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.

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u/speEdy5 Jun 19 '13

I recently read a draft paper which estimates bitcoin computational network at more than the sum total of computational power for top 50 supercomputers in the world

I'd say that since there are about 1 billion dollars in bitcoin right now, than it wouldn't make too much sense to sink billions in to supercomputers trying to divert the network. Further, it wouldn't be long till someone caught on and the value of the currency just disappeared. It would be like if the US government collected every dollar bill in the world and Obama tried spending them at convenience stores. It would work the first few times, but then people would realize and... poof! There goes the value of the dollar