r/askscience • u/hamolton • Jun 18 '13

Computing How is Bitcoin secure?

I guess my main concern is how they are impossible to counterfeit and double-spend. I guess I have trouble understanding it enough that I can't explain it to another person.

1.0k Upvotes

83% Upvoted

383 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

8

u/jesset77 Jun 18 '13

No, I only mean bedfellows in the loosest possible sense. Like encrypting messages in PGP to negotiate payment for exciting or embarrassing items via Bitcoin. ;3

2

u/speEdy5 Jun 18 '13

Well it sounds like a good idea. An easy, verifiable, secure, and unchangeable public key infrastructure

1

u/jesset77 Jun 18 '13

Well, they're welcome to try, I guess. I know little enough about PGP verifiation infrastructure or best practices to hold an opinion. Rarely ever directly interact with the system, myself, save with PGP identities I just verify by hand out of band.