I understand there's been some exception to my use of the term counterfeit. First off, let me clarify that Mt.Gox agreed with me when I asked if the hacker was using fake currency, in other words the Bitcoins were phony or, as I said, counterfeit.

For all intents and purposes the hacker was circulating currency on Mt.Gox as if it were real BTC, it was being traded, it was affecting the currency price and nobody knew what has going on until it was too late. The only problem was the fake money couldn't be taken out of the exchange because the BTC couldn't be authenticated.

This was not just the simple act of changing numbers in a database, as some have suggested, since the hacker pushed the supposed currency into the market where it did real damage and appeared, at least for a short time, to be the real thing.

That said, I can understand how some people could misunderstand what I reported based on the headline. So I have asked the editors to change the term "counterfeit" to "fake." My apologies if you took issue with the title, it was not my intention to offend or mislead.