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Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

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Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#311

Post by danw1979 »

sammy2255 wrote: post #41
p4bl0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction. Isn't Bitcoin wasting enough energy as it is?

What if it’s 100% green energy? Is it a waste?

Yes.

You can do actual useful stuff with electricity no matter where it came from, like smelting aluminium, training AI models or desalinating water. Wasting it on mining bitcoin is literally the last thing we should be doing with spare energy.

If that spare energy doesn’t have a use yet, negative pricing will find one… but allowing that use to be “computing mathematical puzzles to support a deregulated financial instrument whose chief uses are illicit transactions and speculative investment” is just absurd and we should regulate this away.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#312

Post by dheera »

drexlspivey wrote: post #249
dheera wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I guess this means that all Bitcoin transactions have half the entropy we think they do?

All security assumptions on bitcoin rely on 128bit entropy (256 bits in a private key divided by 2)

Is that true for all of the future? I suppose it's only a matter of time before Satoshi's and all the lost wallets will be broken?

Even if it's 70 years from now before we have the compute to do that, the wallets will be worth so much by then that whoever does that will end up with a level of money that is high enough to menace and threaten entire countries if they are malicious.

Why doesn't Bitcoin require keys to get longer over time? Require 256 bit now but require 65536 bit in 20 years to make any transaction?

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#313

Post by mandmandam »

yunohn wrote: post #308
mandmandam wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite well, thank you! Coming up on nine years without hacks, and apparently quantum-resistant. The next release of Nano (the original and best imo*) manages spam to the point where fee-less sub-second transactions can be maintained even while under a directed spam attack. If you want to learn more there's plenty of documentation: Overview: https://docs.nano.org/what-is-nano/overview/ More technical docs: https://doc…

I was wondering where your previous comment was heading - I assumed you were referring to Yet Another Niche Cryptocoin, and that was confirmed. Thanks!

People said the same thing about renewable energy for decades ... "It's so niche! How could it ever replace fossil fuel?".

The point stands - BTC's limitations mean nothing to the potential of digital currency as a whole. Cryptocurrency has been proven not to need fees or mining, and yet people love to attack it on that basis. Anything to feel superior I guess.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#314

Post by Workaccount2 »

sourraspberry wrote: post #224
Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually no way to avoid this, aside from setting the Fee nearly to the reward. It's essentially MitM all the way down. even the private mempool can attempt a double-spend with a larger fee, get one transaction ahead, then try to maintain an edge long enough to be the "longest branch" for consensus - the 51% attack only needs 33% in reality, much less when your the private mempool that can take advantage of…

Isn't this a bit insane? Does this not imply the entire Bitcoin protocol is fundamentally flawed?

The bitcoin protocol isn't fundamentally flawed, but it is fundamentally outdated. If it wasn't for public bitcoin/crypto FOMO, bitcoin would have been deprecated years ago.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#315

Post by kragen »

yunohn wrote: post #307
kragen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are we talking about people doing bitcoin mining or hash cracking? bitcoin mining is an extremely competitive business of finding the cheapest sources of energy and mining hardware; because the cheapest energy sources are all renewable, mining bitcoin with fossil-fuel-produced power is unprofitable. so the electricity we're using to mine bitcoin is mostly solar, wind, and hydroelectric as for the cracking, i don't th…

Finding the “cheapest” energy to do useless work, is still wasteful pollution.

'pollution'? actually no. why would you even think that?

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#316

Post by wkat4242 »

dheera wrote: post #210
wkat4242 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this isn't a normal key. It's a key with extremely reduced entropy for the sake of the puzzle. Most of the private key is already known and is in fact all zero. So this would not be possible with a normal Bitcoin transaction with regular entropy.

But I guess this means that all Bitcoin transactions have half the entropy we think they do?

Effectively, yes.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#317

Post by yunohn »

mandmandam wrote: post #313
yunohn wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering where your previous comment was heading - I assumed you were referring to Yet Another Niche Cryptocoin, and that was confirmed. Thanks!

People said the same thing about renewable energy for decades ... "It's so niche! How could it ever replace fossil fuel?". The point stands - BTC's limitations mean nothing to the potential of digital currency as a whole. Cryptocurrency has been proven not to need fees or mining, and yet people love to attack it on that basis. Anything to feel superior I guess.

It’s not about superiority, it’s about the pie in the sky claims made by crypto, none of which have demonstrably helped real world use cases at any scale.

Even taking your example coin, they’re making it production-grade, for what? How many people seriously use it? What is the real plan to adoption? Or is it just another fun tech project.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#318

Post by wkat4242 »

dheera wrote: post #312
drexlspivey wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All security assumptions on bitcoin rely on 128bit entropy (256 bits in a private key divided by 2)

Is that true for all of the future? I suppose it's only a matter of time before Satoshi's and all the lost wallets will be broken? Even if it's 70 years from now before we have the compute to do that, the wallets will be worth so much by then that whoever does that will end up with a level of money that is high enough to menace and threaten entire countries if they are malicious. Why doesn't Bitcoin require keys to g…

How would you enforce this to cold wallets? The owner would still have to prove their ownership with the old key.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#319

Post by GTP »

fidelramos wrote: post #301
GTP wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're describing Bitcoin Cash, but AFAIK it's worth less than original BTC. What you're not considering is the brand value of BTC being the first and most famous crypto currency.

I agree with part of what you say but not with the implication. Yes, Bitcoin Cash [0] is the Bitcoin that chose to scale on-chain. The split happened in 2017 and since then it has decreased in price both compared to BTC and USD. What I strongly disagree with is that a Bitcoin with bigger blocks and hence larger transaction capacity is inherently less valuable. That is an unfair comparison because Bitcoin Cash, when t…

I didn't say that having larger blocks makes a crypocurrency hinerently less valuable, my point was that it's not enough to obtain the widespread adoption and the consequent increase in value you were talking about. But I also see your point on having those improvements baked in BTC at the right moment vs having a new crypocurrency. But afaik Ethereum is able to handle many more payments than BTC (not sure if transaction fees are reasonable though) and is one of the most popular crypocurrencies. But still, my impression is that it's adoption as actual currency to pay for goods is similar to BTC, despite these improvements.

In my opinion there are two main issues that prevent crypocurrencies from being actually used as currency:

1. How many transactions per seconds can be handled 2. Their extremely high volatility compared to fiat currency

While blockchains can scale to fix point 1, point 2 is driven by forces outside the technology.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#320

Post by drexlspivey »

dheera wrote: post #312
drexlspivey wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All security assumptions on bitcoin rely on 128bit entropy (256 bits in a private key divided by 2)

Is that true for all of the future? I suppose it's only a matter of time before Satoshi's and all the lost wallets will be broken? Even if it's 70 years from now before we have the compute to do that, the wallets will be worth so much by then that whoever does that will end up with a level of money that is high enough to menace and threaten entire countries if they are malicious. Why doesn't Bitcoin require keys to g…

I think you underestimate how big the number of 2^128 ECDSA operations are. It is 20 orders of magnitude bigger than the puzzle that was just solved (that took 2 years). There is no way we scale our compute that much in 70 years unless we start building Dyson spheres.

To answer your question that change in bitcoin can happen at any point in time with a protocol update. It would probably won’t even require a hard fork, a soft fork would suffice.

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