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BTC Endgame

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Re: BTC Endgame

#41

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #3

>There is currently no defense for this attack in Bitcoin, as the simulation demonstrates. The entire Bitcoin miner reward model is the defense for this attack. Nation states have powerful computers... but nowhere near as powerful as the decentralized Bitcoin mining network combined. Even if they did currently, the endgame for Bitcoin as envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto was for everyone on the planet to be mining Bitco…

Who needs processors when you've got big guns?

They don't need the processors - they can simply change the laws.

Re: BTC Endgame

#42

Post by tshaddox »

WJW wrote: post #36
nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> China gains no benefit from destroying Bitcoin; Citation needed on this one I'm afraid. If nothing else, a currency that the Party cannot control would be A Problem. China did not have much economic benefit in halting the ANT IPO, yet it did not go through all the same. There _might_ be a benefit in allowing bitcoin to continue to exist of course, if they think it advances their cause more than it hurts it. But as…

Why haven’t they destroyed it then?

Re: BTC Endgame

#43

Post by PragmaticPulp »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> rather, it'll be because the U.S. has destroyed the dollar. There's value in cryptocurrency simply in it being an alternative that's readily available, so that civilization doesn't stop if the U.S. does end up miscalculating and hyperinflating the dollar.

Even before Bitcoin, we had plenty of other alternative currencies that could have replaced the dollar. I’ve been reading headlines speculating about the dollar being replaced by other currencies as long as I can remember, before Bitcoin existed.

To your point: If Bitcoin somehow did become an alternative world currency and USD was out of the running, wouldn’t that create great incentive for China to crash Bitcoin prices and drive everyone to use their national currency?

I’m not happy with the current rate of inflation, but I think it’s also clear that true hyperinflationary scenarios aren’t likely in modern countries. As much as we like to criticize governments (often rightfully so), it takes orders of magnitude more incompetence and malice for a government to enter hyperinflation. It’s not something that is stumbled upon by accident.

Re: BTC Endgame

#44

Post by gge »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> Stellar

kek

Re: BTC Endgame

#45

Post by AffableSpatula »

yrral wrote: post #24
AffableSpatula wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for change in hash function to work, it would require remonitising to a significant hash rate. Why would anyone invest in mining equipment on that new hash function if they already know how the game ends? (ie. their equipment being written off)

Theres no need to start at a huge hash rate. You can fork and then reset/reduce the difficulty, or adjust the difficulty in the way BCH does. You can also use POW algorithms that can be done only on commodity hardware like GPUs or CPUs so that the community can do it in a more distributed way.

If the difficulty is low then re-attacking the forked chain is inexpensive so you have exactly the same problem. Additionally, reducing the hashrate reduces the settlement assurances increasing the number of confirmations required to be sure your transaction is finalised.

Re: BTC Endgame

#46

Post by flatline »

pvarangot wrote: post #37
nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. When you say "China" do you mean like an actor that can make coordinated decisions? Or just a geographic region? I'm asking out of curiosity because yeah there's a lot of miners in China across many geographic regions but I never saw any evidence that they even talking to each other, even le…

I think the concern is that the authoritarian Chinese government can exercise an awful lot of influence when they are inclined. For a supposedly decentralized system it's an awfully big risk.

Re: BTC Endgame

#47

Post by WJW »

tshaddox wrote: post #42
WJW wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China gains no benefit from destroying Bitcoin; Citation needed on this one I'm afraid. If nothing else, a currency that the Party cannot control would be A Problem. China did not have much economic benefit in halting the ANT IPO, yet it did not go through all the same. There _might_ be a benefit in allowing bitcoin to continue to exist of course, if they think it advances their cause more than it hurts it. But as…

Why haven’t they destroyed it then?

In an elegant tautological argument: because at the moment it does not advance their causes to do so (yet).

Re: BTC Endgame

#48

Post by AffableSpatula »

stale2002 wrote: post #38
AffableSpatula wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think China being a dictatorship is much of a conspiracy. That's where a lot of ASICs are deployed, as well as the majority of the fabrication of the hardware itself.

> I don't think China being a dictatorship is much of a conspiracy. But china enacting authoritarian measures isn't good enough. The blog post did not suggest that the attack vector to worry about was a single country banning crypto. Instead, the blog post said that the attacks would only happen if every major country in the world colluded together, to all being authoritarian, and banning crypto everywhere. If only C…

Changing the hash function doesn't solve the problem. The mining game doesn't remonitise becuase everyone knows where it ends (denial of service and collapse, rendering mining hardware valueless).

Re: BTC Endgame

#49

Post by nine_k »

pvarangot wrote: post #37
nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. When you say "China" do you mean like an actor that can make coordinated decisions? Or just a geographic region? I'm asking out of curiosity because yeah there's a lot of miners in China across many geographic regions but I never saw any evidence that they even talking to each other, even le…

The question is whether CCP has sufficient control over them. If it does not yet, it might consider working on that. OTOH I like the game-theoretic argument: they don't need to.

Re: BTC Endgame

#50

Post by dingus9 »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #3

>There is currently no defense for this attack in Bitcoin, as the simulation demonstrates. The entire Bitcoin miner reward model is the defense for this attack. Nation states have powerful computers... but nowhere near as powerful as the decentralized Bitcoin mining network combined. Even if they did currently, the endgame for Bitcoin as envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto was for everyone on the planet to be mining Bitco…

Right. The protections against this are already baked into the protocol.

51% attacks don't make sense because you're hurting yourself 51% and hurting everyone else 49%.

And for this theoretical attack you'd probably need to sustain 90%+ hash power for a long time.

Your first hurdle will be producing enough ASICs to surpass current hashrate by nearly 10x. Solve that problem and you'll need a massive amount of energy and you'll have to set up huge mining facilities in various locations to prevent crippling local power grids.

This would take years to plan & execute. A lot of people would have to be involved. Good luck keeping it a secret. Network hash rate will continue to increase while you're building this infrastructure.

If by some miracle you've pulled this off, Bitcoin users will switch to a fork of Bitcoin that uses a different mining algorithm and your entire investment is now completely worthless.

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