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Bitcoin is faltering at a bad, bad time for Greece
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Bitcoin's decentralized system is leaving loophole for technical errors — reminding investors that virtual money might not be the perfect alternative to paper, Bloomberg's Olga Kharif reports.
At least not yet.
As some Greeks rushed to buy Bitcoin during bank closures, the payment system, which has been trading at its highest since March, took a stumble over the weekend.
It took nearly five-times longer than usual to process transactions, said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.
A payment could take up to five hours to be confirmed, while some users were also unable to create new Bitcoin, he said.
The lag was caused by an update to the payment system's PC software over the weekend — or more precisely, it was caused by a disjunction in the versions of software users own. Operators who hadn't updated the software "put the whole system out of whack," the article said.
Though the issue is expected to be fixed within a few days, it's not the first time Bitcoin has seen this kind of software problem, Luria said.
"I don't know that it's (ever) happened to this extent, because Bitcoin has never been this big," he said.
Bitcoin's customer base has increased, with nearly 120,000 transactions occurring a day in early June — an increase of 10 times since the same period in 2011, reported Coindesk, a Bitcoin-focused newsdesk. Last week, Coinbase, a Bitcoin exchange and wallet provider, waived fees for customers buying with euros due to the Greek Crisis.
According to Bloomberg, software updates will be much smoother if companies take more market share from Bitcoin machine hobbyists.
"This is test of a decentralized network," Luria said. "Every time Bitcoin passes one of these tests, it gets stronger."
Read the original article at Bloomberg>
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