No. While an individual’s private keys may be gained by a hacker, the Bitcoin network itself cannot be hacked.
Whether by an individual hacker or a nation-state of dedicated bad actors, Bitcoin cannot be hacked.
On the other hand, your laptop, phone or cloud storage that holds information such as your Bitcoin wallet’s private keys, certainly can be.
However, your personal computer used to store a set of keys and the Bitcoin network itself, are two completely separate things.
This blog aims to make an extremely clear distinction between the two and make it clear that Bitcoin cannot be hacked.
Let’s jump right into it.
An individual’s computer can be hacked
So in case there was still any doubt, it turns out that both the mainstream media and government spokesmen really don’t get Bitcoin.
Whenever someone gains access to another’s Bitcoin by simply acquiring their private keys, the headlines inevitably read Bitcoin was hacked.
When of course, all that was hacked was someone’s poorly protected, shitty laptop or 1234 cloud storage password.
And come on, we can be honest here.
If someone puts their Bitcoin private keys to a wallet worth any amount of significant money on a poorly guarded device, then they deserve what they get.
In order to protect your Bitcoin from hackers, the simple solution is to use a cold storage wallet featuring a set of private keys which was never generated online.
Protecting your Bitcoin from hackers is actually not that difficult if the individual takes the time to secure their investments.
The Bitcoin network cannot be hacked
The Bitcoin network itself, cannot be hacked.
Ah, the difference a single word makes.
As you can see, it’s extremely important to differentiate between whether a hacker can gain access to an individual’s keys and whether they can actually hack the network itself.
Bitcoin’s blockchain database is maintained by a network of interconnected computers known as nodes.
Each node on the Bitcoin network communicates with the others and therefore is able to build and maintain an always up to date version of the database.
The Bitcoin network is by far the biggest decentralised network of nodes, featuring literally hundreds of thousands of computers on the network.
With nodes running in all four corners of the globe, no single person or even country of people can claim control of the network.
It’s the network’s sheer size that makes Bitcoin unable to be stopped and completely hack resistant.
Not once in the history of the Bitcoin network has it ever been hacked, leading to its clear claim to be the most secure computer network on the planet.
If one node on the Bitcoin network becomes corrupted or even just inefficient, the network simply cuts them out and moves back to the valid version of the Bitcoin blockchain.
For more information about the technology, check out the how does Bitcoin work section of our beginner’s guide to Bitcoin.
Best of probabilities to you.
Direct from the desk of Dane Williams.
Leave a comment and share your thoughts on whether Bitcoin can be hacked, within the comments section below? Am I thinking about this the right way, or do you completely disagree?
This Bitcoin blog is exclusive to leofinance.io.