[HN Gopher] Sabotaging Bitcoin
___________________________________________________________________
Sabotaging Bitcoin
Author : zdw
Score : 187 points
Date : 2025-12-30 20:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.dshr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.dshr.org)
| gerdesj wrote:
| TIL: https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci - quite horrifying!
|
| EDIT: For comparison: https://gridwatch.co.uk/
| kfrzcode wrote:
| Meanwhile, Hedera remains carbon negative and 7 orders of
| magnitude more efficient than Bitcoin.
|
| "Today, Hedera is performing the equivalent of over 10,000,000
| transactions and 788,000 transactions for the same amount of
| energy it takes Bitcoin and Ethereum to process 1,
| respectively."
|
| [0]: https://hedera.com/blog/going-carbon-negative-at-hedera-
| hash... [1]: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10160701/
| wslh wrote:
| Databases either?
| ShowalkKama wrote:
| I find extremely funny that I came across this spammy comment
| while sitting on a vulnerability in their code because my
| attempts of contacting them have been unsuccessful
| kfrzcode wrote:
| Here you go! https://hedera.com/bug-bounty/
| oofbey wrote:
| Everything is orders of magnitude more efficient than
| bitcoin.
| Zaskoda wrote:
| 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, when power in
| an area becomes too expensive there's no reason left to mine.
|
| AI, on the other hand, is a bet on the future - infinite gains.
| No matter how much power costs, it's worth it to keep using as
| much as possible. We can't know how much power AI uses. Unlike
| Bitcoin, there aren't any metrics from which to extrapolate.
| But we do know that AI uses more power than Bitcoin already. We
| just have no idea how much more.
| fragmede wrote:
| > 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.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| They still do it in North Dakota
| krupan wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this. Do they just allow the gas to go
| into the atmosphere instead? I've always heard that's worse
| than burning it
| UltraSane wrote:
| flare-offs are much better than releasing raw methane into
| the atmosphere because methane is a much worse greenhouse
| gas than CO2
| nativeit wrote:
| Did they require the methane be captured? I thought flare-
| offs were done because the methane gas is something like
| 1000x worse than the CO2.
| cyberax wrote:
| > 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.
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| An interesting point is that any nation state or
| corporation can focus resources on either AI or BTC, but
| not both at the same time. BTC is a sure bet in the long
| run while AI is potentially capable of delivering a faster
| ROI with no hard guarantees. As BTC FOMO hits every country
| on Earth it's likely that AI will take a 100+ year backseat
| to massive state sponsored BTC operations. It's not hard to
| imagine a situation where governments restrict AI HW
| manufacture and limit electricity for AI as a means of
| supporting the national BTC effort.
| UltraSane wrote:
| "BTC is a sure bet in the long run "
|
| 7 transactions per second is NOT a sure bet.
| childintime wrote:
| And don't discount the negative sentiment around bitcoin
| as the nest of types that deserve to be completely
| wrecked financially, because they add no value to
| society, as in a Ponzi scheme. It seems inevitable to me
| this scheme is going to end some day and nobody is going
| to give a damn. It'll be the "Good Riddance Coin", filled
| with negative sentiment.
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| At 7 TSP BTC is far more fungible than Gold.
| UltraSane wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense at all.
| bb88 wrote:
| > 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.
| utopiah wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you have an estimate on that?
| oofbey wrote:
| BTC enthusiasts have very creative arguments for why their
| currency isn't the a complete disaster for the climate. Like
| pointing fingers.
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| 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.
| gorbachev wrote:
| I'm curious as to what's your time horizon for "in the
| long run". When is this transition to bitcoin going to
| happen?
| johnnienaked wrote:
| And what does sucking up all that low cost electricity to
| waste on a frivolity do to the price of electricity in
| general?
|
| Cmon you remember supply and demand right
| bujkopl wrote:
| Since when is incentivizing low cost renewable energy
| horrifying?
| gerdesj wrote:
| My first link shows that Bitcoin consumes roughly 40GW and my
| second link shows that the UK roughly does too.
|
| There are a lot of ifs and buts here ... but the amount of
| power used to support the BT mechanism worldwide is roughly
| the same as the power consumption of the entirety of the UK.
| D13Fd wrote:
| 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 speculation on what
| other people might pay for a bitcoin (i.e., a line on a
| spreadsheet). And even then, that speculation and trading
| often occurs on secondary markets which rely on trusted third
| parties - thus rendering the entire ordeal even more
| pointless.
| bujkopl wrote:
| Better shoot down the sun then.
| comradesmith wrote:
| You're right. I'll setup the database. Everyone can trust
| me, honest!
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| In the long run BTC as a universal digital global currency
| will be more efficient than the fiat currencies it
| replaces.
| munksbeer wrote:
| 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.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Bitcoin cares not for how much energy it uses, just how
| valuable the energy it uses is. This does not make more
| energy available to anyone else or reduce the price.
| utopiah wrote:
| Well what's arguably even more horrifying is according to
| "Estimated average energy efficiency of bitcoin mining
| hardware" no significant changed happened since 2014. I imagine
| we went from CPU to GPU to ASIC in couple of years and now for
| more than a decade, no change, just more.
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| I'm not sure what data you looking at but we went from 8300
| J/TH in 2014 to 33.4 J/TH in 2023. So... what are you talking
| about?
| utopiah wrote:
| They have a graph at the bottom with the name I provided
| "Estimated average energy efficiency of bitcoin mining
| hardware"
| tenuousemphasis wrote:
| You're reading the graph wrong, but I still have no idea
| _how_ you are. Joules per terahash has declined from 8297
| in 2014 to 33 in 2023 (the latest year they have data), a
| 99.996% reduction, or a 250x improvement in efficiency.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Well, improved energy efficiency just means more hashes/s and
| the difficulty adjusting. There's nothing to be gained in
| terms of the security or efficiency of the network as a whole
| by making the hardware faster, it's only good for whoever
| makes and uses that hardware.
| will5421 wrote:
| Is it illegal to attack cryptocurrency?
| qgin wrote:
| If crypto needs legal protection from attacks, I think that
| would invalidate most of its value proposition.
| dboreham wrote:
| Definitely reduces the cost of consensus though.
| Lerc wrote:
| 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.
| wmf wrote:
| The attack described in this article might violate CFTC market
| manipulation regulations.
| anonym29 wrote:
| IANAL, but from my understanding, the primary law used to
| prosecute hacking is the CFAA's broad "without authorization"
| and "exceeding authorized access" clauses.
|
| That said, authorization implies an entity with ownership
| rights granting some kind of limited license to others to
| interact with the owner's property.
|
| For a permissionless decentralized network with no owner, where
| the attack is against the consensus of which chain is valid,
| I'd have a hard time arguing that "authorization" as a concept
| is even applicable or relevant.
|
| As wmf suggested, market manipulation laws may still apply, but
| I'm not sure traditional CFAA "without authorization" /
| "exceeding authorized access" hacking charges could apply,
| though I'd be willing to bet a prosecutor could make a case for
| wire fraud - a scheme to defraud using interstate
| communications.
| OJFord wrote:
| Depending on the currency, it's celebrated. (Code is law, etc.)
| Etheryte wrote:
| That says nothing about actual legality though, just like how
| me saying I am the law doesn't make me the king of the world.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| 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 ;-)
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The answer to this problem is in the original Bitcoin whitepaper
| itself. It gives the formula for the required number of
| confirmations.
|
| The Monero PoW community has had to deal with such nonsense, as
| have other smaller PoW coins.
|
| With e=1e-3, the expected number of 6 confirmations works only so
| long as the largest pool size does not exceed 12%. For a pool
| size of 30%, at least 24 confirmations should be required in
| Bitcoin, but 49 in Monero with its stricter e=1e-6. You can see
| the table and the math at
| https://gist.github.com/impredicative/0907e1699f5ff97a9fed5d...
| and again it's all cleanly reproducible from the whitepaper.
| Anyone who is still requiring only 6 confirmations then will be
| setting themselves up for a risk of reversal.
| dmurray wrote:
| TFA observes that it would be disruptive and socially difficult
| to move systems to expect requiring 24 confirmations, and
| expresses relief that other responses are possible.
|
| Perhaps this is more suitable as a response over months or
| years to a long-term shift in the composition of Bitcoin miners
| than as a short-term measure when it appears that someone has
| suddenly acquired 30% of mining capacity today.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Yes: "Not aligning with reality is disruptive." Some lessons
| have to be learned the hard way if they're not learned the
| soft way. The problem is not reality.
| rationalist wrote:
| Bitcoin has a block/confirmation approximately every 10
| minutes, and Monero every 2 minutes.
|
| So 240 minutes for Bitcoin, and 98 minutes for Monero.
|
| So even though Monero is more strict, it is still "faster".
| Stevvo wrote:
| 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 controlled by the CCP.
|
| What a shitshow. Crypto needs to move on from bitcoin already,
| pick something better... anything better. There are so many
| options, and bitcoin is the worst of all of them.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Too many people have a vested interest in keeping Bitcoin going
| for as long as possible, sadly. It's going to take a massive
| black swan of some kind to shake their faith.
|
| Heck, they can embed CSAM into the Bitcoin blockchain and that
| won't stop anyone from using it, because above all else, line
| must go up.
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| 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.
| hackernudes wrote:
| It comes down to semiconductor manufacturing, not ASIC
| design. Taiwan, Korea, USA are still on top.
| oblio wrote:
| LOL. The Sam Altman plan. Or the US could just put Bitcoin on
| the Entities List and forbid any US citizen and any US owned
| entity from investing or trading Bitcoin and Bitcoin derived
| financial instruments, probably force 25% or more of the
| Bitcoin money to pull out, crater Bitcoin value, and not
| perpetuate this atrocity against nature and humanity.
|
| "Democratizing finance" my a**.
| fruitworks wrote:
| 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
| roenxi wrote:
| 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 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.
| mvkel wrote:
| Isn't this the same thing as saying "if everyone just agrees
| that a dollar bill is actually just a piece of paper, USD
| becomes worthless"? Albeit at a smaller scale
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| I don't think it is the same thing. Everyone agrees that
| mining the next block is valuable.
| cheschire wrote:
| Unless they didn't.
|
| There's nothing inherently valuable about crypto beyond
| what value people assign to it in their minds.
| krupan wrote:
| Same with all money. Please research more before
| parroting this argument. You are not the first person to
| think of it.
| cheschire wrote:
| GP was arguing against GGP's point and I was simply
| pointing out that the argument was hollow.
|
| What are you referring to with "research more"?
| krupan wrote:
| Hmm, maybe I wasn't following the thread very well? Many
| people like to discredit Bitcoin by saying it's only
| worth is what people decide it is. If that's not what you
| were trying to do then I apologize.
| cheschire wrote:
| I don't discredit any crypto based solely on its ability
| or inability to fulfill debts, public and private.
|
| But I do wonder if the abstract nature of it will forever
| hinder its ability to do so universally.
|
| I'm also interested why Bitcoin Cash wasn't more
| successful after the fork.
| yownie wrote:
| >I'm also interested why Bitcoin Cash wasn't more
| successful after the fork.
|
| you mean besides it being run by a bunch of crooks and
| scam artists like CSW?
| cheschire wrote:
| I wasn't actually asking, but making a point. Thanks for
| helping spell it out though!
| TylerE wrote:
| False. Gold and silver have intrinsic value beyond their
| use as currency.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| Not for most people. They aren't going to smelt it down
| and use it to build electronics or jewelry.
|
| For most people the value is what they can receive for it
| in trade. Which holds for all money.
| jfengel wrote:
| True, but only a minuscule fraction of it is used for
| that purpose. If that were the sole source of its value,
| it would be worth pennies per once.
| roenxi wrote:
| https://pse-info.de/en/scale/price - gold doesn't stand
| out, there are a few similar ones
| (Rhodium/Palladium/Iridium/Platinum). I haven't checked,
| but we'd probably find the gold price sits in a boring-
| looking distribution of the prices of other elements.
| Probably an exponential or something that could be
| mistaken for it.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements
| if you prefer wikipedia.
|
| If it wasn't radioactive, poisonous and pyrophoric people
| would probably all just leap into the Neptunium market.
| TylerE wrote:
| That is obviously false on it's face.
|
| If it were only worth pennies an ounce, numerous
| industries wouldn't be paying what they do for it. The
| fact that many industries value it at several thousand
| dollars an ounce is self-evident from their continued use
| of it.
| patrickthebold wrote:
| This is interesting to think about: For gold I'd say the
| demand is coming from both industries and from people who
| want it as a store of value. If it was only used as an
| industrial chemical, then surely the price would drop
| because there would be less demand.
|
| Some bitcoin advocates will talk about how useful it is
| as a currency, and I wonder how much bitcoin is actually
| used for purposes other then to hope you can sell it to
| someone else for more than you paid.
| TylerE wrote:
| If the price dropped, it would be even more in demand and
| reach equilibrium. Gold has several unique mechanical
| properties, being the most corrosion resistant metal and
| one of the most electrically conductive, as well as being
| able to be flattened into extremely thin sheets and drawn
| into extremely fine wire.
| nradov wrote:
| It's always hilarious when people who are unclear on the
| basics themselves tell other to "research more". I
| suppose it's the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I don't see it that way. I see the person saying "stop
| making tired arguments" or "don't ask questions that have
| been answered hundreds of times".
| jfengel wrote:
| Fiat money has a difference: an army. It is issued by a
| government which has the legitimate right to demand
| taxes, paid in their currency, and deprive you of life
| and liberty if you don't.
|
| Ultimately the populace could repudiate the whole social
| contract, which is also just consensus, but that's a far
| bigger deal than mere money.
| nradov wrote:
| Well to be pedantic, in the USA at least the value of the
| dollar is largely maintained by _civilian_ law
| enforcement rather than the military. If you incur a tax
| liability and fail to pay your debt in US dollars then
| eventually the IRS will seize your assets and auction
| them off to settle the debt. Due to the Posse Comitatus
| Act, the Army doesn 't get involved.
| enaaem wrote:
| The true value of (fiat) money is derived from the fact
| that contracts are denominated in that money and those
| contracts are enforced by a central authority with guns.
| No other assumption is needed in financial engineering.
| ycombinatrix wrote:
| Okay, fine. Everyone involved** agrees that mining the
| next block is valuable.
| palata wrote:
| But that's irrelevant to the question above. The question
| asks "isn't [this attack] the same as saying that if
| everybody agrees that the USD is worthless, then it is
| worthless?".
|
| The answer is "no, it's not the same". The attack does
| not require everybody to agree that the bitcoin is
| worthless.
|
| Obviously if everybody agrees that the bitcoin is
| worthless, then it is worthless. But that's a separate
| topic.
| palata wrote:
| That's a good question, but it is different. The equivalent
| would be "if everyone just agrees that a bitcoin is worth
| nothing, then it is worth nothing".
|
| I don't know if I have a good comparison here, but maybe
| something like "if the bank keeps your money for a little
| longer before validating your transaction, they can use your
| money for a little longer and make more money from it". Of
| course if your bank says that a transaction takes 1 year, you
| will go to another bank. But if they say it takes a day...
| copirate wrote:
| > 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
| ones wasting mining time when that happens, while the others
| never do.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Right, but the odds of this happening is small(ish) - I'm
| certain there is a sweet spot for witholding time. If they
| don't find a block within the time interval, then effectively
| all the work for that time is "wasted" by the other
| participants since it could not have been put on the chain
| anyway AND the witholder has a headstart of a couple of
| seconds searching for a new block.
| copirate wrote:
| Wasting time would mean not receiving the rewards if they
| find a block. But that's not the case here. If they find a
| block within the time interval, they get the rewards (and
| the withheld block is discarded).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the odds depend on how much hash power you have. if you're
| at 5% of the network you can wait longer than if you're at
| 1%. the other really big problem here is it creates
| incentives for miners to work together to be able to delay
| longer
| yellow_lead wrote:
| 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.
| copirate wrote:
| But the time spent by B is not wasted. If they find a block
| between minute 1 and 2, their block will be accepted, and A
| just lose the reward of the block they found.
| palata wrote:
| When you reveal a block, it's not accepted
| instantaneously. When two competing blocks are revealed
| "roughly at the same time", it ends up in two competing
| chains.
|
| If B finds a block between minute 1 and 2, they start
| working on their competing chain, but A is already
| working on theirs. And A had a headstart because it
| started working on it somewhere between minute 1. So it's
| more likely that A's fork wins the race in the end.
| copirate wrote:
| But the head start doesn't change anything. At this point
| A is mining on their block, B is mining on theirs.
| There's no advantage.
|
| I'd even say that B is slightly more likely to keep their
| reward because they started propagating their block
| earlier, so it's more likely other miners are mining on
| this block.
|
| If A finds a second block between minute 1 and 2, then
| they win, but it would be the same if the didn't withhold
| their block.
|
| When A is mining on their hidden block, they mine for a
| potential height of 2 that would win against a miner only
| able to push a height of 1. But by doing that they put
| the block they found at risk of being abandoned because
| another miner found a block in the meantime.
|
| So if you find a block, you get almost 100% chance it'll
| stay if you publish it immediately. If you withhold it
| and find another one you get 100% chance of keeping your
| 2 blocks. If you don't find that 2nd one, you get <50%
| chance of your block to be the main chain (depending on
| time of reaction of another block being published, and
| connectivity). On the other hand, if you don't withhold
| it and find 2 blocks in a row, you also get almost 100%
| chance of keeping your 2 blocks. I fail to see how
| withholding is profitable.
| palata wrote:
| > I fail to see how withholding is profitable.
|
| Because you keep ignoring the part where it is profitable
| :-).
|
| > If A finds a second block between minute 1 and 2, then
| they win, but it would be the same if the didn't withhold
| their block.
|
| Except that by withholding their block, they got a
| headstart so they are more likely to find the second
| block. So it's not the same.
|
| And you keep ignoring the fact that they don't
| necessarily have to wait until someone else finds a
| competing block. Maybe a winning strategy is to always
| withhold the block for 5 seconds. If you slightly
| increase your likelihood to find the winning block, you
| increase your profit, and that's the whole point.
|
| With the interesting consequence (and that's the game
| theory part) where if everybody starts withholding their
| block for 5 seconds, then it changes the winning
| strategy.
| copirate wrote:
| > Except that by withholding their block, they got a
| headstart so they are more likely to find the second
| block. So it's not the same.
|
| Withholding their block (5s or whatever) doesn't make
| them more likely to find the second block. The
| probability of finding a block is always the same, given
| a hashrate.
|
| They are the only ones mining on this particular chain,
| but that's not an advantage either. How mining on a
| hidden chain is an advantage?
|
| On the other hand, withholding certainly makes them more
| likely to lose the reward of the block.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the key to realize is that this strategy only makes sense
| if you have a considerable fraction of total hashrate. If
| you have 10% hashrate, delaying for 1 block period gives
| you a 10% chance of finding another block on top (that no
| one else can search for because you haven't published the
| first one).
| copirate wrote:
| But by withholding you also increase the risk that your
| first block will never end up in the main chain (if the
| remaining 90% find a block while you're withholding).
|
| And you would sill have 10% chance of mining another
| block if you don't withhold.
|
| What advantage does withholding give you?
| palata wrote:
| > What advantage does withholding give you?
|
| One last time. By withholding, you have a headstart on
| the next block. If you can mine for longer, you increase
| your chances.
| Majromax wrote:
| > They are the only ones mining on this particular chain,
| but that's not an advantage either. How mining on a
| hidden chain is an advantage?
|
| It's easier to see the argument if you have a head start.
| Imagine you've somehow created a private chain that's 10
| blocks ahead of the public chain. You could publish that
| now and earn 10 blocks of reward, or you could continue
| mining until the lead diminishes to 0 blocks, earning the
| same 10 blocks of reward plus however many blocks you've
| mined in the meantime.
|
| If you have 50%+e of the hash rate on the network, this
| argument would have you bully other miners out by almost
| always stranding their blocks, since in expectation
| you'll mine blocks faster than your competitors.
|
| The insight is that this same situation can happen
| probabilistically with a finite but non-majority fraction
| of the hash rate on the network. With 49% of the hash
| rate you'll still be able to build a private chain some
| fraction of the time, so waiting a little bit to see if
| this occurs might have positive expected value.
| copirate wrote:
| But to get 10 blocks ahead you have to withhold blocks
| before knowing you'll be ahead. If you don't get ahead,
| you'll likely lose the reward of the blocks you withheld.
|
| So, you have to risk a lot of rewards, and for what
| potential gain? If you win you get to discard some blocks
| of others. You don't get more rewards, you just make
| others earn less (and you push the difficulty down a
| bit).
|
| I can see how you get a chance to double spend, though.
| If you want to double spend a transaction with N
| confirmations, you've to be N+1 blocks ahead in your
| hidden chain, publish your first transaction, wait for N
| confirmations on the public chain, and you publish your
| chain that's still 1 block ahead (and includes your
| double spend transaction).
|
| Indeed, it's not "51% expensive", but it's still very
| expensive because of the rewards lost during the failed
| attempts before you get ahead enough. Actually, it might
| even be more expensive, because with 51% you're
| guaranteed to get ahead enough at some point, so you
| don't really risk your rewards (if you can maintain 51%).
| palata wrote:
| > But to get 10 blocks ahead you have to withhold blocks
| before knowing you'll be ahead.
|
| You KNOW you are ahead, because you found a block and
| nobody else has published a block.
| palata wrote:
| > The probability of finding a block is always the same,
| given a hashrate.
|
| I think you are missing something very basic here: the
| longer you compute, the higher the likelihood that you
| will find the hash before the others.
|
| The extreme case being that if you can try ALL the
| possibilities before the others can start, then you are
| guarantee to find the solution before them.
| basilikum wrote:
| That's only mathematically true. The advantage is way too
| small to be relevant.
|
| Your advantage is having exhausted a fraction of the
| search space. But that fraction is tiny.
|
| You're trying to find a hash with a value below a certain
| threshold (simplified said, a hash starting with a
| certain amount of zeroes). You do this by trying random
| inputs to the hash function. Every input has the same
| probability of getting an output that is low enough in
| value. You are not advancing by having tried other
| inputs. It's practically equivalent to rolling multiple
| dices until enough of them show a one. Every roll has the
| same probability of succeeding regardless of the rolls
| before.
| _heimdall wrote:
| 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.
| emil-lp wrote:
| If you mine a block without revealing it, not only are you
| the only one that can mine the next block after that, but
| everyone is mining on the "wrong head". There's of course the
| risk that someone finds a different head in the meantime, but
| otherwise, you waste competitors' resources, while you get an
| advantage on the next block.
| copirate wrote:
| They are not mining on the wrong head. They are mining on
| the current head. If they find a block it will be accepted
| as the new head and the withheld block will be rejected, so
| it's not wasted mining time at all.
| palata wrote:
| Not an expert, but I have two thoughts:
|
| 1. They don't have to wait until another miner finds a
| block, they can just wait "for some time" and then
| release their block. All that time gives them the edge
| for the next block.
|
| 2. My understanding is that if two different blocks are
| found concurrently _for the same head_ , then the network
| waits for the next block to select which "new head" is
| accepted. I.e. when there are competing chains, the
| longer chain wins. So I could imagine that a strategy
| could be to wait until some other miner announces their
| block and release yours precisely at that time, hence
| creating two competing chains. But you presumably have an
| edge because you have already been mining for a while on
| top of your block.
| copirate wrote:
| There's no edge. Having spent time mining in the past
| doesn't increase your odds of finding a block in the
| future.
| adwn wrote:
| The idea is that you can start with the next head
| _earlier_ than all the others, giving you an edge in
| being the first to find the next block.
| copirate wrote:
| But what do they gain by doing that? What's the edge?
| Starting earlier doesn't give you any advantage.
| palata wrote:
| > Starting earlier doesn't give you any advantage
|
| It's a race. Starting earlier obviously gives an
| advantage?!
| copirate wrote:
| No it's not a race, it's a lottery.
|
| It would be like saying you've an edge if you start
| earlier at the roulette.
| palata wrote:
| I think you're confused.
|
| In a lottery, the more tickets you buy, the higher your
| chances to have the winning number.
|
| 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
| could try 50 times before you started, _obviously_ I
| would be more likely to win our game, wouldn 't I?
| copirate wrote:
| > 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 be the first. The goal is
| to find a winning hash that's on a chain that will not be
| abandoned. As soon as a new block is propagated you start
| mining on the new head. It doesn't change anything that
| you previously worked on another chain. The time spent on
| the previous chain is not wasted, unless finding a block
| wouldn't have got you the reward.
|
| There is a kind of a race if 2 blocks are found
| simultaneously. But that's not really what this
| discussion is about, and in this case the outcome depends
| mostly on network connectivity.
| palata wrote:
| 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 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.
|
| > In bitcoin the goal is not to be the first. The goal is
| to find a winning hash that's on a chain that will not be
| abandoned.
|
| 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. If you wait 2 days before you reveal
| your block, obviously it will be abandoned...
| copirate wrote:
| > 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.
| palata wrote:
| > Yes, if there are blocks that are found at almost the
| same time. But that's not the situation discussed here.
|
| It VERY MUCH is.
|
| Of course if you take another scenario that doesn't make
| sense, then it doesn't make sense :-).
|
| > They don't know in advance that they will be that
| lucky.
|
| Whenever you find a block, you know you are one of the
| first to find it. It's obvious because nobody else has
| published a block. So you know you are lucky right now.
| You can decide to wait 1, 2, 5, X seconds before you
| reveal your block and start mining the new block in the
| meantime.
|
| Maybe you just mine for 5 seconds before revealing the
| block, and that's the winning strategy. Maybe you wait
| until someone else publishes their block and you
| immediately reveal yours, ending up with two competing
| chains but knowing that you had a headstart with yours.
|
| The detail of whether or not this is profitable, and how
| exactly you should do it (Wait X seconds? Wait until
| someone publishes a block?) is statistics and game theory
| ("What if the others are also withholding their blocks
| now? What is their strategy?"). The whole question is
| whether or not there is a practical, profitable strategy
| doing that.
| sjducb wrote:
| There is an advantage because occasionally you find the
| second block while the first block is still secret, then
| you release the two blocks in quick succession. That's
| the edge.
| svara wrote:
| You can determine statistically whether you have found a
| block relatively early, and conversely whether other
| miners are unlikely to find one soon.
|
| So you can get a head start on the next block from the
| likely new head block you've found.
|
| It only works on average of course, you might be the one
| wasting resources if someone else published a block while
| you're withholding yours, but the trick is for you to
| gain an edge on average.
|
| Now what happens if everyone is doing that calculation?
| That's where you need to do the game theory analysis
| (which I haven't and don't claim to understand).
| copirate wrote:
| > You can determine statistically whether you have found
| a block relatively early, and conversely whether other
| miners are unlikely to find one soon.
|
| Finding a block relatively early doesn't affect the odds
| of others finding a block soon. The odds are always the
| same, each hash is an independent event.
|
| I don't see why withholding would get you an edge on
| average. If the others find a block while you're
| withholding, you lose your reward. If you find another
| block before them, you get the rewards of 2 blocks,
| exactly like if the same happened but you didn't
| withhold.
|
| The only way for you to have an advantage is if you find
| a 2nd block at the same time as another one finds one on
| the other chain. You can then publish a height of 2 vs a
| height of 1, so you win. But to do that you have to first
| put your first block reward at high risk by withholding
| it. I don't think the odds are in your favor here.
| svara wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking about this wrong. I don't think it
| works.
|
| Edit: I think the strategy does work, but a little
| differently: if you withhold a block and someone else
| finds one while you do so, you can still publish yours
| and win a race with a certain probability, i.e. the
| expected loss is not as high as one might think.
|
| Then, if you do that and if you have enough hash power,
| you can end up mining a private chain ahead of the public
| one often enough, so that the loss you take is less than
| the loss others take through the hash power they are
| wasting because of you doing this.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| What makes it more likely that your first block ends up the
| next head and you're not wasting your own time on the
| second one if someone beats you to the first one while
| you're holding off?
| jcfrei wrote:
| 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.
| Bootvis wrote:
| 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.
| spir wrote:
| 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.
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| 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.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Why? BTC is not just worthless, it has negative value due to
| how much electricity it takes to securely mine new blocks.
| jksmith wrote:
| 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
| everything to humans. They literally determine whether not
| one is a slave (I am my own property). 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.
| nradov wrote:
| Property rights are enforced with guns.
| logicchains wrote:
| That's why Monero is superior; no amount of guns is going
| to help somebody steal property that they don't know you
| have.
| basilikum wrote:
| A 5$ wrench bar is enough to make you give me all the
| moneroj you have eventually. I won't know when that point
| is and will just continue using the wrench until I am
| sufficiently sure you have given me all.
| jksmith wrote:
| So is theft. Depends on who has the most guns.
| munksbeer wrote:
| > 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.
| jksmith wrote:
| You're not getting what I'm saying. Before this
| technology, the concept of property rights could not be
| defended, depending on the attacker. This tech allows
| that, even if it is just for one use case.
| ravenstine wrote:
| That's like saying cars have negative value because of how
| much oil it takes to run them.
| standeven wrote:
| But cars are useful.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Cars have the benefit of transporting humans and goods
| around.
|
| It's more like saying a hypothetical car which moves
| itself by using gasoline as a propellant rather than fuel
| for its combustion engine would have negative value.
|
| Sure, using fuel (of all things) for propulsion would be
| one way to move a vehicle, but it would be inefficient by
| design.
|
| Bitcoin, at least, was created during a time where there
| was no alternative to security-by-inefficency, but PoS
| and other consensus mechanisms are pretty battle-tested
| now
| sanskritical wrote:
| Bitcoin has the benefit of being the first way in human
| history of being able to transfer value between two
| countries in a way that a corrupt bureaucrat, judge, or
| customs official can't freeze, reverse, or steal it.
| That's the benefit Bitcoin brings humanity, and to me, I
| prefer it to having a car.
|
| Proof of Stake is an absurd security proposition.
| Stakeholders are immediately centralized. In every single
| PoS coin, the governance immediately becomes the
| exchanges because they always hold the most coins. They
| can and have used this to guide PoS coins towards
| governance unfavorable to the users, like as happened
| with Steem.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Bitcoin consumes 20 to 40GW to process 7 transactions per
| second. Using 30GW means about 4 billion joules per
| transaction. And transactions per second don't scale with
| more electricity. It is the least efficient technology
| ever created.
| johnnienaked wrote:
| Diminishing value certainly it's called depreciation
| pawelduda wrote:
| It's worth around 85k USD at the time you wrote the comment
| fruitworks wrote:
| why
| bujkopl wrote:
| This article is FUD. No one is spending $30B+ for an attack that
| _gasp_ extends the required confirmations to a few hours until a
| re-org can be achieved and accounts settled.
|
| In fact, wiping out the derivative markets would be seen as a
| net-postive by most individual hodlers.
| comradesmith wrote:
| I believe the article reached the same conclusion you did
| nativeit wrote:
| You forgot to do your own research and read the article.
| w10-1 wrote:
| TIL the scale of bitcoin derivatives in 2020 (hence volatility):
| ~2T on 2B market activity. Jeepers!
|
| --- Starting in late 2020, as shown in The Economist's graphic,
| the spot market in Bitcoin became dwarfed by the derivatives
| markets. In the last month $1.7T of Bitcoin futures traded on
| unregulated exchanges, and $6.4B on regulated exchanges. Compare
| this with the $1.8B of the spot market in the same month. ---
| onion2k wrote:
| Why would you expect the scale of the derivatives to be related
| to the scale of the spot market, especially if the derivatives
| are cash-settled futures? One is basically gambling on the
| price of BTC going up or down, and the other is trading the
| actual BTC, right?
| phonicwheel wrote:
| How is trading the actual BTC not also gambling on the price
| of BTC going up or down?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| You might buy BTC to actually spend it, say on paying a
| ransomware vendor.
| tatersolid wrote:
| We're calling these organized criminals _vendors_ now?
| onion2k wrote:
| It's not really, but the difference is that I'm limited by
| the supply of BTC, and it requires that I actually have the
| money to make the 'bet' at the start. That restricts the
| size of the spot market.
|
| If I'm buying futures I can enter into a contract that says
| "I'll buy a contract for 1BTC that says BTC is going to go
| from $88.5k to $98.5k in 1 year." I don't actually hand
| over any money. In a year's time, if BTC is now $100k the
| person who agreed on the contract gives me $10k. If it
| doesn't go up then I owe the seller $10k. The futures
| contract is settled in cash - no BTC is involved.
|
| Right now though, I don't have a $88.5k to spend on BTC, so
| the spot market isn't an option. I probably could find $10k
| in a year's time so a bet on a BTC future might be viable.
| The actual derivative 'value' isn't real though. The only
| money changing hands is the delta of the change in value
| when the contract is settled.
|
| (Caveat: I am a total noob at finance stuff so this could
| be quite wrong. One of the many reasons I will not be
| buying that futures contract. :) )
| johnnienaked wrote:
| It's very wrong. Futures contracts on traditional
| exchanges have no counterparty risk and require the
| deposit of a significant amount of upfront capital as
| collateral. If the spot price of the underlying moves in
| either direction, debits or credits are made to and from
| each margin account and if you don't have the money to
| cover a margin call, the contract gets closed.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Future markets give traders leverage of 100x sometimes or
| more. Margin requirements are much lower than trading
| spot.
| johnnienaked wrote:
| Margin requirements for trading spot are zero, though
| initial capital requirements are obviously, well,
| whatever spot is.
|
| Futures contracts aren't just pieces of paper traded
| between people, they are actual promises to pay for
| physical delivery of the underlying.
|
| It's not surprising to me that crypto people consider
| them nothing more than leveraged gambling slips but
| that's really not how one should think about them.
| Personally I think crypto needs far heavier regulation
| than it gets.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Its hard for me to consider owning the underlying asset as
| gambling compared to owning paper bets on the future value.
| In the former you are owning it _today_ , in the later you
| are betting only on what it will cost to own later.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Derivatives can be structured in a time-constrained manner
| that requires them to go up/down in a specific time window,
| thus amplifying the gains/losses. Also there's generally no
| way to short an asset without borrowing them with a
| contract to pay them back (which requires timing the market
| move and paying rent on the asset). This is something that
| options contracts solved.
| Turneyboy wrote:
| Well for one with a gigantic derivatives market compared to
| the underlying one it becomes relatively cheap to manipulate
| the underlying market.
|
| If you can make a gigantic bet on the price going up and then
| buy a large amount of Bitcoin that moves the price up you can
| win from that. See the Jane street India derivatives market
| issue.
| rcxdude wrote:
| I dunno, ask India and Jane Street. That's the same basic
| situation: when the derivative market betting on the price
| going up or down is much larger than the market that actually
| sets that price, it's ripe for arbitrage/market manipulation
| by a player big enough to move the market (which one you
| think it is depends on whether you're one of the gamblers
| getting fleeced or the one taking their money).
| spectralista wrote:
| Because at that scale, the tail is wagging the dog and it is
| not even close.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Bitcoin is the least efficient technology ever created. There is
| no limit to how much electricity it can consume just to handle 7
| transactions per second. No matter HOW much electricity it uses
| this value will never increase.
| hggh wrote:
| This solution to this issue is extremely simple, but I bet it
| will never be implemented in Bitcoin BTC. That's one of the
| reasons why it forked in 1 August 2017.
| rlpb wrote:
| There is a limit. The cost of electricity required is bounded
| by the value of the reward (block reward plus transaction
| fees). The value of the reward is bounded too, since the
| "import" of electricity into the Bitcoin economy is
| inflationary.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Then making the block reward halve every 4 years is a pretty
| strange decision.
| sebbyBinx wrote:
| 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 confirmations as well. Consider a scenario where an
| exchange deciding whether a tx with 6-confirmations that took 4
| hours to arrive (this happens occasionally) is safe to consider
| finalized/settled. Even though 6-confimations may be considered
| safe by today's acceptance policies, this tx would still have a
| high probability of double spend due to the assumed 4-hour long
| wait for the 6 confirmations (as the attacker would have 4 hours
| to produce 7 blocks instead of the normal/expected 1 hour).
| Instead of ignoring block interarrival timing, it may make sense
| to include block timing as part of an acceptance policy.
|
| So, going forward Bitcoin acceptance policies may change from
| today's 6-confirmation standard to something more complicated
| that involves the amount of time those blocks took to arrive.
| This would significantly enhance Bitcoin's double spending
| resistance without adding/altering any code and may give the
| network a much needed security boost in the coming years to
| prevent the attack discussed in the post.
| mrb wrote:
| _" Bitcoin's security inevitably weakens over the coming years
| due to diminishing miner rewards (denominated in BTC)"_
|
| That's incorrect. Security scales with USD-denominated rewards,
| not BTC-denominated. And there are 16 years of real-world data
| showing they have been generally increasing, so a healthy sign
| that the Bitcoin experiment is working:
|
| https://newhedge.io/bitcoin/block-reward-per-block
|
| And not only that, but rewards are still expected to stabilize
| _even when measured in BTC_ (thereby not relying on an increase
| of BTC 's price) as they are progressively composed more and
| more of tx fees instead of newly mined BTC.
|
| It's puzzling to me why some still don't understand the
| systemic incentives that make all this work as it has for 16
| years and counting...
| free_bip wrote:
| How are you so confident that it will _never_ weaken?
| Especially since there will come a time when the block reward
| is literally 0.
| mrb wrote:
| Tx fees make up a bigger and bigger fraction of miner
| rewards over time.
| officialchicken wrote:
| Rewards are also a permanent infinite money glitch that
| last in perpetuity? Or won't be changed in the future?
| rcxdude wrote:
| Is a store of value that requires a significant fraction
| of it be eaten up by transaction fees to maintain
| security going to be actually useful in the long term?
| _heimdall wrote:
| With regards to transaction fees, bitcoin is already not
| particularly useful today. It can make sense to be used
| as an alternative to wire transfers where you only
| occasionally send a transaction, but it isn't useful as a
| currency and any day to day transactions have to happen
| off chain and not use bitcoin at all.
| jcfrei wrote:
| transaction fees are not increasing though, so they can't
| offset miner rewards. they have been in the $100k-$200k
| per day range for a long time, with only occasional
| breakouts:
| https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/transaction-
| fees-... and the trend is not to the upside. in fact with
| the arrival of ETFs in 2024 the trend is clearly
| downwards.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Rewards decrease due to halving and there is no guarantee
| that transaction fees will compensate it.
| buzzin__ wrote:
| But transaction fees reset to zero on each block. If
| relying solely on transaction fees, why would you mine if
| they are zero? So, on the start of each block, miners
| will shutdown, or perhaps switch to a different currency
| where it would be profitable to mine. This surely weakens
| the security of Bitcoin.
| officialchicken wrote:
| > It's puzzling to me why some still don't understand the
| systemic incentives...
|
| Then I guess you're the type who will be really surprised to
| learn that with diminishing rewards comes increasing
| consolidation.
|
| > ... that make all this work as it has for 16 years and
| counting...
|
| That's convenient way to memory hole the market flash
| crashes, network forks, the blocks mined without consensus,
| and everything bad that happened over that timeframe.
| copirate wrote:
| If the attacker is waiting for a lucky event to occur (finding
| more blocks than others while having less than 51% of the
| mining power) it means that they are constantly wasting mining
| time. That in itself is a huge cost (operational cost and block
| rewards thrown away), but it also means that they can't predict
| when it will happen. A double spend attack must be planned in
| advance because the first transaction must occur at the
| beginning of the attack. I'm not sure how they could constantly
| try double spends without risking losing the money each time
| the attack doesn't happen.
|
| I don't see how it could be profitable. If it can't be
| profitable, then the risk of someone doing it is pretty low. If
| they already have the necessary hardware, they'd be much better
| off mining.
| Majromax wrote:
| > I'm not sure how they could constantly try double spends
| without risking losing the money each time the attack doesn't
| happen.
|
| If you're not trying to profit from the double spend itself
| but rather from a collapse following a proven double-spend,
| you can double-spend the bitcoins to yourself.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > However, as Bitcoin's security inevitably weakens over the
| coming years due to diminishing miner rewards (denominated in
| BTC),
|
| Says you, without a hint of a rationale backing your argument.
|
| It seems to me that the historical hashing rate curve tells a
| different story.
|
| And block rewards have been diminishing regularly (and very
| predictably) pretty much since day one.
| tromp wrote:
| The hashing rate is not directly relevant. That's roughly
| proportional to the daily dollar value of the reward times
| the efficiency of the leading mining hardware. The latter has
| gone up many orders of magnitude over the years.
|
| > block rewards have been diminishing regularly
|
| That's exactly what the poster you're replying to argued; the
| BTC denominated block subsidy halves every 4 years, and so
| without a corresponding doubling in price, the bitcoin
| security budget keeps diminishing, at least until tx fees
| start to dominate the subsidy.
| nathias wrote:
| you can accept bitcoin at any confirmation you want, it isn't a
| policy
| coldcity_again wrote:
| in bitcoin terminology it is actually called policy rather
| than consensus, meaning you can choose your own config and
| still meet consensus rules.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > 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?
| bellajbadr wrote:
| you can wipe out Russia with thousands of nuclear bomb
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-31 23:01 UTC)