Topic: What do you think Bitcoins biggest vulnerability is? - page 3. (Read 551 times)

It is not that easy. Political control of Bitcoin is just a theory, it cannot be executed at all. Do you really expect government to go to the doorstep of every miner? Anybody can mine crypto, I don't see governments of whole world coming together to not allow their citizens to mine bitcoin independently. Well to make it full-proof control, every single country has to join hands, isn't it!

Government and regulators will always remain as enemies to bitcoin or any other crypto currency due to the fact that they cannot control it and it's decentralized but off-late we have come across situations like kidnappers, hackers demanding payment through bitcoins and claims that bitcoin is used as funding for terror activities and security services cannot track their activities is turning out to be a worst nightmare. But there are crypto friendly countries like Malta, Estonia as well who have seen the bright side of crypto world.

Susceptibility towards political control IMO is the biggest vulnerability of bitcoin currently. We may have seemed to get past the horrors of malleability, 51% attacks and other technical complications that could arise in bitcoin that the last thing to ever cause it some problems in the future is the people who runs the show, or the people who have large control over other people in this decentralized network of computers hashing to mint money. Accept it or not, there will be assholes and greedy scums who will walk the scene with their ever-so-malicious intent of just making money and nothing else for the good and development of crypto, and to me they are the worst enemy of bitcoin, and not the technicality per se.

I believe the biggest vulnerability for Bitcoin is not that it will be hacked/attacked, fought and smeared by gov. forked or co-opted. The biggest fear is that after the world finally understands Bitcoin,  there will not be enough people who care.

Ideology difference between small blocker, hybrid and big blocker which creates 2 years+ drama, wasting everyone's time and ultimately delay SegWit deployment.

As for technical, i guess soft-fork/backward-compatibility approach which increase development complexity and potentially add vulnerability.

Bitcoin's vulnerability is that it is very volatile. Big players can create price hikes and speculations, this is a terrible minus of this digital coin

FUD is the problem of people who are unable to analyze and check information received from media resources. FUD is not a bitcoin vulnerability

Actually, Barry Silbert was on your side, trying to push the NYA (2x fork) down our throats.

The developers did no such thing. Bitcoin Core has never attempted to merge changes that would break Bitcoin's consensus rules -- Segwit certainly didn't. Therefore it's ridiculous to claim they "co-opted" the protocol.

Do you really think Core has an obligation to implement every terrible consensus-breaking idea you want?

You can call that stagnation, fine. But if anything, refusing to split the network by hard forking kept the community together. Instead of a catastrophic hard fork network split, Bitcoin Cash just peacefully splintered off. It was the best possible outcome to a 3+ year impasse.

It seems to me that now fear for the future of Bitcoin, in principle, is not necessary. It is needed as a means of earning and means of manipulation. The big danger for Bitcoin seems to me is that as soon as it ceases to be needed by people with money, it will cease to exist. But the probability of this is very small.

It really all depends on where in the timeline. Quantum computing isn't far enough along to be a threat yet. Also I believe the way it computes data would have to be adapted to hack the blockchain. However apparently this form of computing is fast enough to see the private key as it is revealed briefly for every transaction.

Currently the biggest vulnerability is the possibility of 51% attack.
I have red in several sources that  allegedly China has more than 50% of mining power divided in several locations and by different companies, this would mean that BTC is extremely vulnerable.

The only vulnerability of Bitcoin I can possibly think of is the collapse of blockchain technology and the internet. Blockchain technology is no doubt the backbone of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. If Blockchain technology is eliminated or destroyed, Bitcoin will have no value since it solely operates a blockchain network..

it's not a vulnerability per se, more like an unknown---the viability of a hard capped supply secured only by transaction fees. i really hope we don't wake up to plummeting hash rates a decade or two from now because block rewards aren't covering mining investments.

this is why i tend towards the "small blocker" camp, out of an abundance of caution re mining incentives.


not increasing the block size enough for you is now apartheid? quite the colorful language there, franky.

I think the bitcoin's very dangerous vulnerability is a huge accumulation by one entity that will going to control the market in the future. That might seems impossible but there's a chance that a very rich investor might spend his entire investment to bitcoin. As a solution, I advise my colleagues to accumulate as much bitcoin as they can while it is still early.

Yes, in fact most of the first page of this thread is precisely that, except for Franky's intelligent comment.

Most comments are about government fear. Let me spell it out for you: Bitcoin being banned worldwide would NOT stop it. It was designed to withstand that, and it was expected they would do it, but they didn't. There are far more countries accepting or tolerating Bitcoin than those banning it (about 15).

Someone even mentioned security. SECURITY? Bitcoin cannot be hacked, it hasn't been in 10 years, and it won't be later. This is also one of its key design features, you cannot tamper with the blockchain, and the theoretical 51% attack is a form of brute force attack, which is deterred by the fact that it would cost more to pull out than the possible gain of seizing the blockchain at that point. This should be obvious, but attacks to exchanges, online or personal wallets, are not Bitcoin's fault. Its each of these people's field. And in those cases, you have to talk about "hack" to those specific things, not Bitcoin. There are historical cases of altcoins being "hacked", and that should give you a fair example of what happens when things are not done right.

Since Bitcoin is invulnerable in code, it can only be harmed cosmetically on the outside, with FUD and lies, something that doesn't directly really affect Bitcoin, but the humans that would or would not use it when being misled like that. Bitcoin is working as intended despite that. Same thing as when governments "ban it" instilling fear on their people, but Bitcoin is still working fine even in those countries, you just have to cover yourself better.

The cut of internet connections, we know this is possible because I already saw on the news that one of the places in India got their internet cut off by the government so that they cannot publish on the internet about what is going on out there.
So, what if the internet will be cut off in your area? because of the disputes between the government and its opposition. this is what we called unexpected or sudden happening. if something like this would happen you will lose access to your bitcoins and you cannot get it back until the connection will be brought to normal again. or what if the internet won't come back? then its time to say goodbye to your bitcoin.

Government would be bitcoins biggest enemy. Regulation prevents people from getting involved in crypto, thus preventing cryptocurrency's growth and adoptation. Some countries are skeptical and strict when it comes to their people getting involved to it due to scam and issue that crypto is used in illegal activities.

One word, "Misinformation"  

You get people who know very little about Bitcoin and they are influencers with millions of followers and they go out on social media to bash Bitcoin with their nonsense. The latest one was Mark Cuban with his "I would rather invest in bananas than Bitcoin" comments on social media. A guy like that is the typical "know it all" rich brat that wants to tell everyone what he thinks is good or bad, but he hardly knows anything about the topic that he is bashing.  

So the sheep following him believe this crap and follow his opinions like a slave obey his master.    Luckily for us, there are some influencers out there that actually do their research before they say something about it on social media and they do not make a ass out of themselves.  

a mining 51% attack is no threat.
the reason being is that miners cannot change the rules of the network.
imagine the 'attack' as a 100m race. yea on athlete has more speed and wins more often.. but its the officials that then test his blood and urine, notice he is on drugs and disqualify him for cheating.

however
take the 2017 event. it was the devs that FORCED a network change by saying unless miners follow the dvs new rules on a specific date, the miners will get thrown off the network.

the only fear of a mining 51% threat is that they blacklist certain transactions. as all other fears can be coded out with just 2 lines of code. and even if they start making blocks without transactions. that too can be coded to reject blocks that dont have tx's

 the real fear is the devs

To me is a big company that everyone knows their name
They have a lot os BTC, they support a fork of BTC saying that BTC was not the original one, they have tons of Asics, and they can do a massive atack to BTC

To me that is not such treat than this