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Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

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Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#11

Post by XR0CSWV3h3kZWg »

49bc wrote: post #8

Satoshi really downplayed 51% attacks in his/her original whitepaper[1]: > The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour h…

Yeah in the next couple years I'd expect to start seeing smaller PoW chains wither away due to attacks like this and exchanges starting to have prohibitively high conf times as they'll need to protect them selves from attacks like this.

Merchants are probably fine.

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#12

Post by mike-cardwell »

Crypto currencies are worthless unless they have an enormous amount of hashing power behind them.

We could really do with a webpage with a list of crypto currencies, the hashing power currently behind them, and how much it would cost somebody to take over 50% of the network.

Or does that already exist?

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#13

Post by jmeyer2k »

SurrealSoul wrote: post #2

Knee jerk reaction: Good. However since it is a 'Bitcoin cash' type coin this will ultimately hurt bitcoin and the community as a whole. I can already see the buzz "Bitcoin double spending attack!" articles

I don't have an opinion on BTC vs. BCH, but I think network innovation through competition of these coins is ultimately a good thing. The free market will dictate what each of them is worth for different use cases. In any case, increased competition will increase the quality of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole.

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#14

Post by drexlspivey »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #12

Crypto currencies are worthless unless they have an enormous amount of hashing power behind them. We could really do with a webpage with a list of crypto currencies, the hashing power currently behind them, and how much it would cost somebody to take over 50% of the network. Or does that already exist?

Maybe all that energy spent to secure the chain is not so bad after all.

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#16

Post by sizzzzlerz »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #15
ada1981 wrote: post #7

Curious if this is illegal in anyway? I suppose there will be increasing incentive to do the numbers on the hash cost to take over a coin and to execute these attacks. Neat.

I think stealing is illegal, yes.

but what is the jurisdiction?

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#17

Post by jacquesc »

drexlspivey wrote: post #14
mike-cardwell wrote: post #12

Crypto currencies are worthless unless they have an enormous amount of hashing power behind them. We could really do with a webpage with a list of crypto currencies, the hashing power currently behind them, and how much it would cost somebody to take over 50% of the network. Or does that already exist?

Maybe all that energy spent to secure the chain is not so bad after all.

So it's not a complete waste of natural resources because it helps secure "the chain"?

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#18

Post by tedunangst »

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #6

more details here: https://forum.bitcoingold.org/t/double-spend-attack-on-excha... Bitcoin gold was a fork to try and decentralize mining. It changed to a proof of work that is supposed to be ASIC resistant. It looks like the typical situation is mining by GPU for equihash (BTG PoW). BTG hashrate is at ~30MH/s at the moment, where Zcash's hashrate is at ~486MH/s. I don't have the numbers off hand, but it'd be interes…

> If the exchange is aware of the attack, they may also freeze his account, so that all the funds will be locked inside the Exchange. A failed 21 block attack performed with a 10,000 BTG deposit where the Exchange freezes the account in time will result in a 10,262.5 BTG loss for the attacker. (From link.)

That sounds problematic. If I deposited coins and the exchange determined I was attacking them (how does that work beforehand?) to confiscate my money I'd be pretty miffed.

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#19

Post by m-p-3 »

SurrealSoul wrote: post #2

Knee jerk reaction: Good. However since it is a 'Bitcoin cash' type coin this will ultimately hurt bitcoin and the community as a whole. I can already see the buzz "Bitcoin double spending attack!" articles

To be fair I had to reread the title, as I initially read Bitcoin without focusing on the word Gold.

Re: Bitcoin Gold Hit by Double Spend Attack, Exchanges Lose Millions

#20

Post by patmcc »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #12

Crypto currencies are worthless unless they have an enormous amount of hashing power behind them. We could really do with a webpage with a list of crypto currencies, the hashing power currently behind them, and how much it would cost somebody to take over 50% of the network. Or does that already exist?

>>>Crypto currencies are worthless unless they have an enormous amount of hashing power behind them.

And maybe they're worthless even then. Time will tell on that.

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