Attacks Against Bitcoin

Hackers and the like have been trying to hack Bitcoin or find a backdoor to disrupt the blockchain for a number of years and none have succeeded so far. Really, the only times that Bitcoin has become unstable is when websites that handle bitcoin transactions have been hacked or had DoS attacks against them.

Consider me an interested sideline observer. I've looked at quite a bit of published material on BTC conversation protocol, for example. I follow it in the news, check out a blog here and there, etc.
I came to the conclusion that considering BTC's claims of advantage, a major ingredient in widespread acceptance is consumer and merchant confidence. Credit cards faced this same obstacle in their infancy, as did using CC's online when that all started.
So, BTC is at this stage very vulnerable to a crisis of confidence.
Look at recent events with MtGox, and the hack attacks happening now, LOL

"The Pilgrims risked their lives on termite-eaten wood sail ships to cross the Atlantic to escape religious persecution;
"The Quakers came, risking their lives on dry-rotted wood sail ships, to find a new home;
"The early colonists risked everything to cross the Atlantic to come to the New World;
"The early Pioneers took wagon trains out West and risked their lives against starvation and Indian attacks;
"Awe-inspiring tales of Risk-Taking, Dangerous new ventures and adventures;
"So I bought $100,000 worth of Bitcoin on Mt

Online currency bitcoin had 20 percent knocked off its price overnight on Thursday as one of its major exchanges became the victim of a hacking attack leading to a sell-off in the virtual currency after reaching an all-time high.
"Attackers wait until the price of bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit," Mt.Gox said.

"Babbage" at The Economist takes Bitcoin seriously (or at least refrains from just poking fun at it) and finds it quite interesting.[4]
"Other economists have criticized the idea (to the point of calling it a scam), citing inherent design problems.[5]
"Paul Krugman refrains from making fun of bitcoin, but considers it a reimplementation of the gold standard, with the economic problems that implies.[6]
"The trouble with reimplementing the gold standard in the 21st century is that financial attacks, just like cryptographic attacks, don't get less effective with time — if you apply attacks evolved in a hundred years of Red Queen's race against regulation, then remove the regulation, the subeconomy in question is utterly defenceless