'Free' bitcoins? I'd think he's taking considerable risk, and the nature of BTC is such that if you can do traffic analysis on more than a few nodes in the network, it's going to be relatively straightforward to track down the node where an address is accessed from. There is no guarantee that he (or she) will be able to access their ill-gotten gains without getting caught.

The risk here being? That Romney will sue the guy in civil court? He's trolling the media for bitcoins, how much do you think he has to lose?

I guess there's an extortion case to be made.

But caught where? Eastern Europe?

Anywhere that you can use TOR, or a VPN that doesn't keep logs.

You use the word "conspiracy" to pre-emptively discredit my position, grasshopper.

I understood what you were trying to say, but I think you discredited yourself by misusing the term "false flag operation" before he said anything.

Edit(ing because I can't reply yet): I think in the context you were using it, "hoax" would have been a more appropriate term. "False flag" would mean the intent is to falsely attribute blame on someone innocent (usually some geopolitical entity), and is more simply referred to as "framing" on a smaller scale.

False flag is a kind of hoax, and my point is that the goal is for it to benefit Romney.

That's exactly what I thought you were saying.

Maybe it's because I've been dealing with other people today who think that the simplest explanation of the Dan Rather memos was that it was all a master plot by Karl Rove, so my patience for people suggesting non-obvious routes that lead back to a politician had already been significantly spent.

Is it possible this is something set up to benefit Romney? Yes, it's possible. It's also possible it's something set up to benefit Obama. Such speculation seems useless since the simplest explanation is that someone thinks they can make some money. EDIT or for the lulz.

What name do you suggest for the concept?