2013-03-11 Arstechnica: Major glitch in Bitcoin network sparks sell-off

[bbit]

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/major-glitch-in-bitcoin-network-sparks-sell-off-price-temporarily-falls-23/

[nevafuse]

Kinda surprised this is the only article on this.

[Technomage]

Kinda surprised this is the only article on this.

It was also on Slashdot. But that's pretty much it, I think.

[meanig]

The fork is kind of difficult to explain so I'd expect most journalists to steer clear of it.

[Gabi]

Nah they will say that bitcoin crashed and is bugged.

Incoming cheap coins 

[thefiniteidea]

Press generally likes to get on board when dealing with a massive rise or fall in the exchange rate... which this event barely affected... Note the title of this article lol... Its almost as if they need that excuse to write about Bitcoin and have it be interesting to the public.

No effect on exchange rate? Blaahh who cares!? as if nothing happened...

I agree, definitely a good thing!

[beckspace]

Kinda surprised this is the only article on this.

It was also on Slashdot. But that's pretty much it, I think.

No press because the glitch was resolved too fast. 

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

Comments on article aren't too bad.

BTW any idiots who criticize Bitcoin over the possibility of a fork, advise them that there are frequent forks in paper currency, several of which I've suffered through myself.  Some years ago i travelled to the UK with leftover pound notes from a prior trip, only for the notes to be refused on arrival, apparently there had been a design change in the interim.  I was told that, perhaps, at the Central Bank offices I might have a chance of redeeming the notes, but it was the weekend and I desperately needed cash to pay for taxis and other incidentals.  Finally I found a small exchanger who agreed to take the notes at a 25% discount.

And of course the Eurozone underwent a currency fork in 2000.  If you find Liras or Drachmas or Deutschemarks in your couch cushions, you're effectively on the wrong chain and totally screwed.

To its credit, he USA is one of the few currencies that has never broken legal tender status of obsoleted notes.  Although of course they arbitrarily ceased note redemption in gold in 1933 and 1971.

Given overall paper currency history, I'd trust any Bitcoins acquired today much more than any government-issued notes wrt. potential reedemability 50 years from now.

[nevafuse]

From what I read sounds like we are not only now limited to 1MB, but also 1700 transactions per block.  At least with the 1MB limit, I felt like we had some time, but the 1700 limit was hit last night without even trying.  

I'm definitely surprised how many people upgraded to 0.8 already.  I figured most people were at least a couple releases behind in case of unknown bugs.  There seemed to be a lot more lobbying for this release than previous releases because of the SPV functionality that was added.  I don't believe this fork was intentional, but definitely goes to show how easy it could be for someone to sneak something malicious in.

[grondilu]

I'm definitely surprised how many people upgraded to 0.8 already.

I was naive enough to think this had been tested thoroughly.   Why wasn't this released as 0.7.99 or something?  It was clearly not ready for such an even version number.

[justusranvier]

I was naive enough to think this had been tested thoroughly.   Why wasn't this released as 0.7.99 or something?  It was clearly not ready for such an even version number.

The 0.7 series was the one that needed more testing. It wasn't ready to handle all types of valid blocks.

[Gabi]

I'm definitely surprised how many people upgraded to 0.8 already.

I was naive enough to think this had been tested thoroughly.   Why wasn't this released as 0.7.99 or something?  It was clearly not ready for such an even version number.

Do you know that the bug was not in 0.8?  problem was with 0.7, not 0.8