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Sabotaging Bitcoin

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Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#151

Post by fruitworks »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #60
Stevvo wrote: post #20

Before the AI bubble, Bitmain was only worth ~$1 billion. Now they are worth ~15, because they make chips for AI also. Either way, you could buy bitmain for the budget mentioned in the attack if it were for sale. Or bitmain could pull off the attack, if indeed they do "control ... all the major mining pools" as the article alleges. But who ultimately controls Bitmain? The Chinese state. So, by extension, bitcoin is c…

Like it or not in the end it will just be BTC. China will stop exporting Bitcoin mining tech. Nation States will dump money into proprietary BTC mining tech and keep it to themselves just like military tech. The US needs to see this reality and focus on domestic BTC mining tech like the future depends on it.

why? the easy solution is to let china monopolize bitcoin mining, and the value of bitcoin crashes. then the USD will stand unopposed and the chinese will end up with a bunch of useless equipmemt

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#152

Post by fruitworks »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #63
spir wrote: post #35

This is good analysis. The main longitudinal aspect omitted is that the profitability of the attack goes up as long as the price of BTC doesn't double or more each halving. In ~6 more years, Bitcoin will undergo two more halvings, so if the price of BTC is not ~400k by then, then attack will have become more feasible.

In the near future every nation state will be vying for the largest stake of the BTC mining pie and the BTC race will be bigger than the Space Race and the Nuclear Arms Race combined and adjusted for inflation.

why

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#153

Post by Bootvis »

jcfrei wrote: post #135
roenxi wrote: post #28

The 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 wi…

Take a look at the recently mined blocks. there are some miners that very frequently mine two blocks within quick succession, like just now for example: Block 930256: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/930256 Followed by block 930257: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/930257 The second block is usually almost empty.

This can have another explanation as well: the moment a block is found, the miner starts building on top of the previous block but hasn't constructed a new full block of transactions yet as that costs a bit of time to calculate and distribute. In this period, a new block could be found.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#154

Post by munksbeer »

jksmith wrote: post #85
UltraSane wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? BTC is not just worthless, it has negative value due to how much electricity it takes to securely mine new blocks.

Did you read the paper? There exists a technology that has purely enforceable property rights. What is that actually worth? I don't know. Yeah yeah, I've read the arguments about liquidity issues, shutting down the rails, making it illegal to trade, etc. but that's beside the point and depends on a thousand future variables to play out. So I don't know if btc will make it or not, but I do know property rights mean ev…

> So just the ability to have a technology enables pure property rights to a world where nobody really has enforceable property rights over anything seems pretty interesting to me.

Bitcoin doesn't enforce property rights. The only thing you own is your bitcoin. The fact that I "own" my house and the land it is built on is enforced by the state with guns.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#155

Post by munksbeer »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #146
D13Fd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because every unit of electricity causes climate change and burns resources (even renewable sources of electricity - they just burn them slower). From a societal point of view we are dumping huge amounts of electricity and resources into a hole to accomplish nothing that couldn’t be accomplished with a database and a trusted third party at a billionth of the cost (or less). The vast majority of transactions are specu…

In the long run BTC as a universal digital global currency will be more efficient than the fiat currencies it replaces.

That dreams is dead. Bitcoin is never going to be a universal digital currency. No-one (*) uses it for that purpose now, because they discovered it was rubbish as a cash system

(*) Approaching no-one on a global scale.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#156

Post by gorbachev »

beenBoutIT wrote: post #147
oofbey wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC enthusiasts have very creative arguments for why their currency isn’t the a complete disaster for the climate. Like pointing fingers.

The good that BTC will do in the long run is worth the investment. Civilization getting out from under fiat currencies - once and for all - is a massive step in the right direction.

I'm curious as to what's your time horizon for "in the long run". When is this transition to bitcoin going to happen?

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#157

Post by copirate »

palata wrote: post #145
copirate wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a lottery, the more tickets you buy, the higher your chances to have the winning number. Yes, and it's exactly the same in bitcoin with the hashing power. Each hash is a ticket. > If we played with a roulette and said "the goal is to be the first to have a winning number at the roulette" and I can try 50 times before you start, obviously I am more likely to win our game, am I not? In bitcoin the goal is not to b…

It is precisely what this discussion is about. From the article: > The key idea behind this strategy, called Selfish Mining, is for a pool to keep its discovered blocks private, thereby intentionally forking the chain. The honest nodes continue to mine on the public chain, while the pool mines on its own private branch. If the pool discovers more blocks, it develops a longer lead on the public chain, and continues to…

> The key idea behind this strategy, called Selfish Mining, is for a pool to keep its discovered blocks private, thereby intentionally forking the chain. The honest nodes continue to mine on the public chain, while the pool mines on its own private branch. If the pool discovers more blocks, it develops a longer lead on the public chain, and continues to keep these new blocks private. When the public branch approaches the pool's private branch in length, the selfish miners reveal blocks from their private chain to the public.

I don't understand how this scenario is beneficial. If the selfish miner doesn't have 51% of the hashing power, they can discover more blocks than the public chain only if they are very lucky. They don't know in advance that they will be that lucky. Withholding blocks in hope of this luck means putting these blocks at a very high risk of being discarded and losing the rewards. Why would they do that, exactly? If they get lucky, they get the rewards of their chain, and discard the rewards of the other miners. If they don't, they lose a lot of rewards. On the other hand, if they just publish the blocks they find, they're almost guaranteed to get the rewards. Why take the risk? It sounds like putting your own rewards at risk just to put others' rewards at risk. It looks like the risks even out.

> The goal is to be the first (or very close to the first), because it makes it much more likely that your chain will not be abandoned.

Yes, if there are blocks that are found at almost the same time. But that's not the situation discussed here.

In other situations, being first doesn't matter. If a miner finds a block before you do, then you just start mining on top of their block. You haven't lost anything.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#158

Post by Lerc »

qgin wrote: post #6
will5421 wrote: post #3

Is it illegal to attack cryptocurrency?

If crypto needs legal protection from attacks, I think that would invalidate most of its value proposition.

That seems to be a reasonable position. I'm kind-of comfortable with the position of bitcoin as being large enough to attract significant attacks, but not so dominant that a catestrophic failure of the system would have significant global impact.

I have nothing against bitcoin being the money of the future, but if it is to become that, this is the sort of trial by fire that it should endure.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#159

Post by _heimdall »

yellow_lead wrote: post #108
copirate wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How is it wasted if they work on the current chain? If they find a block during those X seconds, they'll propagate it before the waiting pool does. The waiting pool will then just lose the revenue from the block they put on hold. They're the one…

I might be wrong but I think it's like this.. A finds a block after 1 minute, then powers off and waits for another minute. They reveal the block after 2 minutes. B searches for the block for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, A has used 1 minute of their compute, and B has used 2.

In this case A would be at an advantage to spend the 2 minutes looking for the next block. If they happen to find another block quickly they could release then in quick succession.

The benefit there is that if another miner released a block before that 3 minutes this miner still can release their first block and has already spent 2 minutes working on a block that could better validate their first block now that there are competing chains.

Re: Sabotaging Bitcoin

#160

Post by _heimdall »

sebbyBinx wrote: post #93

Part of this post addresses the economics of creating a 6 block re-org. This makes sense as 6-confimations is the standard for Bitcoin finality today . However, as Bitcoin's security inevitably weakens over the coming years due to diminishing miner rewards (denominated in BTC), I believe this "6-confimation" acceptance policy will change to include not only the number of confirmations, but the timing of those confirm…

> This would significantly enhance Bitcoin's double spending resistance without adding/altering any code

I would have expected such security rules are part of the miner code, no? Don't they need to consider rules related to the comparative security level of a chain when decided which chain to follow when multiple exist?

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