DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Bitcoin: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cryptocurrency

**Adfcvkdg** · 09-06-2012, 06:09 AM

I would dispute whether there are counter-parties to bitcoin. If I recall, a bitcoin is said to be in one's possession only because other users recognise it as so. What has occurred is therefore a distribution of counter-party risk and the added element of algorithm risk.

This is why the distribution of network nodes is important. If a single (or colluding) entity(s) were to obtain over half of the hashrate of the entire network, then they could refuse to process certain transactions, which would obviously not be very good, but they could not steal the coins held by others because they would still lack the private keys.
To help put it in perspective, even if one had control of the hashing power of the entire bitcoin network, which, to my knowledge, is by far the greatest known network of such a hashrate, then it would take about 10 billion years to crack one single bitcoin address/private key.

The other users recognize it as so because only the holder of a private cryptographic key can use that key to sign a message which demonstrates control over said key and the value associated with it, determined by the chain of transactions known as the blockchain. It is viewable here: blockchain.info

As far as algorithm risk, if the cryptography that holds bitcoin together is "cracked", then so is the cryptography of the global banking system.

09-06-2012, 06:09 AM	#4
Adfcvkdg Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 468 Senior Member	I would dispute whether there are counter-parties to bitcoin. If I recall, a bitcoin is said to be in one's possession only because other users recognise it as so. What has occurred is therefore a distribution of counter-party risk and the added element of algorithm risk. This is why the distribution of network nodes is important. If a single (or colluding) entity(s) were to obtain over half of the hashrate of the entire network, then they could refuse to process certain transactions, which would obviously not be very good, but they could not steal the coins held by others because they would still lack the private keys. To help put it in perspective, even if one had control of the hashing power of the entire bitcoin network, which, to my knowledge, is by far the greatest known network of such a hashrate, then it would take about 10 billion years to crack one single bitcoin address/private key. The other users recognize it as so because only the holder of a private cryptographic key can use that key to sign a message which demonstrates control over said key and the value associated with it, determined by the chain of transactions known as the blockchain. It is viewable here: blockchain.info As far as algorithm risk, if the cryptography that holds bitcoin together is "cracked", then so is the cryptography of the global banking system.
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