2013-06-07 Network World: 10 facts about Bitcoin

[austins]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/060713-bitcoin-facts-270605.html

In June 2011, one user in the Bitcoin forum claimed that 25,000 Bitcoins, the equivalent of $375,000, was stolen from his wallet.
Although that was difficult to confirm, it wasn’t an isolated incident. Just a few days after that reported theft, Mt. Gox, the exchange where users can buy and sell Bitcoins for U.S. dollars, leaked 60,000 user names, password hashes and email addresses. Mt. Gox later reversed the trades and fixed the problem, but the leak led to the theft of Bitcoins from about 600 users who used the same user names and passwords for their MyBitcoin accounts. One user reported losing more than 2,000 Bitcoins.

In March 2012, a security breach at a web hosting company would lead to the theft of 50,000 Bitcoins, the largest in the currency’s history.

[ashaw596]

lol. You beat me to it. I was about to post that link. Its an interesting article that spells out the weaknesses of bitcoin pretty well.

[TraderTimm]

lol. You beat me to it. I was about to post that link. Its an interesting article that spells out the weaknesses of bitcoin pretty well.

More like the weaknesses of the human element and bad development decisions when crafting a website. The distinction is important.

[odolvlobo]

9. Bitcoin thefts have occurred, sometimes in large quantities.

Dollar thefts occur all the time, and sometimes in large quantities. Does that make the dollar scary?

8. Old wallets, and their contents, can be retrieved pretty easily.

This is simply false. The problem is that someone can still steal some of your money after you change password -- if they can obtain the old password and they can access a backup of your wallet using the old password. Neither of those are "pretty easy".

2. If Bitcoin fails, it has no safety net.

... If the dollar falls, the Fed will jump in."

That is laughable statement. The dollar has fallen 32% against the euro in the last 10 years. Where is the Fed? Why hasn't it jumped in?