Andreas Antonopoulos Says If Fungibility Is Not Fixed Bitcoin Could Be Attacked

Andreas M Antonopoulos seems to be worried about the delays that fungibility proposals and improvements on the Bitcoin (BTC) network could harm the space.

During a conversation with Diar, Antonopoulos discusses how Bitcoin needs to face some challenges even after becoming widely known in the last years.

Bitcoin Needs To Be Fungible

There are several countries around the world, including Venezuela or Iran, in which Bitcoin works as a transferable censorship-resistant virtual currency, which can also be used as a store of value. Although development continues in the space, there are some key areas that would help Bitcoin be adopted beyond the investment mentality.

It is worth mentioning that in emerging economies, Bitcoin and virtual currencies are mainly used not as price speculation but also as a way to find a hedge against economic and political problems. Bitcoin is used as a tool rather than as an investment.

Meanwhile, in developed economies, Bitcoin is mostly used to speculate about its price. This is why Antonopoulos said to Diar that all of the cryptocurrency’s benchmark propositions remain problematic for daily use in the developed world.

One of the reasons why Bitcoin is not being used in the developed world is due to the fact that the ease of use has not reached parity with other financial services. One of the problems that he believes Bitcoin is facing is the fact that it could be blacklisted due to illicit activities.

This is why he believes that if fungibility and privacy are broken, Bitcoin will be harmed. On the matter, he commented:

“Tainted coins are very destructive. If you break fungibility and privacy, you break the currency. If fungibility is not fixed, it is possible to attack Bitcoin in ways we haven’t seen yet and that could prove very effective. You could see rapid evolution of Bitcoin in a privacy direction or even replacement by other privacy cryptocurrencies.”

Clearly, there are some solutions to these issues. The main question that Antonopulos asks is whether we will be able to implement them without a political rift. Blockstream, one of the main companies that works developing Bitcoin, released a proposal for increasing privacy in the network.

The Chief Economist of Chainalysis, Philip Gradwell, has also talked with Diar about this issue. He said that the risk is about the people users are dealing with rather than the coins that users hold.

One of the largest virtual currencies in the market, Litecoin (LTC), is working in order to implement new privacy features. It is widely known that Litecoin has been used to test improvements that were later added to the Bitcoin network. One of these examples is related to Segregated Witness (SegWit).

Now, Litecoin wants to implement Confidential Transactions or Mimblewimble to make LTC fungible. Although this is something that could take several months or years to be achieved, we could be in the testing phase of privacy solutions for Bitcoin.