Abstract
Bitcoin has a number of features and properties which are sometimes presented as interesting and positive. In fact they are closer to engineering mistakes. Serious problems are programmed in the DNA (the source code) of great majority of crypto currencies. Small details in the source code can make very big difference. In this chapter seven major ‘sins’ of Bitcoin are discussed highlighting risks and suggesting solutions.
Keywords
His blog covering crypto currency technology is blog.bettercrypto.com.
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- 1.
They explain that the exact scenario is when he "controls more than 50 % of the network’s computing power" and they make it clear it can be temporary: "for the time that he is in control". However almost to make things worse again, this official wiki at numerous places refers to another article about Bitcoin attacks written for more general audience (Perry 2012) which again claims that 51 % attacks are “so amazingly cost-prohibitive to perform”.
- 2.
This decision also has definitely infringed on the initial intentions of Satoshi explicitly stated in Sect. 6 of his paper (Nakamoto 2008) where he explains that the fact that a block provides a monetary reward for the “creator of the block” is something which "adds an incentive for nodes to support the network". This incentive is now broken.
- 3.
In contrast Satoshi have claimed that he always has such an option, in Sect. 6 of Nakamoto (2008) we read: “he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins.”
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Acknowledgments
We thank Xavier Alexandre, George Danezis, Gerald Davis, Pinar Emirdag, Michael Folkson, Clément Francomme, Pawel Krawczyk, Jean-Jacques Quisquater, Guangyan Song, Tim Swanson and John Shawe-Taylor for their extremely helpful suggestions, observations and comments.
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Courtois, N.T. (2016). Features or Bugs: The Seven Sins of Current Bitcoin. In: Tasca, P., Aste, T., Pelizzon, L., Perony, N. (eds) Banking Beyond Banks and Money. New Economic Windows. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42448-4_6
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