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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

#41

Post by PeterisP »

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.

Why would the legal tender issue change anything whatsoever?

Fraud and theft statutes in general don't have any specific limitations to what the stolen assets must be, it's sufficient if they have some nontrivial value. No matter if Bitcoin Gold is treated like a currency, a security, or other asset, the treatment of it regarding fraud or theft would be the same.

In general, this seems like a clear-cut case of fraud - there's a victim (the exchange) that suffered a loss (by allowing to withdraw the coins) by deception (the attacker "demonstrated" that they deposited the coins, but reversed it), and there's clear premeditated intent to arrange the scheme for the attacker's financial benefit.

The technical details of how the victim was convinced to accept the deal and how the funds were extracted, and what's the nature of the currency are not particularly relevant to whether it's fraud, they'd be used only as evidence to show what happened and to evaluate the amount of loss.

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

#42

Post by vkou »

drexlspivey wrote: post #34
jacquesc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Would you ask the same question if the world run 100% on renewables?

Yes, because the resources (Material or labour) that went into building those renewable power plants could have gone into building something else that people want or need. Houses. Retaining walls. High-speed rail tracks. Electric cars. Bicycles. Video games. Rolls of sushi.

I will keep asking that question until we are in a post-scarcity society.

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

#43

Post by pilingual »

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?

Related: https://arewedecentralizedyet.com

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

#44

Post by baddox »

drexlspivey wrote: post #34
jacquesc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is a fairly good point. Any argument about externalities in energy usage applies to all usages of energy, and the solution is to internalize them in the price of energy.

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

#45

Post by trsohmers »

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…

Except Bitmain has announced and will be shipping to preorders the first Equihash ASIC (Antminer z9) in July... only 3000 z9's would be needed to equal 30 Megahash, which would be $6M at the z9's $2k price tag. Bitmain obviously has been mining themselves with the z9's for a while, so I would bet that they noticed this and jumped on it before shipping their "lightly used" units out.

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

#46

Post by patmcc »

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.

Is this stealing by whatever definition police/the courts currently use? Isn't it an intentional part of the design of a cryptocurrency that decisions are made by a consensus based on hashing power?

If you have 51% of the hashing power, you have control over that cryptocurrency; that's by design. Can you really steal at that point?

edit: to those replying, I'm not saying this double spend is ethically fine, or not theft in the common parlance. I'm saying it's not entirely clear to me a court would find this to be theft. Think about the Ethereum hard fork to undo the DAO hack; there, a majority of the hashing power undid a bunch of transactions. I wouldn't call that theft (because it was undoing a hack?) but it doesn't seem that different to this situation.

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

#47

Post by aje403 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #38
cachvico wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 us…

Bbbut... the blockchain?

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

#49

Post by bennofs »

ggg9990 wrote: post #30
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?

Interesting point. The cryptocurrency energy consumption problem will never be solved, since if it is, it will be economically feasible to attack. So cryptocurrency adoption in the mainstream will require massive electricity consumption.

Only if it uses proof of work.

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

#50

Post by spookthesunset »

drexlspivey wrote: post #34
jacquesc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Would you ask the same question if the world run 100% on renewables

Opportunity cost. All that 100% renewable energy could be used for something that actually adds value to society but isn't because it is being pissed away on the Rube Goldberg invention known as Satoshi's BlockChain.

> Also they pay for all the energy they spend so what exactly is the problem?

Give me a fucking break. These miners raise the price of electricity for everybody else and produce absolutely nothing of value to society at large.

Same thing these miners have done with graphics cards -- they've made graphics cards more expensive than most people can afford... you know, people who want to use those video cards for playing games instead of sucking down large quantities of non-renewable energy in a vain attempt to Get Rich Quick.

Bitcoin and all the others in the crypto "space" add absolutely zero value to society.

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