Having spent years in the software and data industry, I’m aware of how imperfect software is. Heck, any casual user of software has likely had that realization.
Hence, it’s not much of a stretch to state that I don’t think we’ve seen the end of security vulnerabilities in cryptocurrencies. And as highlighted in this article, Bitcoin Dev Finds Potentially Crippling Security Flaw In Bitcoin Cash, some issues are still being discovered in mid-2018 that are remarkably serious.
But let’s not lose sight that as fraudsters use bitcoin to carry out their scams, businesses and innovators are turning to the blockchain as a potential fraud-fighting technology.
This next post goes over the security issues in more detail, albeit at a level for non developers. How Secure Is Blockchain Really? The post goes over some of the creative ways cheaters operate.
Regardless, in time, security holes will be filled.
But how soon and at what cost is a question without an answer.
As noted in the last article, “One supposed security guarantee of a blockchain system is ‘decentralization.’ If copies of the blockchain are kept on a large and widely distributed network of nodes, there’s no one weak point to attack, and it’s hard for anyone to build up enough computing power to subvert the network.” And yet some entities have developed influence over a large percentage of the network.
This, too, will change over time. I wouldn’t be overly sanguine about the current state of cryptocurrency, but the incentive to solve these issues is strong enough that the necessary resources to do just that will manifest.
The potential for blockchain and cryptocurrency is so promising that it will drive development further and as more breaking points surface, more will be fixed.