Bitcoin Forum

something bothered me,since ive started bitcoin

i think all the transactions are stored in computers,thats the core,right?if that's the core,what if we remove all the core's existence?does this mean all the bitcoins existed will be lost?

You will find that there's 1000's of computers / nodes out there operated by different people who will never remove their copy of the blockchain.

This is the beauty of the blockchain, it's massively distributed on a global scale.

It's not feasible to simply shut it down.

Bitcoins do not exist in the first place.

There is only a huge list of transactions. This implicitly defines a balance that we associate with an address. For easy of use, we say "there's 3 bitcoins on this address" but there are no bitcoins anywhere, not even virtually.

Furthermore, yes, if ALL copies of the blockchain data would be destroyed, then all bitcoins are effectively gone. Just like if ALL copies of your bank's account database are deleted, the euros or dollars are effectively gone.

Difference is, there are thousands and thousands active full nodes world wide, and probably many more full copies of the blockchain floating around. Nobody can delete them all. I personally have a backup of the blockchain data on an external USB drive which is never connected online. There are people printing the blockchain and storing it a vault. There might be freaks carving it in stone. Seriously, this data is so important and there are SO many copies, this will never be deleted. Maybe in 4.5 billion years when the sun burns up, but not in the foreseeable future, and definitely not as long as there is at least 1 person in the world who wishes to use Bitcoin.

+1

This is the reason why Bitcoin is "decentralized". It is so distributed that it's practically impossible to delete the blockchain.

i run currently 2 full nodes just to support bitcoin. the only person that can delete it is me. no one else.
the more people with active nodes the more decentralized it is.

Well, that's why Jeff Garzik started "satellite" project. Check here; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334701.0
I think this satellite project is being developed in case of catastrophic failures, attacks to the network etc.

A target-spesific virus may delete/corrupt blockchain data on PC's etc... Even it's so small but it's a probability...

The thing is it's so small we don't really have to worry about this.  If we ever got down to a level it is a problem I think we would see bitcoin people gear up and set up full nodes.  Look at past when 51 percent was a possible issue all community came together.

You could set up Raspberry Pi's across the world for not a lot of money quick and have ton's of nodes pop online fast.

Bitcoin is everywhere but it is also nowhere, a much better design then the matrix which was centralized by the machines.

Like a cold mist bitcoin is!! :p

If you remove all nodes (I think you mean 'nodes' when you say 'cores' - computers that hold full block chain), Bitcoins will not be lost.
Only block chain will be lost, which contains the data of all Bitcoin transactions carried out till date.

Bitcoins are still safe in that case (that reside in wallet.dat files) but it would be impossible to claim those coins without the block chain.

The miners is not only computer, and the mobile phone also can be as wallet, and rassypi too, so your thought is just wrong.

Even a massive solar flare that hits the earth, wiping out all electronics, wouldn't destroy the entire world, only those that are facing the sun at the time and are unprotected, i.e. not in basements or covered by metal.

The chances of the blockchain being wiped out is incredibly small, I reckon even if a virus was started to destroy it, there would still be blockchains on usb sticks, or offline that could restore most of the info when the virus was eradicated.

I know of one company that utilizes massive dug out rock mining for secure and safe storage of data.  Very smart company they turned the old "veins" into storage it's temperature controlled, secure a pretty nice place.  I'm not aware of any active servers, it was mostly disaster recovery.  Can't find a active link about this one they might not still be doing it.

Other one I know is a cave the government dug at one time for US government agency's.   Go on many years later the cave was converted into offices anyone can rent.   Been a LONG time since I've been in it but last I knew there was one company hosting in their. (And hosting is normal servers not miners).  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubTropolis

So - hypothetical - it would be possible to bring the Bitcoin network down with vanishing the Blockchain of all devices?

If there were no nodes there would be no access to the blockchain.  You could in theory if only one computer control the chain.

But again with price of Raspberry Pi's and how many people care about bitcoin this will never happen.

The main question is how is the virus going to infect 6000+ nodes and most of them are running Linux given that many host it on VPS and raspberrypi. Some people don't do anything other than making it a node. So it would be hard to get them to execute a virus.

Not really. The wallet.dat files only contain the private keys. Without a blockchain, these private keys are useless. Without a verified transaction history (which is the blockchain), your private keys hold just as little (i.e. zero) bitcoins as any random non-existing private key that you generate on the fly.

Again: bitcoins exist nowhere. The blockchain or transaction history, which is stored decentralized and redundantly all over the world (mostly online in the p2p network, but also offline backups), determines which addresses hold which balances. The private key for a particular address, which is stored in individual wallets (online or offline or both, whatever you prefer), is necessary to spend that balance.

Yes, even if we have ONE node that has the most recent block chain, we should be good to go.
The problem will be if we have scattered block chain across multiple computers but NO nodes.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=940440.msg10309038#msg10309038


Here's a fellow looking for full nodes to sync block chain of an alt coin:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=984040  :D

Only problem I see is it seems if only one node was up the might be able to control aspects of bitcoin transactions.  I could be wrong on this but I would think there one they could a possibility of attacks.

Absolutely. With reference to a 51% attack that peopel keep talking about, let's call this a 100% attack :D

If we have catastrophe here on earth and everything will be ruined. Say huge tsunami, earthquakes, meteor strike. I doubt that people would be using bitcoin anyway, that satellite launch is really just fancy project for people and media to talk about mostly. For promotional purposes it is great effort tho.

Deleting all files relating to the Blockchain. Wow, that'll be a task and a half. Shutting down every node? That's not going to happen. Well, in my lifetime anyways. But nobody is going to do this, and if somebody is going to, it's near impossible.

Your bitcoins are not stored anywhere but they are recorded in the blockchain as ledger. You only have your private key in your wallet which is used to spend or sign the address. The client verifies your balance by checking against blockchain, not wallet.dat.

as long as bitcoin are safe(and you hold your wallet.dat/private keys)you just need to restore the nodes and thus the blockchain, i don't see the problem here

but in this case, anyone can control the network easily, it would be a double spend-fest...

Most of you guys are talking about catastrofic "end of the world" events, that might eleminate most of the other electronic infrastructure out there too..

It would take a mayor event to destroy all nodes and if that happens, we would not be worried about Bitcoin anymore.

These nodes are spread out all over earth and soon into space.. so the chance of destroying EVERY node is VERY small.  ;) 

The few people who would survive in under ground bunkers, would not have anything to spend their Bitcoin on, so it would not matter to them, if they using bottle caps or chocolate bars to barter.  ;D

@OP

Your questions have already been answered, there's absolutely no need to worry about bitcoin being lost.

Ok, so the answer is "this is never gonna happen"

Let me ask the other way around: Is this possible to happen to the banking system? I mean can a virus or something "big" eliminate every bank transaction and destory the fiat money as we know it?

All these bank accounts, all these credit cards, all these wire transfers etc. Is there a "blockchain safety" for all these everyday banking related transactions?

It sounds more possible to me. Right?

No, because information is also stored offline so the virus would only wipe out new entries and we'd have a rollback.
Also there are people constantly monitoring the network and any suspicious activity would make them go offline and try to isolate the virus.

Yep, but this was a rather hypothetical question to understand the underlying technicalities of how Bitcoin and the node network works.
(Or at least that's what I think the OP was asking)

On a related note, a few days ago I read about a proposal to launch a series of satellites (yes, the kind that orbit the earth) that contain Bitcoin block chain and act as nodes!
http://www.coindesk.com/jeff-garzik-announces-partnership-launch-bitcoin-satellites-space/

Not possible to shut down. One person can store whole blockchain on pendrive and noone will find it :>

you need to have the latest block to revive the network. it will be shut down unless someone has the latest block height when the whole network stop mining

Or you can implement the most recent copy of block chain, do a hard fork discarding all future transaction that are not available on network any more.

you could  avoid this, by mining yourself before the whole mining network will stop to mine, pretty easy

at that point the blockchain is in your hand too, you have absolute control of it

This is rather a very strange way of thinking. If you remove all the computers in a bank the bank will stop working too. It's all the same. Technically no money is removed in either case, unless you make a pancake out of your HDD and fry it.
Banks are even more vulnerable. It's just that the media doesn't focus on this like it does with Bitcoin. I've read news of teens that hacked through the security of a bank, same with .govt websites.

Good luck on going through a real setup with cisco firewalls. Viruses usually infect the PC of an average Joe. People who have a very high understanding of Bitcoin (few on this forum) are usually very tech savy.

Now lock this thread to prevent useless replies please.

This is not possible. Even the US military in all its glory could not take down the blockchain completely!