They pop up on /r/bitcoin and in articles occasionally, almost always in the context of "here's how compulsive gambling Bits-Coins is ruining/has ruined my marriage."

In real life, the only person I've had more than a one-word conversation about Bitcoin with was a guy who used to hang out at our local pub. He supposedly made a lot of money on Bitcoin-related stuff back around 2011 or 2012, enough that he didn't have to work at the time and drove a pretty nice BMW. I didn't know about any of this until he was complaining at the bar about how all his financial accounts were temporarily frozen. I had always assumed he was a dealer, since those are the only 21 year olds in my neighborhood with BMWs and no jobs.

All of this was before I had gotten interested in the delusional world of Butters, so I asked a lot of questions. The guy was involved in taking Bits Corns for gift cards, which he would then transfer to somebody else for straight cash. I hadn't heard of this before, but I said "I'm guessing they froze your accounts because from their perspective that sounds indistinguishable from money laundering." Cue all of the now-familiar arguments for why this form of money laundering is not actually money laundering.

I'm not totally sure what happened after that or if he actually faced any penalties other than losing whatever money was in the frozen accounts. He stopped hanging out in the pub around that time because he moved or something, so I've only run into him once since then. I didn't have a chance to really talk to him, but I did notice that the shiny black BMW had been replaced by a gold-ish colored Toyota hatchback.