The United States military is studying digital currencies like bitcoin to learn if they can be traced and to figure out how they are used by America's adversaries around the world.
CNBC has learned that the global policy counsel of the Bitcoin Foundation flew to Florida to meet with officials from U.S. Special Operations Command for a daylong discussion Monday on the role of so-called cryptocurrencies—of which bitcoin is the best known—in illicit finance.
The first-of-its-kind discussion came just as U.S. warplanes began flying missions over Syria in President Barack Obama's effort to check the advance of the Islamic terror network ISIS. A key priority for the U.S. military is stopping the flow of money to ISIS fighters and blocking the network's ability to process profits from kidnapping, extortion and illicit oil sales.
The military's interest in virtual currency is part of an overall effort by special operations forces to understand how their enemies finance themselves, and what intelligence special operators can glean by following the illicit money.
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