When the U.S Treasury Department declared in March 2013 that exchangers and administrators of virtual currencies like Bitcoin were "money service businesses" subject to regulation under the Bank Secrecy Act, Reason's Brian Doherty issued a prescient warning.

"What the government cannot stop (and ought not try to stop) it can still interfere with, and ruin lives in the process," he wrote that May. "Those who think it necessary that Bitcoin be regulated, even if they want to be in on making the regulations as sane and harmless as possible, need to remember that every regulation has a punishment attached for violating it."

On Friday, a grand jury charged Phoenix-area neurologist Peter Steinmetz with operating an unlicensed bitcoin exchange.