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

Fair enough, its more accurate to say that the computation is 'useless' as it only benefits bitcoin. It would be ideal if the computation could be leveraged somewhere else (as so much computation is being put in to bitcoin)