Why did Bitcoin do so well in 2016?
#1) The digital coin’s 79% gain four times that of real, ruble
#2) Capital controls, slowing supply growth are boosting demand
If you want the whole story on why Bitcoin has just outperformed every other currency in the world, check out the full article on Bloomberg: Markets.
In my opinion Bitcoin will fail. Can you trust a currency that is reliant on vulnerable technology?? With the creation of a number of new competing cryptocurrencies being developed and eventually diluting the market. If a cyber attack occurred would your Bitcoin be safe. Would you intrust thousands of dollars to the system? How long before Government infiltrate this technology and causes it to fail? Why would Government do that? Because central banks will not tolerate a currency that they do not have complete control over, thats why. If they cause a failure in the system, then people will lose confidence in them, unless of course the federal government comes to the rescue and offers to insure the currency FDICA baby. Look what they did to Precious metals. The feds found a way to manipulate it and fix it. The banks simply print and sell enough paper contracts to dilute the market. Some say that there are up to 200 hundred paper contracts per ounce of gold. The silver and gold markets are easily moved by the simple push of a computer key. They must regulate it in order to keep the value of the dollar intact. The same is true with cryto. If they let the market run, paper currencies would diminish in value. Is it possible that the cryptocurrency was ordained by the central banks as a trail to see if people would buy into this type of monetary system? But for now enjoy the wealth it has created, just don't think they will let the party continue.
I agree that the central banks will use their govt. minions to draft laws that will probably try to co-opt, limit, and otherwise control crypto-currencies. That being said, the whole point of cryptos IS the fact that it's - in theory - not possible for them to be manipulated. Of course, technology is always changing and odds are that someone, somewhere will be gotten to, a program or new quantum computer will be able to hack one or more of these crypto-currencies, etc. Who knows? Like a good idea who's time has come, I think they are here to stay - as long as there's the internet.
These are words of Konstantinos Karagiannis
CTO, Security Consulting, Americas, BT.
But is it safe?
My RSA 2017 talk, “Hacking Blockchain”, includes a fair amount of time explaining historic and current attacks faced by all implementations of the technology. A lot of these attacks are old school, focusing on supporting technology and not on the blockchain itself.
Consider attacks against credentials used at an online cryptocurrency exchange. Such exchanges act as hot wallets, or storage of funds available for transacting online at any time. Traditional authentication hacking of these sites can lead to illegal transactions. Some attacks are even more creative, such as the ability to force a cold or offline wallet to become hot and therefore a target for fraudulent transactions.
The major issue I cover, though, is the inherent flaw on page one of Satoshi’s paper. That elegant if pesky line about “computationally impractical to reverse” transactions. You see, the crypto behind cryptocurrency is actually public key. We are likely less than three years away from this being completely hackable by a quantum computer.
Facing reality.
Fantasy? Hardly. Labs around the world have already proven that quantum computers can run Shor’s Algorithm and almost instantly find the private key of a public key pair even 4,096 bits long. Because of how public key works in most blockchain implementations, including Bitcoin, this would mean any time a transaction occurs, a quantum computer has everything it needs to obtain a user’s private key. Spend a single cryptocoin, and any entity with a quantum computer can download that currency’s blockchain, see your transaction, and in a few moments spend the rest of your funds.
The threat seems even worse if you consider blockchains designed to prove ownership of land or other critical identity-related transactions. A private key attack here can lead to an irreversible type of identity theft, at least within that blockchain ecosystem.
The NSA has already warned against the use of non-quantum-safe encryption. Its’ time to realise we may be rushing towards putting everything on a digital house of cards rather than an unbreakable chain. Let’s fix blockchain’s inherent flaws now, before it’s too late.
If you want to see our Blockchain demo in person, why not visit Innovation 2017, our technology and innovation exhibition taking place in June.
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