111–120 of 431 posts
> Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate I don't get it, doesn't this effectively mean China can force a 51% attack by just strongarming the pools that operate there?
> Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate I don't get it, doesn't this effectively mean China can force a 51% attack by just strongarming the pools that operate there?
In theory yes, but in practice it's rather infeasible to do 51% attacks IRL --- the main constraint is the people not the math. A 51% attack mainly lets you double spend, so you have to: (1) get a lot of coins and spend them on something (2) start mining a fork where that spending didn't happen (but other real transactions continue to happen) --- your hash power will now need to be dedicated to this new fork at the e…
This assumes the existence of a legal system with coercive power, which bitcoin doesn't have. That was the point of bitcoin to begin with, in fact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus, the model of BTC as “digital gold” is pretty resilient to 51% attacks: if you don’t touch your coins, no one can take them away from you. (A 51% attack can’t reassign coins.) Of course, the price of BTC might tank in response to the news of a successful 51% attack, but it’ll probably bounce back just like every other event in BTC history.
> if you don’t touch your coins, no one can take them away from you. (A 51% attack can’t reassign coins.) it can't generate new unsigned transactions but it can roll back the network to a state when someone else owned those coins. from a practical perspective there is no difference, you no longer have those coins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. See the "bitcoin snack machine" for some hard numbers: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.0 > The network nodes only accept the first version of a transaction they receive to incorporate into the block they're trying to generate. When you broadcast a transaction, if someone else broadcasts a double-spend at the same time, it's a race to propagate to the most nodes first. If one has a slight head star…
That has nothing to do with rolling back or 51% attacks. A racing attack and a 51% attack are different things.
I wonder if there has been an analysis of how much hash power you'd need relative to how many blocks in the past you'd want to roll back.
> Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate I don't get it, doesn't this effectively mean China can force a 51% attack by just strongarming the pools that operate there?
No, it means that theoretically a 51% is possible but the levels of coordination required to do that and the ability of the bitcoin network to figure it out and ignore it are means that it is unlikely to be effective .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
sure if you're suddenly not counting China's hydropower as renewables suddenly.
Depending on what's flooded Hydro can actually be the dirtest power out there. There's a hydro plant in brazil that contributes 3 times the number of ghg emissions as it's equivalent coal plant.
This is actually good for bitcoin
... because it attracts new players to the mining game
... because it will make the argument that bitcoin is bad for the environment weaker
I agree, the "any news is good news" is a fun game to play.
Use proof of stake coins like Cardano and Polkadot They use 10000 to a million times less energy than bitcoin to process payments!
Cardano is interesting but much less inspiring to me.
But I still think that Ethereum 2.0 will be the public blockchain of choice down the line.