The vaunted and highly regarded United States government's extremely well recognized Securities and Exchange Commission has spoken, and they assert, with all the authority they have, that Bitcoin is "ripe for fraud and Ponzi schemes," according to CNET. http://www.cnet.com/news/bitcoin-is-ripe-for-fraud-and-ponzi-schemes-warns-sec/
Of course, not everyone, including this author, regards the USA government very highly. And while I recognize the SEC, I don't recognize it as being very effective. For example, an extremely casual and momentary search on the term "fraudulent investment scheme bitcoin" brings up only about 101,000 results for me. A search on the very similar phrase "fraudulent investment schemes US dollar" generates 1.4 million hits.
Now that is anecdotal evidence, and it isn't certain that search results indicate a strong relationship. I wouldn't be especially surprised if the ratio of US dollar fraudulent schemes to bitcoin fraudulent schemes is much greater than 14:1. For one thing, simply modifying the search term to remove "US" and leaving only "fraudulent investment schemes dollar" gets me 3.15 million hits.
In the dollar-related searches, among the top three hits in each case are links to the Bernard Madoff fraud. That's the top link under the "US dollar" variation on the search. Madoff seems to have defrauded investors of about $64.8 billion (according to a wikipedia entry on the subject) in a vast Ponzi scheme, second only in scope to the social security "system" which the USA government has operated since 1935. The Madoff "investment scandal" seems appropriate to mention in this context for a few reasons.
First, questions about Madoff's company had been raised as early as 1999, but it was not until 2008 that an investigation ultimately led to criminal charges. During the time that Madoff was ignored by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), his company was able to rip off a large number of investors and became, for a time, the sixth-largest market maker on Wall Street.
A brief summary of the SEC's failure is found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal
"In September 2009, the SEC released a 477-page report on how the SEC missed these red flags and identifies repeated opportunities for SEC examiners to find the fraud and how ineffective their efforts were. In response to the recommendations in that report, eight SEC employees were disciplined; none were fired."
Apparently, government regulation of dollar-based fraudulent investment schemes is minimal, faint-hearted, and incompetent. Presumably all the enthusiasts for government regulation of bitcoin are aware that the government can't seem to find its way out of a paper sack with both hands and a road map, which is why they trumpet regulation as a "good" thing for bitcoin.
Second, the size of the Madoff fraud has been estimated at about $64.8 billion, making it more than 11 times the current notional value of all bitcoin ever mined, and roughly ten times the current market value of all block-chain type crypto-currencies in circulation. And that's just one dollar fraud that the SEC failed to notice, failed to prosecute for about nine years, and for which failures the SEC refused to fire any of its regulators.
It is entirely laughable that the SEC thinks it ought to be warning investors that Bitcoin is "ripe for fraud." Why isn't the SEC ignoring Bitcoin for nine years, in keeping with their track record with Madoff?
Responding to the tempest-in-a-teapot sized furore over the SEC's statement, a Colorado Congress critter has issued his own statement. http://www.cnet.com/news/congressman-if-we-ban-bitcoin-lets-ban-dollar-bills-too/
Jared Polis (D-CO) writes, in part, "The dollar bill market has been extremely susceptible to forgers, tax fraud, criminal cartels, and armed robbers stealing millions of dollars from their legitimate owners." Actually, the dollar bill has probably seen tens of billions of dollars of fraud and theft by private parties since it broke the last link to gold in 1971. If we count government-related fraud, the dollar has been involved in tens of trillions in disreputable claims and false promises.
Or, briefly, with regard to the SEC, what "authority" do they really have? Not much.