Bitcoin was created to overcome the problems of traditional money. Problems like inflation, government centralization, bank monopolies, and capitalism caused the 2008 financial and housing market crash. Bitcoin seemed like a cure for all of the things that were wrong with money. Fiat saw a competitor and without understanding, exploring and trying out cryptocurrency, bitcoin was a threat, but more than a threat it was food for trolls.
Although it has always been a far from perfect system, it is still some good a** legendary technology. It changed so much for the giant cartels and for the public. It gave us blockchain technology in a way that was unfathomable before.
It works in a decentralized way, this makes it different, fair, transparent and the best. A single person or company has no authority over it. While it sounds fun and perfect but, is not always so great.
Decentralized technology means that ownership is split amongst the protocol’s various stakeholders (developers, miners, and users), no one really ‘controls’ the ledger or the organization.
Bitcoin is undoubtedly the most secure cryptocurrency to date, with factors at multiple levels of the protocol often rendering sustained sophisticated attacks too expensive to pull off. However, the tight security does not mean that bitcoin is safe from outside attacks. Hence, all the news about hacking and theft, being $1.1B only in 2018 alone.
While some attacks are external, some are internal too. This means that the consensus that bitcoin runs on divides and splinters off in a fashion that is called forking.
All sorts of heavily-regulated markets are prone to manipulation at a number of levels, so it does not seem so strange for an organization with no head or structural force owning and regulating it. Funnily enough, it does not cause social havoc and anarchy, the absence of a ruler only means that the members somebody get away with greed and sometimes with arrogance.
Thus, there are too many claims of price, consensus, functionality and ownership manipulation in Bitcoin because of its relative lack of regulatory oversight.
There are many different ways to attack a currency. With cryptos, it’s not so hard because the blockchain tech can be read and algorithms can be broken, more and more hackers are taking upon themselves to challenge this tech. This means that the blockchain is only becoming more and more vulnerable with time. The attacks are saved and remembered as vectors by the hacking community. It is simple and easy for analysts, thinkers, and enthusiasts to categorize these attacks and decipher where bitcoin stands each time. These include ways like 51% attack, price manipulation, fungibility, and the Sybil attack. So, bitcoin is not untouchable. Be wary!
