A Brooklyn man has been robbed at gunpoint of over $1000 in bitcoins, according to local reports.
The 28-year-old resident of Crown Heights in the hip New York borough had arranged via Craigslist to sell the online currency to an individual.
However, when the man got to Troy Avenue and Crown Street the buyer ushered him towards his silver Honda to complete the deal.
Once inside a second man pulled a gun on the unlucky Brooklyn-ite and forced him to transfer $1100 in bitcoins to them.
They then stole his smartphone and made off with the loot, according to the New York Post.
The incident happened at around 11.30am.
Police are apparently looking for two men – one of whom is thought to be 19 – and a woman, although it’s not clear why they’re after the latter.
The mugging brings to mind an incident in February when a New York City firefighter was stabbed and robbed after he met his assailants to sell them some of the popular crypto-currency.
And before that, bitcoin enthusiast Dean Katz was robbed of $8500 in the digital currency after meeting a prospective buyer in Queens.
It’s thought that bitcoins and the like are a tempting target for robbers as it iss easy to steal large sums of money untraceably when it lives in the virtual world.
These incidents of violent physical theft are a counterpoint to the usual bitcoin misadventures which happen online.
In February last year, for example, attackers managed to exploit a vulnerability in the bitcoin protocol to hack and drain darknet drugs marketplace Silk Road 2 of money.
Just last month, security researchers warned that crypto-currencies based on blockchain software have exploitable flaws which could be abused by hackers.
Juniper Research has estimated that the number of active bitcoin users worldwide will reach 4.7 million by the end of 2019, up from a little over 1.3 million last year.