Researchers Locate Flaw In Bitcoin Protocol

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Microsoft Research and Cornell identified a potential flaw in Bitcoin's transaction propagation. In a recent paper they show how miner nodes in the Bitcoin network have an incentive not to relay transactions to the rest of the network, and propose to implement a scheme that rewards nodes [PDF] for relaying messages."

Comments

Re:Another flaw found in Bitcoin protocol

[Bert64]

The value of a good is actually whatever a third party is willing to give you in exchange for that good... This value is completely arbitrary, and allows products with no physical value (eg software) to be sold for huge amounts of money or other goods...

Similarly, money itself has no real value, only the value that others are willing to give in exchange for it.

The advantage of bitcoin, is that while its effectively a worthless token system, just like regular cash, it is a finite supply and thus not subject to the whims of a central authority.

Personally i use bitcoin a lot, primarily as an intermediary currency because i can buy bitcoins with money i hold in one currency, and then draw it out again in my local currency without incurring fees levied by existing currency exchange establishments.