
Bitcoin under pressure - damian2000
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590766-virtual-currency-it-mathematically-elegant-increasingly-popular-and-highly
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dangero
_The system is now straining at the seams. Its computational underpinnings
have collectively reached 100 times the performance of the world’s top 500
supercomputers combined: more than 50,000 petaflops. Bitcoin’s success has
revealed three weaknesses in particular. It is not as secure and anonymous as
it seems; the “mining” system that both increases the Bitcoin supply and
ensures the integrity of the currency has led to an unsustainable
computational arms-race; and the distributed-ledger system is becoming
unwieldy. Will Bitcoin’s self-correcting mechanisms, and the enlightened self-
interest of its users, be able to address these weaknesses and keep Bitcoin on
the rails?_

And this is how you spread misinformation and create fear. Bitcoin certainly
has its risks, but either the author is fear mongering, or really does not get
it.

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mpg33
He doesn't back up these statements with any evidence...

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influx
I agree with you, but to be fair you don't provide any to refute it.

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trafficlight
Those who make the claims are obligated to support it.

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iLoch
> Rather than relying on confidence in a central authority, it depends instead
> on a distributed system of trust

Isn't it built on a distributed system of _lack of trust_? That is, after all,
why it is distributed.

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dpedu
I would say the "trust" is in that the majority of the network is sane.

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dpedu
> Every participant in the system must keep a copy of the block chain, which
> now exceeds 11 gigabytes in size and continues to grow steadily. This alone
> deters casual use.

Is 11GB really that much? Downloadable video games and movies easily top this
size, and it's not at all uncommon for a person to "have" several pieces of
similar media.

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boon
This piece was clearly not written out fear from misunderstanding the
technicals of Bitcoin, which is forgivable to some degree. It was written out
of fear of something uncontrollable and different.

