Bug in Bitcoin software led to fall

A bug in the basic software of Bitcoin has Monday night led to a fall of 23 percent, after which transactions were temporarily shut down. Bitcoin-miners had to return to an old version to get the challenges.

The problem had to do with the block chain of Bitcoin. These are databases that nodes share with each other and that all transactions of the virtual currency. Every ten minutes new blocks containing the recent transaction data is formed. Miners verify then, as soon as possible whether or not the block is that according to the rules of the Bitcoin protocol is formed. The nodes must mutually agree that it is a valid block, otherwise creates uncertainty about the transactieverleden, increasing the confidence in Bitcoin in the proceedings.

Monday appeared, however, a block with a size that was accepted by nodes based on the new Bitcoin-software version 0.8, but that was rejected by miners on the basis of the 0.7-variant, so a fork was created, writes Ars Technica. Bitcoin developers tried to the mining community to persuade only version 0.7-to-use and also they called on to temporarily halt trading.

After a short decline of 23 percent climbed the value back quickly to the old level, and there are no transactions or bitcoins lost. There is the glitch a new dent in confidence in Bitcoin, which in the past suffered with share prices as a result of large-scale thefts, including at Mt.Gox exchange, one of the most active Bitcoin exchanges.