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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

#31

Post by gowld »

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…

The point is that stolen goods cost as much as mined goods, so why would an attacker prefer to steal?

(Unless they are trying to vandalize the ecosystem)

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

#32

Post by gowld »

georgemcbay wrote: post #27
tedunangst wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wherever the exchange is?

Does wherever the exchange is recognize Bitcoin Gold as legal tender? The issue seems a lot more complex than either "of course this is illegal" or "of course this isn't illegal". I'm certainly not arguing in favor of either of those positions.

It's obviously not legal tender (you can't pay taxes in BTG), but that's irrelevant. If can be bought and sold, it's property that can be stolen.

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

#33

Post by Havoc »

>Obtaining this much hashpower is incredibly expensive

Is it? Presumably you only need to maintain it for a short amount of time. Sounds like something one could smash with google cloud preemptible GPUs or similar. Especially since such an attacker is presumably not above using a stolen CC or three.

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

#34

Post by drexlspivey »

jacquesc wrote: post #17
drexlspivey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Would you ask the same question if the world run 100% on renewables? If not, it seems that your argument should be "we should accelerate our transition to renewables" instead of "bitcoin spends too much power".

Also they pay for all the energy they spend so what exactly is the problem? Do you see vegans complain for the resources spent to raise animals?

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

#35

Post by tgb »

cachvico wrote: post #23
jacquesc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners. It's not waste if it serves a purpose. The service it provides is to guarantee the integrity of the blockchain without the requirement of a central authority.

It's wasting if it's using more than the alternatives and it is using more than the alternatives.

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

#36

Post by drb91 »

Smaug123 wrote: post #24
gowld wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a complete waste of natural resources to lock a bank vault door, or run a network firewall?

Those are both activities which use up trivial quantities of those natural resources. Bitcoin uses up nontrivial quantities of electricity.

There's a hidden cost of trust there, though, which vanishes with bitcoin (or at least reduces its cost). Maybe the value of bitcoin is more apparent from the perspective of venezuela at the moment, where the risk involved with traditional banks, currency, and security is more apparent.

I am emphatically not taking a stance on which I prefer here, I might add, just pointing out that there are more variables here than you're acknowledging.

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

#37

Post by 49bc »

gowld wrote: post #31
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…

The point is that stolen goods cost as much as mined goods, so why would an attacker prefer to steal? (Unless they are trying to vandalize the ecosystem)

The calculus to steal compared to mining is actually much cheaper. Just briefly hold 51% while you double spend some massive wallets.

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

#38

Post by spookthesunset »

cachvico wrote: post #23
jacquesc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly. We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners. It's not waste if it serves a purpose. The service it provides is to guarantee the integrity of the blockchain without the requirement of a central authority.

> We should stop using the word "waste" to describe the energy consumption of the Bitcoin miners.

All you bitcoin shysters can keep telling yourself that to sleep at night, but you are lying to yourself and you know it.

Bitcoin consumes massive amounts of energy for a pathetically small amount of transactions per second. ON a per transaction basis, Bitcoin uses several orders of magnitude more energy than anything used by modern day financial systems.

Like, embarrassingly, shamefully large amounts of electricity. Y'all should bow your heads in shame for the harm you are doing to the world.

> The service it provides is to guarantee the integrity of the blockchain without the requirement of a central authority.

The blockchain, whose only use case is to enable rampant speculation and amazingly large quantities of fraud.

The whole "space" needs to go away.

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

#39

Post by 49bc »

Havoc wrote: post #33

>Obtaining this much hashpower is incredibly expensive Is it? Presumably you only need to maintain it for a short amount of time. Sounds like something one could smash with google cloud preemptible GPUs or similar. Especially since such an attacker is presumably not above using a stolen CC or three.

Also they only need to hold 51% for as long as they can complete the double-spend attack.
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