Transaction

j"1LAnZuoQdcKCkpDBKQMCgziGMoPC4VQUckM´<div class="post">I don't think that broken cryptography could ever be the end of BitCoin if it becomes popular. Since the block chain can be forked without losing too much data, modifications to all aspects of BitCoin are possible. If SHA-256 was broken, a new version of BitCoin would be released that would switch to a stronger hash function for addresses. Changing the hash function used for blocks might not be necessary if the weakness still required some non-trivial amount of computation. The new version would ignore SHA-256 blocks after a certain point in time, but most old transactions would survive.<br/><br/>In case the weakening of SHA-256 is gradual instead of sudden (much more likely, IMO), BitCoin could stretch the process of switching to a different hash algorithm over a long time. First accept SHA-512 (or whatever) in addition to SHA-256, then use SHA-512 by default, and finally stop accepting SHA-256 for new blocks.</div> text/html