Man claims TSA asked to search his luggage for Bitcoins

Maybe this enterprising TSA agent was hoping to find some of the Bitcoins that disappeared from Mt. Gox. Or maybe that agent had no clue that Bitcoins aren’t coins at all.

Either way, it resulted in an interesting exchange for David Baker, who was flying out of Manchester on his way to New Hampshire, according to Tech Crunch.

Baker thought he would trip up the TSA agent by asking “What did the Bitcoin look like?”

Surely, the agent wouldn’t be able to describe a Bitcoins, since they don’t exist as physical objects.

The agent responded that they looked like tokens (a logical guess, right?) and suspected he was traveling with more than $10,000 of Bitcoins, which is illegal. Oddly, the TSA agent did know something about Bitcoins, because he told Baker that the value of them “fluctuates all the time.”

A spokesman for the TSA says the agency hasn’t been able to find the agent in question or verify the incident.

Via Techcrunch