>>965702
>Yea but the reality is killing it: ever-higher transaction costs, and no legal protection in the event of fraud/hacking.
I totally agree. I think that Bitcoin's biggest problem is that it was the first cryptocurrency. While it serves as a nice proof of concept, it has out lived its usefulness. There are already pleanty of other cryptocurrencies that are probably better designed than Bitcoin. The issue is that these will never take off since Bitcoin is the name everyone knows.
>I will bet that some years down the road, it will be revealed by a former-govt-spook that bitcoin (and others similar) were heavily infiltrated from very early on, and were not secure or un-traceable.
Bitcoin is, by design, traceable. Anyone with a full copy of the block chain can determine how much BTC every address has, and how they got it. The trick is to figure out who controls each address.
As for Bitcoin being un-secure, here's a little math:
>Bitcoin's current hash rate is about 50 exahashes per second. [1]
>The Dragonmint 16T ASIC miner can do 16 terahashes per second. A single unit costs $2,844.00. [2]
>That means that it would take 3 million units, or about $9 billion to match the current hash rate.
>If one organization can control >50% of the network's processing power, then they can control the network. [3]
>In 2013, the U.S.'s black budget was $52.6 billion. [4]
Citations:
1. https://bitinfocharts.com/ (https://archive.fo/Dvcmf)
2. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/hardware/dragonmint-16t/ (https://archive.fo/iCcFh)
3. https://bitcoin.org/en/glossary/51-percent-attack (https://archive.fo/UsJ8B)
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/black-budget/ (https://archive.fo/Wi4Vp)