Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: More than $1 billion dollars worth of a digital currency known as "bitcoins" now circulate on the web – an amount that exceeds the value of the entire currency stock of small countries like Liberia (which uses “Liberian dollars”), Bhutan (which uses the “Ngultrum”), and 18 other countries. 
  
 So what is a “bitcoin,” and why would anyone use it? 
  
 Unlike traditional currency, bitcoins are not issued by a government or even a private company. Instead, the currency is run by computer code that distributes new bitcoins at a set rate to people who devote web servers to keep the code running. The bitcoins are then bought and sold for regular U.S. dollars online. 
  
 'They buy gold, they put it under the mattress, or they buy bitcoin.' - Tony Gallippi, the CEO “BitPay.com, 
  
 Bitcoin is in high demand right now -- each bitcoin currently sells for more than $90 U.S. dollars -- which bitcoin insiders say is because of world events that have shaken confidence in government-issued currencies. 
  
 “Because of what's going on in Cyprus and Europe, people are trying to pull their money out of banks there,” Tony Gallippi, the CEO “BitPay.com,” which enables businesses to easily accept bitcoins as payment, told FoxNews.com. 
  
 In Cyprus, the government is considering taking a percentage of all citizens’ bank accounts to solve its fiscal woes. That has led Cypriots -- and other Europeans worried about the same thing happening to them -- to take their money out of banks. 
  
 “So they buy gold, they put it under the mattress, or they buy bitcoin,” Gallippi said. 
  
 Bitcoin demand has also increased, Gallippi says, because last week U.S. regulators issued the first official guidelines for private digital currencies. Prior to the regulations, the legal status of the currencies was in doubt. 
  
 “Now people can see that it's not illegal, that it's not banned,” Gallippi said. 
  
 Bitcoin is controversial because the currency can be exchanged anonymously online -- it is in a sense the digital equivalent of using hard cash -- and so some have criticized it for facilitating online drug markets. On the site known as "the Silk Road," for instance, users pay bitcoins for illegal drugs and other forbidden items. 
  
 Bitcoin Targeted by Cyberattack Just as Bitcoin explodes beyond the $1 billion mark thanks to Europe’s debt crisis, the emerging virtual currency was dealt a setback this week after a key exchange was hit by a powerful cyber attack that caused delays. Read more at Fox Business. 
  
 In a 2011 letter to the Attorney General, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) argued for strict enforcement. 
  
 “After purchasing bitcoins through an exchange, a user can create an account on Silk Road and start purchasing illegal drugs from individuals around the world and have them delivered to their homes within days,” the Senators wrote. “We urge you to take immediate action and shut down the Silk Road network.” 
  
 But the Silk Road is still running, and a recent study estimates that $23 million dollars of illicit items are sold for bitcoins on the site every year. 
  
 The regulatory guidelines issued last week by the government agency known as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), however, will not stop that. 
  
 The regulations say that digital currencies like bitcoin are to be treated essentially as foreign currencies. Companies that exchange digital bitcoins for real money will have to comply with the same regulations as traditional currency exchangers -- namely, they must verify the identity of anyone exchanging money for bitcoins and report large transactions to the government. 
  
 Using bitcoins to purchase goods, however, is specifically exempted. 
  
 “A user who obtains convertible virtual currency and uses it to purchase real or virtual goods or services is not… under FinCEN’s regulations,” the guidance reads. 
  
 Some bitcoin defenders say the use of bitcoins to buy illegal items shouldn’t obscure the legal uses. 
  
 “With any technology… Criminals are going to use it for something, and regular people are going to use it for something,” Gallippi said. “You can't ban cell phones just because criminals are using them to do drug deals. You can't ban e-mail just because people are using them to do phishing scams in Nigeria. You have to start just prosecuting people who are committing crimes -- you can't just completely wipe out the new technology.” 
  
 Gallippi says one reason to use bitcoins for legal transactions is a lower risk of identity theft. 
  
 “If you are buying something online and you have the choice of paying with a credit card or bitcoins – think about what you have to do to use a credit card. You have to fill out this whole long form, name, address, account number, sometimes more... coincidentally, that’s all the info a thief would need to steal to pretend to be you.” 
  
 Between that, bitcoin’s anonymity, and worries about conventional currency, bitcoin demand is as high as ever, according to Alan Safahi, who runs “Zip Zap” – a company that facilitates cash deposits at stores like CVS and Wal-Mart for transfer to a site that can convert the money to bitcoins. 
  
 “We’re processing millions of dollars a month. We’ve seen tremendous surge in activity,” he said. 
  
 Contact the author at maxim.lott@foxnews.com. ||||| Hang around in the tech industry long enough and you or someone you know will be heard saying, “that’s so crazy it just might work.” Two years ago, if you’d have told me that an open-source, P2P currency would soon be a thriving, billion-dollar market, I would’ve told you that you were on a lonely bus headed to CrazyTown, U.S.A. But today, Bitcoin officially became a crazy idea that’s actually working. 
  
 Today, all the Bitcoin in circulation — some 10.9 million of them — have collectively crossed the billion-dollar mark. As it is wont to do, the value of Bitcoin (and its exchange rate) has fluctuated wildly today. At one point, it hit a dollar value around $78, then pushed into the mid-nineties. As of this minute, it’s hovering around $90. 
  
 Okay, it’s still a tiny fraction of Google’s market cap, but this is something — especially for a largely unregulated, decentralized virtual currency. (Say that three times fast.) The world’s most popular controversial crypto-currency, mind you. 
  
 Bitcoin supporters will scoff and tell you that this is no news, and that Bitcoin has been alive and thriving for years. In fact, it first appeared back in 2009, and has been slowly gaining steam since. But Bitcoin has largely remained outside the realm of mainstream media attention, because no one has been quite sure what to make of it. Is it a passing fad, a hilarious geek-driven phenomenon, or the real deal? 
  
 In fact, it has really been relegated to the realm of the uber geeky, or seen as the currency of anarchists or crazy digital libertarians. The black market marketplace known as Silk Road, which allows pretty much anyone to anonymously sell “alternative products” (i.e. large quantities of one’s drug of choice), uses Bitcoin for its currency. Something which hasn’t exactly helped Bitcoin’s “cross over” appeal. 
  
 And geeks have had a point: Eventually, with the increasing popularity of P2P networks, virtual currency and digital marketplaces, it was only a matter of time before these entities would collide and a virtual currency of record would emerge. No government control?! Even better! 
  
 Bitcoin crossing the $1 billion threshold may not seem like much, but if anything, it seems to be a sign to anyone listening that the crypto-currency is ready to be taken seriously. Of course, there are still a lot of concerns, as John Biggs laid out in 2011. 
  
 But why has Bitcoin become a billion-dollar market? 
  
 First off, startups are beginning to carry the torch. As Alex wrote yesterday, Expensify announced that it is now supporting Bitcoin “to give international contractors an alternative to PayPal and the high fees associated with the service.” Reddit has jumped on the bandwagon, too, along with WordPress and Namecheap, among others. 
  
 Adam Draper, the founder of Menlo Park-based accelerator, Boost VC, recently announced that the team would be focusing on Bitcoin-focused startups for its summer class. As he laid out in a post today, one of the other big reasons Bitcoin is beginning to take off — besides, of course, that it allows secure digital transactions without transmitting personal information — is that investor confidence is growing. Bitcoin startups are beginning to raise, and Draper claims that their fund is far from being the only one that’s interested. 
  
 What’s more, the government has finally realized that it needs to start taking virtual currency seriously and develop a strategy for dealing with these types of currencies. FinCEN recently put out a series of “Guidelines,” which will inform future regulation, but also works to establish trust and credibility for virtual currency, particularly Bitcoin. 
  
 There’s also the climate of the global financial markets, particularly the panic in Cyprus, after the government froze its citizens’ bank accounts following its bailout. Many believe that the tenuous financial markets in Europe and beyond create an atmosphere that’s ripe for a digital panacea like Bitcoin. 
  
 Of course, the other side of the Bitcoin argument is that the confluence of unsteady financial markets, and skyrocketing growth of virtual currency (plus hype), is creating a perfect storm that equates to Bitcoin just being one giant bubble waiting to pop. 
  
 What’s more, as my colleague Greg Kumparak pointed out today, Bitcoin itself is still in a tenuous place, policy-wise. There’s a good chance that a decentralized, unregulated market is going to scare the pants off the government once it’s fully cognizant that Bitcoin is a billion-dollar market — and growing. “It’s the easiest ‘this funds terrorism’ scare argument the government will ever try to make, so a big battle within the next year or two is pretty much guaranteed,” he said. 
  
 Whether one sees it as a phenomenon or a legitimate institution, Bitcoin is working on all cylinders to become the latter — and now has a real case for our undivided attention. Either way, feel free to marvel at how a virtual currency that appeared practically out of the ether (created by some phantom mathematician/economist) just pulled a billion-dollar market out of its hat. 
  
 See you on Silk Road? |||||
Output:
There isn't any national treasury backing the bitcoin, nor does anyone have great stores of physical bitcoins lying around. Yet more than $1 billion worth of this invented currency is in circulation—more than the entire currency stock of 20 countries, Fox News reports. A single bitcoin is currently worth more than $90 US. What's the appeal? Well, some say it's because global currency markets are so unstable that bitcoins, which are distributed to people who donate web server space to the bitcoin system, seem more stable than cash. "Because of what's going on in Cyprus and Europe, people are trying to pull their money out of banks," says BitPay CEO Tony Gallippi. "So they buy gold, they put it under the mattress, or they buy bitcoin." But others have another theory. Because bitcoin can be traded anonymously, like a digital form of cash, they believe bitcoin is fueling online black markets and drug markets. Gallippi scoffs at that concern. "With any technology," he says, "criminals are going to use it for something." TechCrunch has more background on how the system works.