Commentary It all started with the “Genesis Block.” On Jan. 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first “block” on a distributed network known as a blockchain—and suddenly bitcoin was born. Within two years, the nascent cryptocurrency had captured the imagination of the early adopter masses. And when the masses’ imaginations kick into high gear around money (especially in an area where they don’t have a whole lot of actual knowledge), you’ve got an environment ripe for the picking. In late 2011, a bitcoin advocate who regularly contributed to several forums and went by the (very appropriate) handle Pirateat40, launched a “high-yield bitcoin investment program” he dubbed Bitcoin Savings & Trust. For minimum deposits of 25,000 BTC, he offered weekly interest of 7 percent—that’s over 3,000 percent a year. (He claimed he made his investors money via a bitcoin market arbitrage, which, ironically, was the exact same story Charles Ponzi told …