Internal FBI risk assessment of Bitcoin network [pdf]

Post by rorrr » Sun, Nov 18, 2012, 9:30 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #121

rorrr wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would stop me from creating a thousand (or a million) wallets, and just randomly shuffling money between them a thousand times per day, creating a visibility of activity? As long as you control all the wallets, the money is still yours.

Not much now, but if this becomes the norm, transaction fees will stop you. Or at least discourage heavily - excessive transactions aren't great for the network because they bloat the block chain. Mixers largely bypass this concern because they can deal with larger blocks of money and more people than you can realistically do yourself, so the transaction fees are basically inconsequential. Also, if you do this, you'r…

If I send the money between my wallets, the transaction fees are not an issue - I keep that money, don't I?

Making a new TOR connection per transaction shouldn't be too hard to automate.

Post by Groxx » Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 8:50 AM UTC

rorrr wrote: post #151

Groxx wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much now, but if this becomes the norm, transaction fees will stop you. Or at least discourage heavily - excessive transactions aren't great for the network because they bloat the block chain. Mixers largely bypass this concern because they can deal with larger blocks of money and more people than you can realistically do yourself, so the transaction fees are basically inconsequential. Also, if you do this, you'r…

If I send the money between my wallets, the transaction fees are not an issue - I keep that money, don't I? Making a new TOR connection per transaction shouldn't be too hard to automate.

They are an issue. Transaction fees are paid to the miner who builds the block which contains a transaction - for your transactions to be valid, they must be included in a block, so you'll have to pay the fees. Unless you mine the block yourself and don't require a fee / recollect it - a possibility, but your odds are abysmal.

Transaction fees are intended to be motivation to be a miner. Since 50 bitcoins per mined block will soon become 25 and eventually nothing, transaction fees will progressively take over to become the majority of miners' income. They're not enforced by the protocol, so there may be some transaction-fee-free miners out there at any given time, but they're not likely to be the majority of the compute power (and will probably diminish as time goes on). You might end up waiting for a long time for your transaction to be confirmed.

Re: Internal FBI risk assessment of Bitcoin network [pdf]

Re: Internal FBI risk assessment of Bitcoin network [pdf]