Cryptocurrency is for the money what the Internet is for information. It is a powerful and powerful technology that can change the world. It is an evolutionary tool in the sense that it is already advancing humanity. Crypto will help people eliminate banks, governments and other organizations with unique points of failure. However, visionaries, entrepreneurs and iconoclasts can not be distracted by the usefulness of this tool. You can not get carried away by the hype because the cryptocurrencies are not invulnerable. In a sense, Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was corrupted during a hacking maneuver, indicating that these tools are not insensitive to attack.
THEINFILTRATION AND SUBVERSION OF BITCOIN
It is true that the technology that allows Bitcoin to work - the chain of blocks - is anti-brittle and resistant, but still has an Achilles tendon. There is at least one attack vector that can damage Bitcoin. In fact, when someone creates an allegedly impregnable technology, he almost invites people to launch attacks against him.
However, the exploiters of exploited weaknesses were not based on code or math. Instead, the attackers focused on a vulnerable aspect of technology: the community.
The attackers infiltrated the community and compromised Bitcoin to change the original purpose of the cryptocurrency. They changed the bitcoin of a threatening and extremely efficient peer-to-peer payment system into a less frightening, slower and heavier cryptocurrency. Now it is called "Bitcoin Core" or "Segwit Coin", instead of the incredible invention of Satoshi Nakamoto, "Bitcoin".
The attack happened almost imperceptibly, a little slowly, pushed back. The attack was so successful that many people do not believe Bitcoin was attacked. This is because the psychology of the community has been distorted in this process.
The large-scale debate
It all started with a debate about the development of bitcoins. Between 2014 and 2015 there was a lively discussion about how Bitcoin can be transmitted to the masses.
The escalation debate has been mainly on Reddit and bitcointalk.org, as these sites are the ones the community meets on a regular basis to discuss issues within the ecosystem. Shortly after the debates began, people seemed to join Core's development team, as did Blockstream, supporting the idea that Bitcoin could not evolve by increasing the size of the block.
Cryptocurrency Prey Falls Prey on a 51% attack. Key spokespeople said that Bitcoin could never reach the level of performance through Visa and MasterCard networks by expanding the channel. For Bitcoin to achieve this growth, second layer solutions must be implemented. This would be done by adding a protocol called segwit. This would solve the problem of malleability of transactions and add second layer protocols.
Kernel argues vehemently against an increase in block size. They said it's not a solution that allows for exponential growth. This would also lead to greater centralization of mining in Bitcoin, resulting in a 51% attack.
For anyone who is paying attention, these arguments would have seemed odd since Bitcoin wanted to expand the chain. It is true that there was a block size limit of 1 MB, but this strict limit was only implemented to prevent spam from the network. The strict limit is expected to increase as the network expands.
The fear of centralization is also wrong. Bitcoin can arise in a chain without too much centralization as technology grows exponentially. This is reflected in both Moore's Law and the Law of Accelerating Return, as Ray Kurzweil has shown. In this sense, the technology would keep up with the growth of bitcoins to avoid the possibility of greater centralization.
