<story><title>I Tried Hacking Bitcoin and I Failed</title><url>http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-kaminsky-highlights-flaws-bitcoin-2013-4</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>clarkm</author><text>Here are the slides from a talk that Dan Kaminsky gave about Bitcoin at Toorcon Seattle a couple years ago: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/dakami/bitcoin-8776098&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slideshare.net/dakami/bitcoin-8776098&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I like his &quot;Security Inversion&quot; slide:&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; Normal Code:&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; * Looks like it might be OK up front&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; * Scratch the surface, it&apos;s actually really bad&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; Bitcoin:&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; * Looks really bad up front&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; * Scratch the surface, it&apos;s actually surprisingly good&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; * &lt;i&gt;We aren&apos;t used to systems with these characteristics&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;     * This code has the mark of having been audited by People Like Us</text></comment>
<story><title>I Tried Hacking Bitcoin and I Failed</title><url>http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-kaminsky-highlights-flaws-bitcoin-2013-4</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zeteo</author><text>&amp;#62;The cost of regulating any network actually goes up exponentially with the number of nodes that must be monitored (you need a hierarchy of systems to perform ‘guard labor’ to make sure systems are behaving within declared parameters).&lt;p&gt;This is at the core of the argument and doesn&apos;t make any sense. Worst comes to worst, the cost of monitoring all interactions between n nodes is O(n^2) even when adding monitors on top of monitors etc. The way banking is organized, it&apos;s even less. Alice doesn&apos;t transfer money directly to Bob: she talks to her bank, who talks to Bob&apos;s bank, who then talks to Bob. The banks have to monitor one-on-one interactions with their customers and the government monitors interactions between banks. This all is well within O(n), where n is the total number of customers.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not saying Bitcoin doesn&apos;t have any advantages, but easier monitoring of fraud is not one of them. How do you even know the coins were indeed stolen?</text></comment>