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BTC Endgame

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Re: BTC Endgame

#171

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

gavrif wrote: post #83
generalizations wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a wild guess that when parent is talking about 'control', they mean that if a miner is located within China, the Chinese government has the ability to put a gun to that miners head and tell them what to do.

With that kind of control, they could just put a gun to anyone's head and ask them to start mining bitcoin and do it the way they want them to. It wouldn't have to depend on how many bitcoin miners are in China at the moment.

You can't just ask a random person to mine Bitcoin (well you can't, it just won't do much). It needs to be someone who has the mining hardware. So how many miners there are (specifically, how much mining hardware there is) matters.

Re: BTC Endgame

#172

Post by eloff »

inopinatus wrote: post #135
generalizations wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a wild guess that when parent is talking about 'control', they mean that if a miner is located within China, the Chinese government has the ability to put a gun to that miners head and tell them what to do.

The implication, that no other nation-state may use force to assert control of a strategic economic resource, is in contradiction with both history and common sense. GP is ipso facto calling out lazy casual racism, but framed constructively because they’re better at it than me.

Casual racism?

The Chinese government has 100% power to do whatever they want. If they want to kill you on an invented charge and send the bill for the bullets to your parents, they can do so (and have done so).

Yes Western governments can use force to intervene with private companies and have done so in the past, but it's unusual for them to do that because people and companies have rights and they can contest the action in court. That's nothing compared to what China can do with no recourse, see Alibaba or the Canadian Michael's for a recent example.

You cannot pretend that the two are similar situations, and doing so is whataboutism. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the difference between a free country and a totalitarian country.

Re: BTC Endgame

#173

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

WJW wrote: post #15
paulgb wrote: post #2

The linked Medium posts have a bit more content https://joekelly100.medium.com/how-to-kill-bitcoin-part-1-is... Note that this is from last July, when the price of BTC was significantly lower and thus the price of the attack is likely higher now. That said, this becomes more feasible in the long-run when mining is purely funded by transaction fees. Something I don’t see talked about much is the fact that, although Bi…

I always wondered about that and perhaps someone here can explain. After bitcoin reaches its "full" volume, mining rewards will go away and the only way miner income can stay the same is if transaction fees rise to match. Since the competition of miners basically converges to "block reward is equal to electricity cost equivalent", this would mean transaction costs increase to an insanely huge amount. Not paying the l…

There is no strict technical limit on the number of transactions per block. Due to the rising price, each block is currently worth something like $350k.

The Bitcoin network rules restrict it to a couple thousand transactions per block. Even with that, each on-chain transaction would "only" need to cost $100 or so to replace the block reward. Infeasible for micropayments, perfectly fine for large scale settlements.

Another possible solution would be increasing the block size limit - the mining effort is a per-block cost, the cost of additional transactions is minimal. So small fees + massive transaction volume could work. With a million transactions each block, $0.35 per on-chain transaction is enough to pay for the current security level. More transactions allow for even lower fees. The Bitcoin Cash fork aims for this.

However, all of this is very long term. The halvings happen a bit faster than every 4 years. Let's assume 3.5 years - that means 20 halvings in 70 years. The block reward not drop to 0 until 34 halvings, so this is not a problem we have to deal with in our lifetime. So for the forseeable future, one possible solution is for the Bitcoin price to keep going up, paying for the same or an increasing security level despite the halvings.

Re: BTC Endgame

#174

Post by fanciestManimal »

wruza wrote: post #153
fanciestManimal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unsolved problem, and all solutions would require a majority of the mining pool to get on board. You could periodically increase the block size, splitting the transaction fee among more transactions. Although larger blocks make it more difficult to produce hashes, so more power would be consumed, thus increasing the transaction fees further. You could change the block reward such that there's a larger block r…

periodically increase the block size, splitting the transaction fee among more transactions. Although larger blocks make it more difficult to produce hashes Couldn’t they simply lower the baseline difficulty along with a block size? Edit: and wouldn’t difficulty drop automatically in this case?

Yea, difficulty would drop. You'd end up producing a block more often than every 10 minutes. There's probably some lower bound on difficulty (and block frequency) that also maintains network consensus.

Re: BTC Endgame

#175

Post by inopinatus »

eloff wrote: post #172
inopinatus wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication, that no other nation-state may use force to assert control of a strategic economic resource, is in contradiction with both history and common sense. GP is ipso facto calling out lazy casual racism, but framed constructively because they’re better at it than me.

Casual racism? The Chinese government has 100% power to do whatever they want. If they want to kill you on an invented charge and send the bill for the bullets to your parents, they can do so (and have done so). Yes Western governments can use force to intervene with private companies and have done so in the past, but it's unusual for them to do that because people and companies have rights and they can contest the a…

The Chinese government is not China any more than the US government is America or the Kremlin is Russia.

Having a go at authoritarian demagoguery and secret police is one thing, have at it.

But doubling down on the casual false equivalence between a people, a country, a government, and a person, just reinforces the point.

Oh, and when you find a free country, do let me know. I haven’t seen one yet. So far, from Australia to Zimbabwe, all governments coerce and murder their citizens.

Re: BTC Endgame

#176

Post by eloff »

inopinatus wrote: post #175
eloff wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casual racism? The Chinese government has 100% power to do whatever they want. If they want to kill you on an invented charge and send the bill for the bullets to your parents, they can do so (and have done so). Yes Western governments can use force to intervene with private companies and have done so in the past, but it's unusual for them to do that because people and companies have rights and they can contest the a…

The Chinese government is not China any more than the US government is America or the Kremlin is Russia. Having a go at authoritarian demagoguery and secret police is one thing, have at it. But doubling down on the casual false equivalence between a people, a country, a government, and a person, just reinforces the point. Oh, and when you find a free country, do let me know. I haven’t seen one yet. So far, from Austr…

The OP was not taking about the Chinese people, he was taking about China the Chinese government. It was very clear to me reading that, I'm not sure why you're all confused.

Re: BTC Endgame

#177

Post by ntr-- »

goldcd wrote: post #126
nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

I think I agree with you and think there's a parallel to other conventional currencies. Controlling the hash is similar to controlling a central bank - you've got the power to trash your currency, but that's coupled with you probably having the most to lose if you do so. You could maybe do something stupid short-term - Say you own a controlling amount of hash, but a fraction of the currency. You could seize the curre…

> More realistically, "Chinese Miners" aren't the government.

I think that's largely the point, other comments are appealing that somehow the Chinese govt has a lot to lose by seizing control of bitcoin, but in reality they probably just have no reason to yet, it beggars belief that an authoritarian government would allow private citizens to control an important currency on their own soil. My own take is that they are letting it run because of the shadow of doubt it is casting on the USD.

> ASICs going to be on a plane and plugged into the Hoover Damn or Iceland's geothermals

A little simplistic to think non-negligible percentages of the hash pool would turn themselves off, relocate internationally, completely disrupt the difficulty rate, put themselves at a massive disadvantage and subject themselves to an unknown foreign government who might be completely hostile toward them. More pertinently the CCP might "meddle" with their ability to fly out of the country as they have done with countless dissidents already.

Re: BTC Endgame

#178

Post by bontaq »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #52
tshaddox wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why haven’t they destroyed it then?

Frankly, because it’s not as much of a threat as the popular narrative suggests. They may actually benefit from being able to use cryptocurrency for their own ends, either by using it directly or using the public ledger nature combined with their surveillance powers to get insight into transactions. Regardless, the attacks described here require large concentrations of mining power. In theory, the best way to attack…

If anything, a government might even like a public ledger of all transactions. Sure, you can sell in person, and then it's about as secretive as cash.

Re: BTC Endgame

#179

Post by inopinatus »

eloff wrote: post #176
inopinatus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government is not China any more than the US government is America or the Kremlin is Russia. Having a go at authoritarian demagoguery and secret police is one thing, have at it. But doubling down on the casual false equivalence between a people, a country, a government, and a person, just reinforces the point. Oh, and when you find a free country, do let me know. I haven’t seen one yet. So far, from Austr…

The OP was not taking about the Chinese people, he was taking about China the Chinese government. It was very clear to me reading that, I'm not sure why you're all confused.

It is no better an assumption than assuming the OP is a man.

Re: BTC Endgame

#180

Post by sushisource »

fanciestManimal wrote: post #61
WJW wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered about that and perhaps someone here can explain. After bitcoin reaches its "full" volume, mining rewards will go away and the only way miner income can stay the same is if transaction fees rise to match. Since the competition of miners basically converges to "block reward is equal to electricity cost equivalent", this would mean transaction costs increase to an insanely huge amount. Not paying the l…

It's an unsolved problem, and all solutions would require a majority of the mining pool to get on board. You could periodically increase the block size, splitting the transaction fee among more transactions. Although larger blocks make it more difficult to produce hashes, so more power would be consumed, thus increasing the transaction fees further. You could change the block reward such that there's a larger block r…

> You could switch to Proof of Work

Wait, you mean "move away from" ?

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