The Brown Daily Herald

An app developer can change a feature, publish a new version and ask users to install it. But Bitcoin, a form of digital currency, has no equivalent update button. Its software runs across thousands of independently operated computers, and the people maintaining those decentralized systems do not always agree on what should change. While the price of each unit of bitcoin remains closely watched, a new rule can suddenly affect wallets, miners, exchanges and users across the network. Developers can propose and test code, but whether it becomes part of the Bitcoin…