More likely their Bitcoin goes to $0.
I’m surprised nobody has ever considered that Bitcoin is vulnerable to attacks. It hasn’t happened yet, but imagine if someone finds a way to do fraudulent transactions. Then it’s all over.
I’m surprised nobody has ever considered that Bitcoin is vulnerable to attacks. It hasn’t happened yet, but imagine if someone finds a way to do fraudulent transactions. Then it’s all over.
It's hard to know sometimes if one is being sarcastic on HN, but at any rate, Bitcoin is quite possibly the most scrutinized piece of technology ever developed and there is an enormous amount of research, both academic, corporate, and even just random independent individuals looking for any kind of fault with it whatsoever.
Does that mean Bitcoin is infallible? Absolutely not, but to claim that nobody has considered that Bitcoin is vulnerable to attacks is just one of the most ridiculous claims I've read on HN, once again assuming you're not being sarcastic.
It would be caught after the fact, and the software patched, but money would be lost and confidence in Bitcoin's resistance to double spends would be shaken.
Snark aside, all risk is relative. Your bank account is also vulnerable to attack, and also a lot more vulnerable to human error and a bunch of other risks. Various instruments are good for various goals - as it happens, BTC is a pretty good value store. Not what anybody expected in the beginning, but there you go.
Organizing a bank run is illegal.. but not with crypto
Is it? I don't see why I shouldn't be able to withdraw my cash from a bank, nor be able to tell others that I'm doing so and why... So what part is illegal?
What you mean to say is that BTC is a pretty good speculative asset, and I would agree up until the point that people want to actually turn their speculative asset into tangible wealth. Then they are going through fiat, or an exchange, and all the issues with the traditional finance system come through full force on top of crypto volatility.
DeFi and all these attempts are reinventing the wheel but without the traditional protections put in place. If I forget my password and email with Chase I can still recover my assets. Not so with crypto, and if someone does get my wallet key there is nothing stopping them from draining it dry. My bank would probably freeze the account for suspicious activity.
I haven't even brought up malicious theft of crypto, which happens all the time. Mt Gox wasn't that long ago and what was it, 10% of all circulating Bitcoin at the time that went missing? Most users aren't using hardware wallets and I imagine even less know how to really audit a smart contract. These are all barriers to widespread adoption.
Don't you think somebody would notice something by now?
Anyways. Do you really think the network wouldn't do anything about it? Even quantum-proofing Bitcoin is a possibility, so why not fixing a bug?
I bet that the humans running the machines that run the Bitcoin network would simply update their Bitcoin-core and go on from the point just before the transaction that stole everyone's Bitcoin. A significant nuisance, but hardly a catastrophe.