Apple II floppies in the 1980s that contained a bad version of DOS 3.3, circulated on BBSes. I was never personally affected, but I heard (at the time, not afte

Apple II floppies in the 1980s that contained a bad version of DOS 3.3, circulated on BBSes. I was never personally affected, but I heard (at the time, not after the fact) that the point was to drive traffic to a certain pirate BBS that charged for membership. I don't know how such memberships were paid for, but I do remember that Sprint long-distance codes were being traded at the time, so it would make sense to use that method. I also saw a Mac virus that encrypted word-processing files. This was in either late 1980s or early 1990s (I wasn't sure in my earlier post, so I erred on the side of recency). That was the one that promised recovery by postal mail. I don't know anything about the "AIDS Trojan" that you mention. It seems very important to you that you successfully draw a bright line between digital-currency-funded ransomware and the other ransomware that preceded it. You might strengthen your argument by taking a position closer to reality, which is that digital currencies have facilitated online transfers of value, and thus have become more popular. From that point of view, one would hope that digital currencies would come to dominate, including in the realm of ransomware. But again, that gets us back to the original topic: whether the beneficial uses of such currencies outweigh their negative uses.