Bitcoin's Scarcity Highlighted by 2010 Code Flaw Incident

According to PANews, Corn co-founder Zak Cole recently tweeted about a significant incident in Bitcoin's history that occurred on August 15, 2010. A flaw in Bitcoin block 74638 resulted in the creation of 184 billion BTC due to an unchecked integer overflow, with two addresses each receiving approximately 92.2 billion BTC. The survival of Bitcoin on that day was attributed to the quick actions of the community, who noticed the issue and responded within five hours by deploying a fix, releasing a patched client, upgrading nodes, and removing the invalid block from consensus. Cole emphasized that Bitcoin's scarcity is not inherently protected by its code but by the people who maintain it. He argued that Bitcoin's monetary policy was saved not by the protocol itself but by the individuals running it. This incident underscores the reality behind the "trustless" narrative, highlighting that it was the community, not the code, that preserved Bitcoin. The struggle to maintain Bitcoin's scarcity continues to this day.