Thirteen years after the appearance of the Bitcoin white paper, its technology seems more invulnerable. Hacking Bitcoin could take 30,000 years or a cost of USD 2.2 million per hour.
The Bitcoin white paper teaches how difficult it would be to scam the network still valid thirteen years after its appearance. Besides, the network of Bitcoin miners grows every day, which makes the simple idea of hacking the system increasingly absurd.
Satoshi Nakamoto did not rule out the possibility of attackers wanting to scam the system. He stated that there is always someone greedy who wants most of the cake.
In 2009, when Bitcoin was only worth a few pennies, the network only connected a handful of computers. When the Bitcoin consensus rules were in the writing process, a computer sneeze from a hacker could have caused problems.
However, those rules contributed to making people use their effort and computers to achieve a common goal. The Bitcoin network has become more secure as its cryptocurrency has increased in value.
Rules of the Bitcoin Game Shatter the Hopes of Attackers
A scam or a transaction exchange would not allow a greedy hacker to make more money than honestly mining Bitcoin. It would be too costly – USD 2.2 million per hour – to secretly remake the blockchain through proof of work (PoW).
The cybercriminal would need many computers or Bitcoin mining devices to fool most miners working on the network. For example, the attacker would have to resort to a 51% attack to censor others’ transactions or reverse his transactions, thus creating double spending.
The Odds Are Against a Hack on Bitcoin
The growth in the block history above the transactions hackers want to modify reduces the chances of cheating the network of miners. Furthermore, a hacker could only change his latest operations secretly. The other nodes would never accept a history of new transactions not matching the one in his record.
That is so unlikely that Satoshi Nakamoto compared that delusional expectation to the statistical concept of gambler’s ruin. Someone who persists in playing a game with a deficit will eventually go broke even though he has unlimited credit.
Regardless of how hard a cybercriminal tries, the chances of succeeding using the Bitcoin software are slim. He will unlikely manage to secretly replicate a blockchain and replace it with a public one.
The Bitcoin white paper mathematically demonstrates the progressively declining fortune of those attempting to hack Bitcoin. In other words, the document that Satoshi Nakamoto wrote shows no compassion for anyone, without exception.
Nothing Is Random on the Bitcoin Network
Some hypothetical conditions might not fall into the definition of hacking. However, Bitcoin is prepared to prevent someone from trying to take advantage of it. For example, if two miners add blocks to the chain with identical transactions, those spread in a shorter time will be the only valid ones.
Most nodes would start to discard repeated transactions before mining the next block. Bitcoin chooses the longest chain or the one with the most proof of work as the true one, thus avoiding any double spending.
Each hacking attempt has a high economic cost, many odds against them, and complex cryptographic processes. Those factors, among others, should serve to deter hackers, as the rigorous Bitcoin white paper indicates.
By Alexander Salazar
