Ripple CTO David Schwartz –Hackers & Glitches Cannot Impede Bitcoin

David Schwartz, Chief Technology Officer for Ripple, states that Bitcoin is fundamentally shielded from a glitch or hacking of the system. In his Quora post, Schwartz states that miners who support the network would fix issues in any of the aforesaid cases.

In this regard, he cites the mishap in August 2010 when 184 billion worth Bitcoin was generated by a hacker by exploiting a bug in the system.

The issue was plugged by Satoshi Nakamot, creator of Bitcoin, and a soft fork was carried out to normalize things. Schwartz states that the event established a format for tackling similar problems in the future.

“The bug would be fixed or the hashing protocol would be switched to a new one and Bitcoin would continue on. This is precisely what happened during the value overflow incident of 2010 and the accidental fork crisis of 2013. There is a chance such an incident could result in the blockchain hav[ing] to be ‘rewound’ back to a point before the bug was exploited. People who relied on payments during the incident might wind up losing money because their payments might get reversed.”

In the meantime, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse raised doubts about the degree to which Communist Party of China could create issues for Bitcoin in the months ahead. While speaking to Bitcoin bull and co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital, Anthony Pompliano, queries were raised by Garlinghouse about the even spread of Bitcoin mining capacity across the globe to limit China from modifying the network as it desires.

“Four miners in China [combined] have well over 50% control… If you control a majority of the hashpower, we have seen 51% attacks on other blockchains.”

Pompliano states that he trusts China could force the shutdown of mining facilities, but does not possess the ability to force miners to alter the network. At the time of writing this article, China accounts for roughly 65% of worldwide hashrate for Bitcoin, as per Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.