Hacker News Reader

Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

I understand that most people probably would switch. I’m actually looking it this from a different perspective: would Bitcoin be able to regain trust? A large hack might kill Bitcoin if everyone decides that they don’t trust Bitcoin’s security.

View on HN

I think it depends how it goes. Some people might gain trust if the community could move swiftly to fix the problem

It's an interesting question but I'm fairly sure that after ten years Bitcoin has matured enough that all possible exploitation vectors have been tested.

In theory though this would definitely cause some chaos if something like this happened today, I don't know if it's enough to kill bitcoin but it would certainly drop the price. Most people only interact with bitcoin in a very abstract way through exchanges and don't understand enough of the details to care. If the exchange switched to the proper chain and everything appeared to be fine to the end user I don't think you'd see too many long term problems.

The really huge problem would be if the digital signatures would have a weakness. I believe all the other parts of the protocol are simple enough to fix, but there's no mathematical guarantee that the discrete log problem in the Bitcoin elliptic curve is algorithmically hard, we just think it is, because it has the test of time.

Yes. The trust is not in the code, it’s in the hash power.

From a normal investor’s standpoint, the hash power is an implementation detail. Trust has to be in the integrity of the blockchain.

Maybe that investor shouldn’t invest in bitcoin or Proof of Work based chains.

These systems are nothing like PayPal and Venmo and investing in ignorance is just asking for losses.

I agree; nobody should be considering cryptocurrencies an investment. That’s not the message coming from most Bitcoin enthusiasts, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com