"Update: A TSA spokesman says they have been unable to find the agents in question or verify the incident. I’m told Baker’s story is complicated by the fact that protocol would be to contact law enforcement if someone was taking large amounts of cash for a suspected purpose, rather than request additional screening."<p>So basically, he most likely had some 'TSA' agents that were trying to rob him.
This smells a lot like agents getting a bonus for seizing cash over $10k which the TSA keeps.<p>When a chain of people start aggressively enforcing laws for their own gain without giving a damn what the original intent of the law was, very strange things start happening in society.
I traveled a lot in post-soviet countries. Once I was held for several hours by military police for losing my way into restricted military area. But never ever anyone took my fingerprints, except TSA agents...
This story sounded a lot like the one that happend to me in 1984. It's rather hard to describe a place I was working at the time beyond saying it was a restricted access area. Anyway, I was detained by security for walking out from the gates with a floppy disk and a programming manual. I had to explain what a floppy disk is. It wasn't actually very funny, mostly because my quarterly bonus was at stake. The funny part was to read the incident report, that said I was detained with one "manual" and one "information".
"When Baker asked how much he thought his alleged tokens were worth, the agent responded, “It fluctuates all the time.”<p>Either a surprisingly well informed (and a tad snarky) TSA officer (who inexplicably dwells on the possibility of vanishingly rare physical Bitcoin), or a tounge-in-cheek satire presented as fact. I suspect the latter, unless the supposed victim can produce any non-anecdotal evidence to corroborate the story.<p>Edit: It seems strange to me that TSA would be making such a big deal about searching for Bitcoin, when as far as I'm aware, limitations on transfer of cash only apply to international flights, and would be handled by actual law enforcement or Customs, not TSA. And other than the author being a bit of a dick in his supposed TSA interaction, I really don't see how this situation would have been plausible.
I admit the title had be curious, but upon consideration, I suppose it's <i>possible</i> that the TSA employee (I refuse to call TSA employees "agents") saw something small and round on the Xray, and thought they might be physical Bitcoins. Some of the early ones enclose private keys to wallets containing 25 BTC or more. That would easily be more than the $10k limit.<p>Please don't take the above as my condoning the employees actions, the existence of the TSA, governments, or any other entity whose existence is based upon the initiation of force against others.
That is quite a twisted interpretation of that law/regulation/etc. - bitcoin in itself is not cash.<p>Also as a result of that logic, no traveler who owns lots of bitcoins would be allowed to travel on a plane - how the heck does that make sense?