Is it illegal to attack cryptocurrency?
Depending on the currency, it's celebrated. (Code is law, etc.)
Sabotaging Bitcoin
21–30 of 224 posts
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#22TIL: https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci - quite horrifying! EDIT: For comparison: https://gridwatch.co.uk/
What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste. Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible. Because that's what everyone else is doing. With Bitcoin, you now exactly what your costs are and what your yields are. There's a clear threshold,…
> gas that's normally burned off at the well site
Funny thing about that. Civilized governments put a stop to that, by fining flare-offs to make it economical to not do that.
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#23[flagged]
Sanctions are just a political tool to oppress people and freedom.
The real trojan horse is the 3% inflation each year that the government subjects us to with their moneyprinting. It compounds one's savings into nothingness. That's before it ultimately blows up altogether with hyperinflation which is its only possible long-term outcome given the exponential debt that doesn't scale with GDP.
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#24TIL: https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci - quite horrifying! EDIT: For comparison: https://gridwatch.co.uk/
What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste. Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible. Because that's what everyone else is doing. With Bitcoin, you now exactly what your costs are and what your yields are. There's a clear threshold,…
> What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste.
WTF? Hydro is rarely wasted because it's so dispatchable. Typically, it can only happen during high water seasons. Same for the gas power plants.
> Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible.
Like coal.
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#25Is it illegal to attack cryptocurrency?
You will probably end up in court. But you might not get convicted.
Shakeeb Ahmed was convicted of wire fraud for exploiting a smart contract bug.
Avi Eisenberg was also convicted for exploiting a smart contract bug, but he had his conviction overturned on appeal.
The Peraire-Bueno brothers were in court for exploiting a bug in the MEV mechanism but it ended in a mis-trial so we're going to have to wait to find out.
Not legal advice ;-)
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#26TIL: https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci - quite horrifying! EDIT: For comparison: https://gridwatch.co.uk/
What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste. Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible. Because that's what everyone else is doing. With Bitcoin, you now exactly what your costs are and what your yields are. There's a clear threshold,…
> We can't know how much power AI uses.
I call shenanigans on this statement. We can and most certainly can tell how much power AI is using. The upper bound is the total datacenter usage.
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
What this site does not show is how much of the power used to maintain the network is waste power such as gas that's normally burned off at the well site or hydro electric that goes to waste. Unlike AI, there's a strong incentive to find the cheapest electricity possible. Because that's what everyone else is doing. With Bitcoin, you now exactly what your costs are and what your yields are. There's a clear threshold,…
> gas that's normally burned off at the well site Funny thing about that. Civilized governments put a stop to that, by fining flare-offs to make it economical to not do that.
They still do it in North Dakota
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#28The Eyal & Sirer paper is pretty interesting - they basically point out that there is actually some game theory involved in when miners should reveal that they mined a block to compete most effectively with their fellows. If a pool can set up a situation where they mine a block and wait X seconds to reveal it, they can force other miners to waste X seconds of has power and gain an advantage.
It looks like a result with complex implications - eg, maybe making it impossible for new miners to set up unless they have a meaningful advantage in operating costs instead of just parity with the entrenched players. It is hard to tell because market reality is a mess but if there is a meaningful strategic choice to be made beyond simply announcing a block when it is mined then there is a lot of room for weird equilibriums even if the paper's specific analysis turns out to have flaws.
Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin
#29[flagged]
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