Economic effects of bitcoins

[Gohs]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

[Barnabe]

This could be possible, but if no one has done it until now, there is little chance they manage to do it in a few years. As bitcoin becomes more and more popular, industries will use it too. But if they have to trust bitcoin, they will probably pay a lot of money to review all the code (to see if their investment is safe).

But if someone cracks it anyway, we should expect a rollback.

[jak3]

that is possible and not only with bitfleinex we have seen many incidents like mtgox or other bubbles. if something like that happens which op is saying then i think we will be dommed but not really there are many smart people in bitcoin world who do not put their money without researching

[European Central Bank]

the genius would no longer be a genius because he would instantly make bitcoin worthless. we'd probably undergo the hard fork from hell and turn his theft to dust. after that there wouldn't be any faith left and people would move on to something else.

but the world's not taking bitcoin to its heart until all the vulnerabilities and amateurishness are taken care of. how it is at present ain't acceptable.

[lionheart78]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

It is very possible that a genius may hack majority of bitcoin.  But that act alon will make all his effort in vain in hacking the majority of bitcoin.  Reason is that, bitcoin will automatically fall in price until to the point of being worthles.  Support will be taken away because it shows that bitcoin is a failure.

[pitham1]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

If the whole world adopts it, the distribution would be much wider than what we have.
It is unlikely that any one point of failure would result in such large amounts of bitcoin getting stolen.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

It is very possible that a genius may hack majority of bitcoin.  But that act alon will make all his effort in vain in hacking the majority of bitcoin.  Reason is that, bitcoin will automatically fall in price until to the point of being worthles.  Support will be taken away because it shows that bitcoin is a failure.

Yes but you know there are hackers that would do it anyway.   And not only that, there are probably hackers who would send the coins to a burn address just for the sheer pleasure of destroying something of such value.

[Samadur]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

It is very possible that a genius may hack majority of bitcoin.  But that act alon will make all his effort in vain in hacking the majority of bitcoin.  Reason is that, bitcoin will automatically fall in price until to the point of being worthles.  Support will be taken away because it shows that bitcoin is a failure.

Yes but you know there are hackers that would do it anyway.   And not only that, there are probably hackers who would send the coins to a burn address just for the sheer pleasure of destroying something of such value.

Unfortunately big minus in Bitcoin - is security. No one can know what will happen tomorrow with his wallet. Everyone knows that risk

[raja2sumi]

Yahh that could be possible .but i think by that time when the 20 million bitcoins have been mined then the security would increase a lot and our government would give a tight security to make not that happen.

[Wind_FURY]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

This is maybe the dumbest question ever to be asked in this forum, or one of the dumbest. But to answer your question it will all go down. By all I mean all of the Bitcoin based industries that were created around and on top of it. That hacker would have been richer if he stole fiat and invested them in Bitcoins.

[rahmat92]

Impact or effects of bitcoin on the economy I think it is good because the value of the virtual currency does not affect the exchange rate of ordinary currency so that more and more people who have bitcoin will be better in a country's economy

[Icculus.]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

Bitcoin would become worthless. Bitcoin is nothing without demand...just like every other currency. There's nothing tangible about it. It only has value if a community of people agrees that it does, it's thoroughly based on trust.

The world would decide on some other currency to use to conduct business - likely one of the other 100+ alt coins in existence!

What's worse is during a time of calamity. Say there's a major world war, internet goes down, power outages, something significant...it would have a huge impact on access to the blockchain, miners, prices, demand.

[zulkarnaen]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

Bitcoin would become worthless. Bitcoin is nothing without demand...just like every other currency. There's nothing tangible about it. It only has value if a community of people agrees that it does, it's thoroughly based on trust.

The world would decide on some other currency to use to conduct business - likely one of the other 100+ alt coins in existence!

What's worse is during a time of calamity. Say there's a major world war, internet goes down, power outages, something significant...it would have a huge impact on access to the blockchain, miners, prices, demand.

I have the same opinion with you, although existence of bitcoin certainly has a good contribution to economy of a country, but of course many factors are always a consideration for each country to accept bitcoin and recognize its legality, including transaction that always uses internet connection as well Transaction costs Also a constraint even today transaction process becomes an obstacle for users to perform transaction activities that seem slow.

[andrei56]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

A genius will not be able to do this, it will need be someone with access to technology we do not know yet, so either the governments will be behind this or aliens, governments could try to do this but aliens have better things to do than to worry about that.

[uneng]

I was just thinking that since Bitcoins is 100% on the internet, what would happen if the whole world adopts it and 20M bitcoins gets stolen by a genius similar to what happened to Bitfinex?

A genius will not be able to do this, it will need be someone with access to technology we do not know yet, so either the governments will be behind this or aliens, governments could try to do this but aliens have better things to do than to worry about that.

That is the point, a technology we don't know yet, because with the technology there is in the world today it's impossible to steal all the bitcoins. Who could do it isn't a genius, just someone very evil, because he would kill the bitcoin market.
It would be the end of bitcoin, the price would decrease, killing the currency instantly. Not good for the genius and not good for anyone.

[Amph]

first of all not all the 20 million coins are on exchange, also they are not on a single exchange anyway, so what you are talking about it's an impossible scenario

this ginius at best can stole 20k-100k like happened on some exchange in the past, and the price hardly crashed back then

[Fappanu]

Yahh that could be possible .but i think by that time when the 20 million bitcoins have been mined then the security would increase a lot and our government would give a tight security to make not that happen.

Well i wish our government will be forever hands off in bitcoin 'coz if they'll do or they will have a interest in bitcoin community they will manipulate us. Too many greedy and corrupt officials 
But bitcoin for sure will not be hack by others because of its unique features and also the block chain. It's not beknownst to us.

[Hydrogen]

It is possible for someone to crack the private keys to all 20 million bitcoins.

The nature of cryptography doesn't make this impossible.

It only makes it unfeasible in terms of time consumption.

You can crack all 20 million coins, but it will take you 10,000+ years to do it.

[equator]

What ever OP wanted to do for hacking but one thing he is forgetting is that out of 20 million coins some more then 10% of the coins are in dead wallet which are lost the keys by their owner so they are dead and balance are in split so what ever illusion he wants he can make it.

[Yuhee]

What ever OP wanted to do for hacking but one thing he is forgetting is that out of 20 million coins some more then 10% of the coins are in dead wallet which are lost the keys by their owner so they are dead and balance are in split so what ever illusion he wants he can make it.

I think the issue is not the dead wallets but those blocks that are still in the net. The cryptogram that was used in btc has a millions of combinations of numbers so i doubt if anyone could hack that. This is the new era and if there was hacker with that kind of knowledge then this should blocks should be hacked by now. I mean 6 years have passed and still no hacking on the blocks has had happened. So for me, it is too far in the future could the blocks be hacked.