In an interview from his home in Finland, Martti Malmi, who goes by 'Sirius' online, told us that since Bitcoin is just a program, not an actual corporation, it can never be shut down. Earlier this week, U.S. authorities charged executives at Liberty Reserve, a combination digital currency purveyor and wire transfer service, with running a massive money laundering scheme.

Malmi says authorities could even go after Bitcoin Foundation, Bitcoin's non-profit custodian, and the currency would survive. 

"It's just one way to distribute the program," he said. "If [Bitcoin.org] got shut down, the program could be distributed in some way like torrent files. It's not a point of failure for the system, just a distribution channel."

If Bitcoin endpoints eep shutting down, it will kill Bitcoin.

Why do the Bitcoin headlines here make Bitcoin *sound* like a corporation?