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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

#241

Post by caf »

yborg wrote: post #194
mike-cardwell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think stealing is illegal, yes.

What exactly was stolen here? This isn't legally recognized money. And the spend was of the attacker's own coins. The exchange into another cryptocurrency or fiat currency is fraudulent I suppose, but isn't that on the transacting exchange?

They pretended to transfer to the exchange an item of value, and agreed to swap that item for a different item of value. They've defrauded the exchange / obtained a benefit by deception, like writing a dud cheque or something.

Fraud doesn't require "legally recognized money" to be involved. If you had some scam where you knowingly traded counterfeit collectable cards for real ones you'd be in trouble too.

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

#242

Post by djsumdog »

jhpriestley wrote: post #83

When Bitcoin was running up to $20,000, I tried to analyze the system and come to a personal conclusion about its equilibrium value, because I didn't want to miss out if it really was the currency of the future. I ended up not investing, because of the possibility of a double-spend attack. I think that cryptocurrency enthusiasts are seriously underestimating the importance of double-spending attacks to the economics…

Wouldn't this level of energy consumption be noticeable and stand out? What about the sheer number of ASIC units?

Right now what would minimum amount of power would be necessary? How many homes/neighborhood worth? How many Amazon data centers?

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

#243

Post by branchless »

jhpriestley wrote: post #83

When Bitcoin was running up to $20,000, I tried to analyze the system and come to a personal conclusion about its equilibrium value, because I didn't want to miss out if it really was the currency of the future. I ended up not investing, because of the possibility of a double-spend attack. I think that cryptocurrency enthusiasts are seriously underestimating the importance of double-spending attacks to the economics…

Here's my reason for not "investing" (it's no investing, it's speculation):

* bitcoin is not mandated as the sole accepted currency for settling tax in any sovereign state, therefore it can go to zero

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

#244

Post by oh_sigh »

vntok wrote: post #140
oh_sigh wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even finding a single double spend attack that only double-spends 1 satoshi would be enough to destroy bitcoin.

No it would not. Finding a BTC double spend attack vector would be like finding a 0-day: good and maybe even profitable up until fixed, which would take hours, days at most. Have 0-days destroyed Microsoft, Android, Firefox, Electron or Chrome?

Why do you think a double-spend attack would be easy to figure out? It could rely on start of the art crypto attacks which aren't known to the general public, or some very obscure bug which has slipped past thousands of eyeballs.

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

#246

Post by alistproducer2 »

What's interesting to me is that the bit game theory that is supposed to make such an attack unprofitable seems not to be holding here. Supposedly the idea that the blockchain was insecure would devalue the coin to such a degree as to disincentive people from attempting these sorts of attacks. I see virtually no movement in the price of BTG and relatively little in XVG (also attacked this week). If anything, the fact that the chain's integrity can be compromised and nothing happens appears to undermine a core assumption of Nakamoto consensus.

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

#247

Post by Taek »

onecooldev24 wrote: post #138
Taek wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the bitcoin system, miners make literally billions of dollars a year protecting the network. Any successful attack on the bitcoin network is going to massively erode confidence, reduce the price, reduce the usage, and therefore reduce the value of all that single-purpose, bitcoin-only hardware. Large miners don't want to see Bitcoin get attacked because it destroys their income and de-values their incredibly expen…

Top miners can short twice as many BTC futures to create one last profitable destruction.

If a large miner comes to you asks for a multi billion dollar short position, you should be suspicious.

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

#248

Post by stale2002 »

mortdeus wrote: post #238
tehsauce wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spooky thing that this made me realize, is that if anyone did find a vulnerability in bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) is that they would have a greater incentive to only slowly leech off the system, because they will be able to siphon out much more over time than if everyone panics over security. The weapon is no good unless it's secret.

What about state level actors, say the NSA, that consider bitcoin supplanting the US dollar as the standard medium of international currency exchange a huge threat to the world economy? (or at least their ability to control it) I think people need to be concerned that Governments, at any point of time, with their incomprehensibly huge computation power, can use it to crush bitcoin. Not only that but they can pass law…

You are not wrong to argue that state level actors are a serious threat.

But fortunately, these state actors seem to have no interest in attacking crypto.

It seems like the governments that matters IE the 1st world, are perfectly happy to allow people to have access to a censorship resistant method of financial transactions.

This makes a certain amount of sense. The governments of the 1st world claim to care a lot about freedom. And it seems that they are getting us have it.

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

#249

Post by stale2002 »

apo wrote: post #216

Oddly enough, one of the selling points of Bitcoin Gold (a hard fork of Bitcoin) was its use of Equihash instead of SHA-256. The idea was that a memory-hard proof-of-work function would inoculate Bitcoin Gold from miner centralization. The problem with mining centralization is that sufficiently powerful miners can attack the network by rewriting blocks. This opens the door to double spending. This was exactly the att…

All of the major Bitcoin miners are very pro Bitcoin cash. They basically created Bitcoin cash. They would be more likely to attack Bitcoin Core, if anything.

I would also point out that Bitcoin cash is the 4th largest crypto currency in the world, by market cap. If IT is in danger.... Well I fear for everyone else even more.

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

#250

Post by fiatjaf »

guiomie wrote: post #208
21 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because shitcoin prices have no relation to any sort of reality. Some shitcoins are traded on exchanges even if no actual coin or code existed.

They would exist as ERC20 tokens I believe...?

EOS has begin trading without any of that. Now it's a ERC20 token, I guess, but still there is no code, no network, no nothing -- and in fact their creators have declared they won't be starting the network or whatever, they're just selling "the idea". The tokens themselves have no value at all, they only _hope_ that whenever someone starts the network they will give some privileges to the current token holders.
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