A prominent libertarian supporter of Bitcoin has been fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for illegally selling shares in two business ventures, as the US authorities try to clamp down on a shadow world of unregulated share trading in virtual currency.
Erik Voorhees, who moved from the US last year to operate Bitcoin ventures outside the purview of US laws, agreed to pay more than $50,000 to settle charges over what he had presented as a kind of public flotation of the ventures.
Mr Voorhees and others were the owners of SatoshiDice, a gambling game in which users could win Bitcoin, and FeedZeBirds, which paid users in virtual currency when they retweeted promotional material on Twitter.