Bitcoin’s history is colourful, more colourful than some received wisdom might have it. Some Bitcoin proponents say ‘Bitcoin (the protocol) has never been hacked,’ but they are wrong. Bitcoin has been hacked.
Here is a selection of events from historyofBitcoin.org and the Bitcoin Wiki.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:History
15 Aug 2010
Bitcoin’s protocol got hacked. Beware the popular narrative that says, ‘Bitcoin itself has never been hacked’. A potential vulnerability was discovered, and someone exploited this vulnerability in block 74,638 to create 184 billion bitcoins for themselves. This strange transaction was quickly discovered and, with the consent of the majority of the community, the whole blockchain was reverting it to a previous state. So much for the immutability of Bitcoin’s blockchain: there are always exceptions. The bug was fixed.
Bruno Skvorc has written a good explanation of how it happened on his blog bitfalls.com128, and the bitcointalk forum has a thread129 where key developers discussed the bug.”
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822.0
https://bitfalls.com/2018/01/14/curious-case-184-billion-bitcoin/
Credit: this information is taken from the wonderful book of Antony Lewis's "The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains"
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