They’re calling it "a virtual Wild West for narco-traffickers and other criminals."

My beautiful kind-hearted boy, Daniel, was just 21. Now, he’s died before he should have. Daniel died because he was lured into a world where criminals and drug dealers use an unregulated currency called “bitcoin” to get away with it. He had fallen into a dark web of dangerous people, completely unregulated -- and determined to squeeze money out of our kids for dodgy drugs.

Now we read that these drugs, combined with alcohol, are also influencing the wave of violence on our streets

Other countries are waking up to the threat posed by an unregulated currency and taking action. We need to urgently do the same in Australia before more lives are lost.

Bitcoin is operating as a black bank and facilitating the hiding of participants in drug and other black market transactions. Bitcoin is also offering a marketing service for global drug traffickers who are targeting Australian youth.

My son was just 21. And now he’s been taken from me. He died from drugs and I know that I can’t bring him back, but if the same laws had been applied to bitcoin as applies to regular currency, it would be easier for the police to find the people who did this. The other parents I’ve talked to think it’s not happening to them, but I know it is.

After my son died, I had to go through his facebook and emails to see the unbelievable trail of push marketing from people trying to use bitcoin to sell every possible drug you could imagine. And when I told the police about it, they told me they don’t have the resources to fight it.

Australians are rightfully concerned about this new threat. That’s why I’m asking the government to regulate bitcoin and prevent its use as a malicious market. We need the government to have a proper inquiry into bitcoin and stop pretending it doesn’t exist.

The inquiry should consider how banks can get away with allowing these people to trade in bitcoin and how we’re letting them get away with killing our children.