The inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents

[nancylebov]

Edited to add: So much for my beautiful observation. Charlie says quite plausibly that he thought security issues were too obvious to be worth mentioning.

A serious security breach was recently discovered at a bitcoin repository, and Charles Stross, who hates bitcoin engaged in some schadenfreude.

The schadenfreude link has an explanation of what it takes to do security programming for institutions that handle money-- something Charlie did for years. It's *hard*, even with the resources of a large organization.

He's entitled to gloat about the current mess, but since I'm not as convinced as he is that governments should be able to keep track of the whole economy, I remembered he'd been downright nasty about bitcoins, but I didn't think he'd mentioned anything about security problems. He hadn't.

Prediction is difficult, especially about the future, but this is an interesting case because Charlie is very smart, has spent a lot of time thinking about what's likely to happen, was looking for reasons to hate bitcoin, and had specific experience which would have given him another reason to hate bitcoin.... and he still didn't see the security problems coming. Alternate theory-- he did see the security problems, and didn't want to give a warning. I have no idea whether he's that sneaky.

I'm going with the honest mistake theory, and trying to figure out if there are ways to find out whether you've missed something important.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Other possibilities: (1) You can't write down and publish everything you think of. (2) He had suspicions, but nothing concrete enough to commit. When you're an expert on something, you're often more careful about what you say publicly.

I don't think much of Stross's politics, but I have huge respect for his knowledge of computers. I've had the general concern that there could be hidden weaknesses in Bitcoin and there are large financial incentives to find and exploit them, but I hadn't said anything public about them either. Computer security is part of my professional expertise too, so I want to think carefully before saying too much.

Most people can snark politically without loss to their professional reputation.

[mishalak]

I think that while the purpose of Bitcoin and other electronic currencies is to try to end government control of the economy I doubt there is now or will ever be a real danger of it happening because of the professionalism gap.

Un-managed currency equivalents are vulnerable to problems precisely because they do not have professional economists/bankers managing the money supply's relationship to economic activity or to reassure hurt participants. This is not to say that government backed currencies are invulnerable or perfect, but they are superior. And this is precisely why most criminal transactions take place in some form of exchange of physical currency since it allows the gray or black markets to piggyback upon the management of government control.

There are good reasons besides governments being selfish and/or controlling that private banknotes went away. It would be extraordinarily hard for any private business/foundation without some sort of force or coercion power to be in the currency business for longer than a few decades. Which is fine if you are in at the beginning and get out before the end, but that is like trying to time the stock market.