwood catches her soon-to-be vice president husband puffing an e-cigarette.

"You're cheating," she says, referring to their efforts to quit smoking.

"No, I'm not," Congressman Francis Underwood replies. "It's vapor....addiction without the consequences."

A Washington-based drama with an implicit endorsement of "vaping" – the practice of partaking in nicotine without burning tobacco?

It could have been ripped directly from the playbook of lobbyists working Capitol Hill and Washington regulators on behalf of the estimated $1.7 billion-and-growing e-cigarette industry.

Eric Criss of the Electronic Cigarette Industry Group (ECIG), laughs off the suggestion that his Florida-based organization, which recently opened a lobbying office in suburban Washington, orchestrated the House of Cards scene.

"No, we did not have anything to do with that product placement," Criss says, or with the Golden Globe Awards gag last month where Julia Louis-Dreyfus ostentatiously puffed a blue-tipped e-cigarette. (Pro-"vaping" sites lit up with comments about the House of Cards moment since the show has become almost synonymous with product placement.)

As e-cigs continue to embed themselves in popular culture, lobbying efforts are heating up around the issue of how government will ultimately regulate the nascent battery-powered nicotine delivery system. All eyes are on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which, in concert with the White House Office of Management and Budget, is expected to soon release a long awaited proposal for regulating e-cigarettes.

Selling D.C. On A New Cig

Debate over the product's health effects continue. A recent Bloomberg Businessweek cover on e-cigs captured the discussion with this tagline: "They're new. They're blue. But will they still kill you?"

Because e-cigarettes don't burn tobacco, cancer-causing tar isn't delivered to users' lungs. But there are concerns that the electronic version could serve as a "gateway" to traditional cigarettes for young people, and that the full health effects of inhaling the nicotine vapor have yet been studied.

The question occupying both ECIG, which represents small producers of e-cigarettes, and tobacco giants like Reynolds American, which has a growing e-cigarette subsidiary, is whether the FDA will seek to regulate the nicotine delivery system in the same manner as traditional products that burn tobacco.

"We're focused not so much on the Hill, but more on the regulators," says Bryan Haynes, a partner and tobacco regulation expert at the large national law firm Troutman Sanders LLP and counsel for the ECIG.

"We do want the public to have a comfort level that what the manufacturers say is in the product is actually accurate," Haynes says. "At the same time, we do not believe that e-cigarettes should be regulated in the same way traditional tobacco products are regulated."

The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Act includes restrictions on retail and online tobacco sales, limits on advertising and marketing to young people, and assesses user fees based on market share.

Criss, ECIG's spokesman, says that most e-cigarette producers, big and small, agree the product needs to be regulated to prevent its sale to minors, to control its ingredients, and to provide proper and accurate labeling.

He also acknowledges the concerns of anti-smoking advocates who have "worked very long and hard to make smoking not look cool – and this product looks like a cigarette, and has nicotine."

"That is a real concern when it comes to kids," he says, "but it is combusting tobacco that kills people."

The "white hat" message that ECIG is using to persuade regulators and Congress is this, according to Criss: e-cigarettes can "move existing smokers down the ladder of risk."

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has another view. The group claimed this week that tobacco giant Lorillard Inc., in a Sports Illustrated advertisement for its e-cigarette, directly targeted teenage boys.

The ad by Lorillard, which last year spent about $2.8 million lobbying for issues including c-cigarettes, featured a close up of a model in a tiny bikini bottom emblazoned with the company's e-cigarette's logo.

In a blog post on its website, the group called on the FDA to prevent such marketing, asserting that the ad "is just the latest example of how marketing for e-cigarettes is using the same slick tactics long used to market regular cigarettes to kids."

The organization is on record, however, as saying that e-cigarettes could benefit public health if responsibly marketed.

Big Tobacco, New Market

David Howard is spokesman for Reynolds American, the parent company of subsidiaries that include the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker of Camel, Pall Mall and Winston cigarettes, and the relatively new R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., which produces the VUSE e-cigarette.

"We are in this business, and we are going to lobby on issues that affect our business, and we are going to have our side represented," Howard says. "These products are different from traditional tobacco products. There's no tobacco. There's no combustion."

The company, which in 2013 spent about $3.3 million lobbying for issues including e-cigarettes, activated it first statewide distribution of VUSE in Colorado last July. It went statewide in Utah in January, and the company is taking steps for a national rollout, he says.

"We believe there is significant potential in the category," Howard says. "Some analysts say it could be a $5 billion industry in the next handful of years."

When the FDA releases its proposed regulation, it simply begins a lengthy comment period, one that could very well spawn litigation. Howard mentions that R.J. Reynolds successfully challenged a marketing provision in the 2009 Tobacco Act after it was proposed.

So while e-cig lobbying has already been kicked up a notch, the real fight begins when the FDA makes its regulation proposal — any day now.

Many religious leaders are feeling under siege. They believe the Obama administration is at worst hostile but at least "tone deaf" to the demands of faith. In their view, the government is attempting to make them act in ways that violate their convictions.

That is the context in which so-called religious freedom bills are being considered in Arizona and numerous other states.

The bills, which would allow business owners to refuse service to gays or other groups that offend their religious beliefs, appear discriminatory on their face.

John McCain and Jeff Flake, Arizona's two Republican U.S. senators, have called on GOP Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the legislation passed last week.

Whether these bills were born out of fear — or bigotry, as many opponents argue — they are marked by the notion that the culture is changing rapidly, in ways that undermine not just religious doctrine but the ability of individuals to act according to the dictates of their faith.

"There's a feeling that this administration is aggressively trying to restrict religious liberty in the United States," says Gary Bauer, a prominent social conservative. "There's just a pattern here that has led a lot of people of faith to believe that this is a period of the most severe legal challenges to what had previously been seen in this country as a fairly broad right."

A poll released last week by Lifeway Research, which is associated with the Southern Baptist Convention, found that 70 percent of senior Protestant pastors believe that religious liberty is in decline in this country and that 54 percent of the public agrees with them.

"This broader sense of anxiety that many conservative religious people have reaches out to many aspects of politics," says John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron.

"There's genuine fear that religious liberty could be severely restricted," he continues. "Whether we believe those fears are justified or not is a different question."

Disappointed In Obama

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that turns on the question of whether the administration, under the terms of the Affordable Care Act, can force employers to provide birth control coverage even if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.

In 2012, the court ruled unanimously against a position taken by the administration regarding church personnel policies.

"The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. "But so, too, is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith and carry out their mission."

President Obama's positions on these legal issues — as well as his support for same-sex marriage — has convinced some religious leaders that he and his administration are "the most tone-deaf to religious liberty in recent memory," as Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia put it to CNSNews.com.

While arguing that religious liberty is "at risk," Chaput and other leaders concede that religious freedom is nowhere near as endangered in the United States as it is in, for example, North Korea, where last week an Australian missionary was detained for leaving religious pamphlets in a Buddhist temple.

But they argue Obama has not been sufficiently vigorous in speaking against religious persecution abroad, including mass killings of Christians in Nigeria.

"The State Department has downplayed the issue, the president has seldom raised it, nor have his representatives raised it in international meetings," says Bauer, a Republican presidential candidate in 2000 and president of the nonprofit group American Values. "They are much more likely to condemn a country for not allowing same-sex marriage, or other items on that agenda, than they are to condemn a country for persecuting Christians."

A Right To Refuse Service?

It's same-sex marriage that is driving the current spate of bills that seek to protect religious freedom at the state level. There have been a few isolated but widely cited examples of businesses — a baker, a florist — sued for refusing to provide services to gay couples who were getting married.

"They feel that the power of the state is being used to force them to engage in things that go against their conscience," says Green, the Akron political scientist.

Further protections are needed, says Terry Fox, senior pastor of Summit Church in Wichita, Kan. He supported legislation — passed by the state House but declared dead in the state Senate — that would give shop owners the ability to choose whether to withhold services to anyone, based on religious beliefs.

Homosexuals "would be included in that," Fox says, but he says the bill was not directed entirely at them. He argues it would have afforded protections to shop owners who are gay.

"What if Fred Phelps" — the notoriously homophobic leader of Westboro Baptist Church — "went to a business owned by a gay person and wanted to order signs, as he often does, saying 'God hates fags'?" Fox asks.

Separating Church And Commerce

Some pastors such as Fox worry that their ability to preach Scripture as they see fit might eventually be impinged upon, or that the government will force them to offer marriage rites to same-sex couples if they perform weddings at all.

That seems unlikely. But there's still the question of whether religious freedom under the First Amendment — which surely protects the ability of Americans to worship as they wish — trumps concerns about discrimination when it comes to commerce, where interactions with different types of people are a given.

"They all have at their core this idea that a person's religious beliefs trumps their need to serve the public," says Robert Boston, the author of the forthcoming book Taking Liberties: Why Religious Freedom Doesn't Give You the Right to Tell Other People What to Do.

Many if not most pastors and priests argue that believers should be able to live according to the principles of their faith in the public marketplace, as well as in private spaces.

"Freedom of religion has always been more than the right to practice prayer and rituals within the confines of a home or sanctuary," says the Oregon Family Council, which is sponsoring a ballot measure to protect religious liberty. "It's a right to have faith expressed in meaningful ways throughout the public square."

Supporters of the religious liberty bills say they support the Civil Rights Act and other laws intended to protected racial and ethnic minorities from discrimination in public accommodations.

Many of them argue that homosexuality is different. Fox, for instance, says that being homosexual is a choice, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. It's not like being born, he says, as an African-American.

"There's certainly a consensus in our society that discrimination based on race, when you're operating a business is and should be unacceptable," Bauer says. "But when it comes to asking business people to cooperate in activities that they might find morally reprehensible and in violation of their religious beliefs ... is against everything the country is built on."

Coping With Change

The broader context to the whole debate is the fact that the country has experienced fairly dramatic cultural and demographic changes over the past couple of generations. There's nothing new about the argument that traditional values are being undermined, but it's become a particularly acute concern for social conservatives with the spread of same-sex-marriage rights.

"From the perspective of religious conservatives, there has been too much change, too quickly," says Boston, communications director for the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

He says that conservative Christians are uncomfortable with the ways in which recent civil rights movements are changing America into a more open — and more secular — place.

"There's a great deal said in our country about tolerance," says state Sen. Phillip Gandy, a pastor and sponsor of a religious freedom bill passed by the Mississippi Senate last month. "It seems to me that people of faith are asked to be tolerant, but many people don't want to be tolerant of us and be respectful of our beliefs."

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