Bitcoin Forum

Or any other hack which requires a rewind of the blockchain.

My thoughts are: yes. Of course, it would be terrible for bitcoin's PR. There would be potentially hundreds of thousands of people out of pocket (everyone who made a transaction after the rewind point), most of them with little chance of getting their money back. Bitcoin's price would surely plummet. But would it go all the way to zero? I think not. Unlike last time this happened (2011 I think?) there are literally millions of people out there with a vested interest in bitcoin's continued success. We wouldn't be so quick to throw in the towel. If this happened tomorrow, and after the patch and blockchain rewind the price dropped to say $50, would I be trying to sell the coins I currently own? Certainly not, I'd be buying more.

And furthermore, following a successful patch, the system would be stronger than ever before. In this sense bitcoin is 'antifragile'- everytime it breaks, instead of getting destroyed, it actually gets stronger and more resilient.

Would you rather place your trust in a system that had never been hacked, or a system that had been hacked X times and recovered every single time?

Bitcoin has never been hacked.

Would I trust all my BTC to someone else? GOD NO.  That is how you get goxed.

 Agree b;ockchain never has been hacked,only btc services have been hacked

the only one what can disturbe bitcoin is bitcoin itself,high mining diff and problems with nodes
and that have to be improved

The only times Bitcoin had actual problems was when it was a couple of months old, nowadays whenever you hear about a hack it is a hack to a specific service.

That's not the point. The 90 billion coins was not a hack, but an exploit of a bug. Although unlikely, we can't rule out another bug like that from happening again.

and kacker love recycling stolen bitcoins.


so Bitcoin is even more valuable than paper money that cost a hell of production (and trees).

I think that such a hack is unlikely except by a government.  A hacker would not want to do such a thing, it would drop coin price and many would lose faith.  If the blockchain could be restored, and protected from future hacks, then bitcoin would not fail all the way however I believe that it would be many years until faith and value were restored.  If this happened an altcoin with better security would likely take over.

OTOH a government who does not want currency to become decentralized (all of them?) might do this to destroy bitcoin.  I just hope that it doesn't happen!

August, 2010.


Bitcoin was 4 years old (March, 2013) when a hard-fork panicked the core devs.  The fork grew to a length of 31 blocks before being abandoned.

I think that if the blockchain, not an exchange, but the actual bitcoin was hacked then it would be over.  Sure maybe an alt coin could take over but even that would not happen for a long time.  All faith would be lost, and the damaged reputation would never recover.  I think that hackers will go after exchanges and private accounts.  Why kill the golden goose?

It would be fine the blockchain would require a hardfork to before the hack
At least that is what occured when the chain split and I believe also when that hack was discovered.
(Now if it made all transactions invalid and no one found out about that bug for years and it became unrecoverable that would be something else entirely)

If smething big happens that could "break" Bitcoin, transfer to Litecoin, the safe haven coin.

If something big happens and breaks Bitcoin, then Litecoin will follow.
Besides, how do you transfer broken Bitcoins to Litecoins?

It's a bug of MtGox, not a bug of Bitcoin.

Exactly, unless it is an exploit in SHA256. Which in that case, Litecoin, a scrypt mining algo based coin would be safe.
But this would never happen as SHA256 is considered to be VERY secure. If it was broken, then many other services (not related to bitcoin) will also break.

the only way is by dumping them before the bug occur, or if you can catch the news about it, you just dump your stash, but if then bitcoin recover you might lose more in the end...

better to dump for fiat in that case, or a better coin than litecoin....


are you sure, we are talking about this

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident

Thanks, no one explicitly mentioned this in this thread.

A similar incident happened in 2013 but Bitcoin has survived: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki

If fork like this happens again in the future, care should be taken to ensure all legitimate transactions in the buggy chain are moved to the repaired chain.

I think bitcoin is relatively safe money, many peoples want hack it but like you see nothing really happens.

Would this be possible, without the consent of people who had sent money in the buggy chain? They would of course have a financial incentive to NOT have the transactions moved.

You only need miners' consent

Good point, I did not realise this. I suppose it would be a bit like a 51% attack but for good reasons.

Trading them via exchanges.  Like if the 20mb block hard fork does happen as planned, I might hold some LTC.

http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/fighting/setting-himself-on-fire.gif

Bitcoin and Litecoin use the same private keys.

See www.Buttcoins.com to how one private key has different "sister" addresses.

If the 20mb fork happens LTC is for sure going to follow it eventually.

Best to just stick in cash or on real bitcoin.

Eventually, but let's see how it all pans out for BTC first.

I don't think BTC was ever hacked and The MT.Gox incident was just like changing hand. The BTC is still in the market and someone out there is using them. I hope new users take lessons from the incident and take precautions.

i dont think that will be possible. not in my opinion. gox bot was a blessing in disguise

Bitcoin would easily recover from a problem like that.  90bn new coins would completely destroy faith in the system, so everybody would move to a new chain that doesn't include that transaction, and since the longest chain is the valid chain, that transaction would disappear from history as it if never happened.  Not only that, it would be happen and be fixed in less than 50 blocks almost certainly.  It would be noticed right away, everybody would freak out, move to a new chain, and then things would settle down after the new chain became longer than the 90bn chain.  And within a day a patched client would come out.  The price would take a huge hit because of the ensuing panic and craziness, but within a few days things would be back to normal and it would just be another fun story in the crazy history of bitcoin.

I think that any event at this point be it a hack of bitcoin or an exchange would be very bad.  Coin already has a sketchy reputation at this point because of silk road and mt gox.  Another major incident, or at least an incident that was reported on the news as major, would be very bad right now.  I believe most would flee the currency and never come back.