Bitcoin Is Broken - How an attack would allow a small group of miners to reach majority
47 replies, posted
Bitcoins will soon come tumbling down from a governmental intervention, crushing it in the cornflakes of a thousand bowls of the work class men, women and children.
In other words being the 99% is suffering when it comes to bitcoins. You didn't realize before it was too late and you don't own even one single coin.
[QUOTE=FezianEmperor;42767843]Bitcoins will soon come tumbling down from a governmental intervention, crushing it in the cornflake of a thousand bowls.[/QUOTE]
But how? Tons of bitcoins were dumped on the market before, BTC crashed before, but it is still going strong. Unless the U.S makes a concentrated mining attack as outlined above, how will this be possible?
[QUOTE=DoctorSalt;42767878]But how? Tons of bitcoins were dumped on the market before, BTC crashed before, but it is still going strong. Unless the U.S makes a concentrated mining attack as outlined above, how will this be possible?[/QUOTE]
Well you just answered your question, but I believe that's up to those who want the bitcoin to be gone don't you think?
[QUOTE=DoctorSalt;42767878]But how? Tons of bitcoins were dumped on the market before, BTC crashed before, but it is still going strong. Unless the U.S makes a concentrated mining attack as outlined above, how will this be possible?[/QUOTE]
There's this conspiracy theory that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a group of cryptographers working for the feds who developed bitcoin, and hoarded massive amounts of it. Since bitcoin favors early adopters, and blockchain analysis showed that an early miner (Probably Nakamoto) has been mining since the beginning (And has slightly less than 10% of all bitcoins), the possibility of him trying to cash that in is both real and could very well crash the bitcoin market and discredit cryptocurrencies for the indefinite future.
See [URL="http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1139"]this[/URL] and [URL="http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1009"]this[/URL].
EDIT: Literally just as I say this
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27619601/Public%20Pictures/screenshots/2013-11-05-180703_1280x768_scrot.png[/IMG]
"The goyim know!"
[QUOTE=KorJax;42766061]It'd be really really obvious. And computers are actually not very good at mining so they'd need to infect most of the ma-and-pop PC's on the internet to do it.
Keep in mind when you mine BTC at full power on your computer you pretty much can't use it at all since your computer is 100% focusing on mining. You could do background mining I guess, but considering you need like two high end AMD video cards running 24/7 in crossfire at full power to even mine a modest amount of BTC, a virus would need to pretty much infect every single PC connected to the internet in the world to do this to any effect, and even then I doubt it would work.
Also the attack mentioned in the article is still a 51% attack, its just the general idea behind it is if you have 25% of the computing power of the network it'll theoretically be easier to get miners not apart of your network to hop on and validate your fake blocks in the name of evil knowingly till you have 51% of the network validating your fake blocks. This will literally never happen and would be easy to see if someone was trying to do this.[/QUOTE]
It's possible that a well executed botnet could do it though.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;42767979]There's this conspiracy theory that Satoshi Nakamoto is actually a group of cryptographers working for the feds who developed bitcoin, and hoarded massive amounts of it. Since bitcoin favors early adopters, and blockchain analysis showed that an early miner (Probably Nakamoto) has been mining since the beginning (And has slightly less than 10% of all bitcoins), the possibility of him trying to cash that in is both real and could very well crash the bitcoin market and discredit cryptocurrencies for the indefinite future.
See [URL="http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1139"]this[/URL] and [URL="http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1009"]this[/URL].
EDIT: Literally just as I say this
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27619601/Public%20Pictures/screenshots/2013-11-05-180703_1280x768_scrot.png[/IMG]
"The goyim know!"[/QUOTE]
Its completely silly to assume the people who made bitcoin were secretly trying to just get rich dumping the market.
Bitcoin was literally worthless for the entire first year of its inception and money was thrown around, deleted, etc without a care in the world because nobody really expected it to take hold. I can guarantee nobody who invented bitcoin did so with the purpose of just dumping all their holdings for mad profit considering I doubt they even have access to the original wallets anymore. And to say that its honestly something made by the feds for the reason of... crashing a market they started? Are you serious? Aliens at Area51 sound more plausible than that conspiracy.
[editline]5th November 2013[/editline]
Also that's called a correction.
[url]http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/correction.asp[/url]
[quote]A reverse movement, usually negative, of at least 10% in a stock, bond, commodity or index to adjust for an overvaluation. Corrections are generally temporary price declines interrupting an uptrend in the market or an asset. A correction has a shorter duration than a bear market or a recession, but it can be a precursor to either.
[/quote]
It could cause a bit of a downtrend or a reversal or cause a buy frenzy as people get in on new lows, nobody knows. We're going to see plenty of price corrections as bitcoin approaches its all time high of 266.
Part of the reason this correction happened was that some dude earlier today bought almost 4000 bitcoins ($1mill) causing the price to go from 249 to 257. Big buy booms like that almost always cause some of nervous hands that sell. We might see the price go down from here for a while, but it could also recover pretty quickly too. Its really hard to say.
[QUOTE=mobrockers;42767780]I don't mean those bitcoins. There's a cap at 21mil bitcoins right? Will they keep counting toward that cap?[/QUOTE]
Yeah they keep counting since the bitcoins themselves aren't in the wallet file itself, The wallet file just says hey those bitcoins in the network are mine. And then in the chain it can be backtraced to confirm they actually belong to a certain wallet.
So if the wallet file is lost, so is the ownership of those coins in the chain. Thus the coins stay in the chain, they're just not owned by anyone.
Lol 40%
So even if it was broken, the bitcoin will still be more balanced than the US dollar.
I mean its probably easier to crash the stock market by taking advantage of the trade bots that have been put in charge of billions in commodities and stocks. they've caused minute crashes on their very own, I imagine If someone was able to crash enough of the bots thsimultaniously then the rest would cascade out of control before their owners could react, by the time the bots reached the macro world in timescale, they could cause considerable damage
[QUOTE=KorJax;42768324]Also that's called a correction.
[url]http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/correction.asp[/url]
It could cause a bit of a downtrend or a reversal or cause a buy frenzy as people get in on new lows, nobody knows. We're going to see plenty of price corrections as bitcoin approaches its all time high of 266.
Part of the reason this correction happened was that some dude earlier today bought almost 4000 bitcoins ($1mill) causing the price to go from 249 to 257. Big buy booms like that almost always cause some of nervous hands that sell. We might see the price go down from here for a while, but it could also recover pretty quickly too. Its really hard to say.[/QUOTE]
Is bitcoin a currency or a commodity? Everyone seems very bi-polar about it.
[QUOTE=Lonestriper;42770704]Is bitcoin a currency or a commodity? Everyone seems very bi-polar about it.[/QUOTE]
They can't decide either! :v:
Bitcoin will never become an accepted currency, it's just too volatile and poorly designed.
[QUOTE=Lonestriper;42770704]Is bitcoin a currency or a commodity? Everyone seems very bi-polar about it.[/QUOTE]
Its pretty much both tbh
It works better as a commodity right now than a currency but it has all the systems in place to work as a currency as well, and people do in-fact use it as a currency
I.E. its like gold or a stock in how its value is established, but supports the ability to be transferred anywhere on earth without banking or serious time delays or fees, doesn't weigh anything, works like an instant paypal or like giving someone cash on the street when you do a transaction, etc. As it grows in use and the price reaches some kind of long term equilibrium it'll likely transition into a pure currency/investment because of this instead of being a volatile commodity.
[QUOTE=KorJax;42770891]Its pretty much both tbh
It works better as a commodity right now than a currency but it has all the systems in place to work as a currency as well, and people do in-fact use it as a currency
I.E. its like gold or a stock, but supports the ability to be transferred anywhere on earth without banking or serious time delays or fees, doesn't weigh anything, works like an instant paypal or like giving someone cash on the street when you do a transaction, etc. As it grows in use and the price reaches some kind of long term equilibrium it'll likely transition into a pure currency/investment because of this.[/QUOTE]
It also requires a hellish number of computers to process and record transactions, mint new coins, eats up massive amounts of energy for exponentially decreasing gain, the built in deflation, etc.
It's pretty indicative there are problems when many people list prices in normal money, but allow the option for it to be paid in bitcoin (which is too volatile for most merchants).
The biggest problem I think with it however, is that it is entirely unregulated and deflationary. You get what what we had in the 19th century. Violent booms and sudden slumps. That is no way for a currency to operate, and the free market can't fix that alone.
KorJax did you just say that under the best conditions it would stay bipolar?
[editline]6th November 2013[/editline]
I mean that in itself doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing
[QUOTE=Lonestriper;42770986]KorJax did you just say that under the best conditions it would stay bipolar?
[editline]6th November 2013[/editline]
I mean that in itself doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing[/QUOTE]
What do you mean under the best conditions?
I'm pretty much just saying that volatility will likely go down as adoption and market cap go up. Its still pretty new in the grand scheme of things, it didn't start getting any sort of mainstream "Oh this is a thing" until this year. That said I wouldn't doubt that it will probably still have market forces going on even under low volatility, i.e. years where it slumps a bit in value vs. years where it goes up in value.
Well there is an assumption that it will reach an equilibrium and it will grow in use. The former I'm unsure of when you look at what constitutes the Bitcoin market since it's mostly speculation but the latter I can accept as happening since the media is paying more attention to it. To be frank I'm quite skeptical of its long-term viability as either a currency or a commodity. As a currency it has massive pitfalls which either prevent it from being able to scale (think the size of blockchain and how transactions add to this) or just complicate the entire transaction process (i.e: it requires some technical know-how and an internet connection). As a commodity its only as good if people are willing to speculate on it, which I can't quite see being a source of stability.
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