8 ms·
part of the reason is that bit coin does not depend on any banks if you have 100 btc in an offline wallet, you will still have it tomorrow, despite whatever bu
by hayksaakian 13y ago
part of the reason is that bit coin does not depend on any banks
if you have 100 btc in an offline wallet, you will still have it tomorrow, despite whatever bugs/attacks hit the exchanges.
imagine if your bank was hacked, many people would literally be removed of their money.
With cryptocoins, you have the advantages of keeping dollars under your mattress while still bring able to spend them anywhere that accepts them.
- akkartik 13y agoIs that really true? Could a botnet not conceivably make transactions out of your wallet? Doesn't the distributed ledger have tentacles reaching under your mattress?
- mrkickling 13y agohttp://learncryptography.com/51-attack/ http://learncryptography.com/51-attack/ I guess it would be possible.
- SomeoneWeird 13y agoNo, even if you successfully achieve a 51% attack, you can't spend coins from arbitrary wallets.
- mrkickling 13y agoWell, you could control the blockchain, wouldn't that include spending coins from any wallet?
- maxerickson 13y agoNo. Transactions have to be signed by a private key matching the from address. The double spend attack works by convincing the other party that the transaction has completed (so they release whatever escrow is in place) and then replacing the blockchain. (But a botnet infection could watch for wallets on a computer and cause the coins in the wallet to be spent)
- SolarNet 13y agoNo. The wallets are protected with public/private key cryptography. Controlling the block-chain simply lets you control whose transactions get processed, and hence potentially allow someone to attempt to double spend their money. You could also prevent other people from spending their money entirely.
- eatitraw 13y agoYou don't "control" the blockchain in the strict sense. To generate a transaction from one address to another, you must know the private key corresponding to the sender's address. Without that, the transaction is invalid, and no sane node will accept block containing such transaction. When you have 51% of mining power, you can do a lot of nasty things(like stopping confirming transaction at all), but not spend someone else's bitcoins.
- ye 13y agoNo, a botnet can't ever achieve 51%. One modern ASIC rig is equivalent to a few thousand average CPU+GPU computers that make up a botnet.
- VMG 13y agoA valid digital signature gives a recipient reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender, such that the sender cannot deny having sent the message (authentication and non-repudiation) and that the message was not altered in transit (integrity). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature The purpose of the blockchain is to establish an ordered sequence of transactions.
- lmm 13y agoSure, but no-one calculates digital signatures in their head. Your bitcoins are worthless without computer systems, and those computer systems are the subject of attack by thieves.
- VMG 13y agoSure, but this attack is not about that. This is a DDOS attack on the integrity on the distributed database, which is very bad, but not able to spend Bitcoin that isn't yours.
- mrkickling 13y agoIn what way is that different from fiat money? You can keep fiat money in your mattress and spend it anywhere that accepts them. If you have $100 in a mattress (offline) then you would still have it tomorrow. The problem is that the moneys value may change tomorrow, especially if we are talking about bitcoin.
- kordless 13y agoYou can't secure cash under your mattress with a password, for one thing. That makes cash (and paper wallets) venerable to physical attack, even by vermin: http://metro.co.uk/2007/03/27/mouse-eats-cash-machine-makes-nest-203417/ http://metro.co.uk/2007/03/27/mouse-eats-cash-machine-makes-... There is no problem with value changing tomorrow as this is a potential problem with any new payment methodologies. Adoption does not appear magically overnight. The US Dollar is velocity stable due to its wide spread use and being propped up by the equivalent of a bunch of duct tape and bailing wire.
- anigbrowl 13y agoThere are these things called safes...
- branchan 13y agoAre you going to put the safe under your mattress? Or do you think a secure encrypted and password protected wallet stored on a tiny USB drive or SD card might be more secure?
- kordless 13y agoUSB drives have the advantage of small. There's literally a hundred places I could hide one in my house. Hell, I could hide 20 fake ones haphazardly and one legit one really well. The chances of everyone doing this and being comfortable with it is pretty low though. We need brain storage medium.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Canada 13y ago> imagine if your bank was hacked, many people would literally be removed of their money. Are you sure about that? For the most part those transactions would simply be reversed. Bitcoin exchanges seem a lot more exposed to computer security breaches to me. > With cryptocoins, you have the advantages of keeping dollars under your mattress while still bring able to spend them anywhere that accepts them. Paper currency is a bearer instrument. It can be used for offline payments. Cryptocoin can't be. Both parties need to be connected to the rest of the coin network so the transfer can confirmed by other nodes. Not to say that cryptocoins have no under-the-matress advantages. They are a lot easier to hide than cash and you can make backup copies of them, which obviously can't be done with cash.