I wouldn't say that the U.S. media is obsessed, I'd day they are counter-obsessed.

And that's because there's an alliance between parts of the technocrati and libertarian communities who became originally obsessed, and as it turns out rightly so. Because however you tell the story to feature Silk Road and MT GOX Bitcoin has still been a remarkable success, moving from an idea in someone's head in 2009 to a functioning stateless currency at present.

So the corporate media, which by its incentives wants to protect legacy institutions and debunk anything new whatever its merits, has taken to presenting every bump in the Bitcoin road as the end of a crackpot idea. The tulip mania and ponzi schemes are invoked by financial writers because they can't grasp the underlying value of the Bitcoin protocol and because sensationalism sells.