http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-community-adapts-to-hackers-and-fraudsters/The Bitcoin community has adapted to verbal, criminal and cyber attacks on the currency, an academic paper due for release tomorrow, reveals.
The attacks – whether from hackers, fraudsters or government regulators – seem to be strengthening the community, the research Breaking Out of the Bank in Europe – Exploring Collective Emergent Institutional Entrepreneurship Through Bitcoin suggests.
The rise in discussion of attacks in the last two years, as well as the increasing number of start-ups like Bitpay, Coinbase and Coinsetter, have collectively increased awareness and improved technologies that prevent fraud. In other words, the community has acted to defend itself, the paper says.
Researchers studied online Bitcoin activity from Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites. They also examined 1.15m posts on Bitcointalk forums written by almost 22,000 people.
The research suggests there is evidence of the open-source Bitcoin community increasingly acting as an “institutional entrepreneur”. It also says that Bitcoin is having an impact on the behaviour of traditional banks. The paper says: “[T]here are indications that the scheme is initiating and implementing substantial changes in the financial institutions that are deeply entrenched globally.”
You can download the paper
here.
