The hook of the first heist was how mind-bogglingly simple the scheme was: A guy called tech support pretending to be James Grant, the head of Canadian Bitcoins, and was subsequently able to gain access to a wallet containing $100,000 worth of Bitcoin.

The fault clearly lay with with the tech support firm, which is in fact owned by Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications, and in itself should not undermine confidence in the viability of the digital currency.

The other two thefts were more straightforward: A digital currency exchange based in Palau called CoinEX was hacked and robbed of all its Bitcoin. And Polish exchange BitCurex lost between 10% and 20% of its Bitcoins.