Why Bitcoin's Anonymity Could Soon Collapse Like A House of Cards
— Bitcoin address, Anonymize, Mysterious founder, Researchers say, Bank accounts, Protected, Single agent — 1 min read
Bitcoin was particularly vulnerable to a kind of exploit called a “51 per cent attack’, which allows individuals or groups working together to spend the same Bitcoins repeatedly. The researchers say these early Bitcoin users had numerous opportunities to game the system and yet they stuck to the rules allowing Bitcoin to emerge as the decentralized currency it is today. The structure of the Bitcoin Network that emerged from this process has unexpectedly made Bitcoin vulnerable to the kind of attack that could de-anonymize almost any of its users. Bitcoin is a digital currency in which transactions are continually recorded this list encrypted so it cannot easily be changed. But at the beginning of Bitcoin’s emergence, when there were only a few users, it would have been trivial to coordinate. Source