To Double Spend or not to Double Spend...

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Bitcoin markets were rocked this morning by some major news outlets claiming a Double-Spend in Bitcoin had occurred...

If you are reading this, there is probably no need to tell you that if true, that would be extremely bad for bitcoin.

Extremely bad probably isn't even a strong enough statement, it would probably be the end of bitcoin.

That would undermine the very foundation that bitcoin is built upon.

Something that would be extremely difficult to recover from, if ever.

The good news?

There was likely no double spend event like some are claiming...

Luckily our good friend Andreas M. Antonopoulos got ahold of Bloomberg to clear some things up on exactly what happened:

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(Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-21/why-bitcoin-double-spend-story-is-being-misinterpreted)

Unfortunately I can't get the whole story due to my free articles being up for the time being on Bloomberg, which means I'd have to pay for this one.

Sorry Bloomberg, paying for news from you guys is something I will never do out of principle.

However, we can get the info straight from the horses mouth right here...

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(Source: https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/1352258125932371968)

That twitter thread ended up being over 24 posts long, so I won't post them all here, but feel free to click on this link to see the rest:

https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/1352258125932371968

TLDR:

Adreas says there was no double spend event, but instead a chain reorganization which is a fairly normal and common event. The drop in bitcoin was caused by irresponsible reporting from Cointelegraph and others irresponsibly claiming a double spend event when there was not one.

If that is indeed the case, this is probably a very good buying opportunity for those sitting on some cash as I would expect the price to start climbing again once this FUD is officially debunked.

Stay informed my friends.

-Doc

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



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7 comments
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Wow, what a great explanation from him. It is even clear enough that I think the common reader should be able to understand it. Not that the common reader is probably following him on Twitter or anything.

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If this is indeed what happened, and I am assuming it is considering bitcoin didn't go to zero already, it's probably a good spot to buy some.

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I just grabbed about $50 worth. Most I could afford right now.

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The Bitcoin blockchain can never have a double spend, but it is possible for a service using the Bitcoin blockchain to see conflicting transactions in a fork for a short period of time. This is why exchanges and payment processors require a few confirmations (additional blocks) before they accept a transaction. It's really that simple. The only real news would be if there was a successful 51% attack against the Bitcoin network which caused a reorg of > 3 blocks, but that is very extremely unlikely.

The craziest thing to me is that numerous other smaller chains like ETC have been successfully 51% attacked on multiple occasions, effectively executing double spends on certain exchanges or services, and yet no one really seemed to care and the prices didn't move much at all IIRC. I guess that's similar to the fact that people still use Steem after it was attacked and they literally just stole the tokens from people they didn't like. People mostly don't care about any of this stuff and just want to make money.

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(Edited)

Good points. It will be interesting if there are as many headlines out there debunking the double spend rumors as there were spreading it in the first place. I am guessing not... On that note, for those looking to buy, this gave them a nice entry point.

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I am sure with Bitcoin being around this long that if this was possible it would have happened ages ago. At the end of the day, I would take Andreas side of the story over Bloomberg. Just grabbed a bit of a coin so I could get some Hive to get some LEO but unfortunately, it now seems that Hive is going up in price while Bitcoin is going down. I think I will wait until Bitcoin raises again.

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Nice. Though now it looks like HIVE has completely reversed. That was fun while it lasted!

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