Bitcoin Forum

Is there any truth to this tweet?
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/583701441866371073

Patio11 is generally well respected and even though I have been in Bitcoin for a long time, I never heard of this 8 hour shutdown.

His tweets are getting lots of coverage right now.

(The entire tweet storm starts here: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/583696870704152576)

I'm hoping someone around when this happened could perhaps chime in and offer a defense?

If there is a defense, then perhaps publically reply to Patio11?

Is this even possible to shut down whole system by anybody?

No it's not possible. for shutting down whole bitcoin network you have to shutdown all the nodes or by 51% attack both are not possible.

bitcointalk (this website) which is only a forum and NOT a blockchain NOT a currency.. just a website... was down for several hours a couple days ago...

seriously people need to learn the difference or if they know the difference, atleast explain it better.

its like saying wall street trading markets stalled.. where the reality would be that the financial times newspaper was late to press

Actually the Bitcoin network was technically down for sometime (was it 8 hours?) due to a botched update for Bitcoin Core in March 2013 where certain valid blocks were being rejected causing a concensus fork, making it impossible for some users to get their transactions to confirm and miners lost significant revenue. An alert was put out using the Bitcoin Core alert system telling users to downgrade to the last version until a patch is released, and the devs contacted the largest pools asking them to downgrade, I assume this is the "IRC channel meeting" referred to.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork/

The issue was quite serious and should've been found with some basic testing. Thankfully this is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Bitcoin network.

Right. The forum here was ddosed and not reachable for some hours.However the Bitcoin Network was online and can not be shut down so easily. Some people are really too dumb.

Read the rest of the little tit's tweets. It's one long line of bitterness and FUD. And don't you think you would've heard something about it in a rather loud manner on every single thread on every single bitcoin forum and news source if it were true?

you know that bitcoin is decentralized? no one can shut down anything, that's the point of a decentralized system, totally detached from anyone

the OP is referring to the forum btw

Here is my response to this guys tweets.


Do we really need an office on both ends just to transmit funds?


Yes it is true that tx's are pretty expensive (I don't know how accurate your figure is). Currently the majority of that is covered by the mining reward, the user only pays a few cents if anything.

The fact is we REALLY don't need an insanely high hashrate to protect the network. We only need just enough to protect the network. If miners aren't getting paid enough, they will switch off, incresing the revenue for every other miner. We don't need an insanely high hashrate. Yes this is bad for miners but miners should know that Bitcoin mining is very new and has significant risks.

Also if Bitcoin becomes big the transaction fees will cover some of the mining reward. This is what Satoshi predicted would happen.

The other thing is changes to the concensus system could make mining a thing of the past, or less important. I believe that one day we may move to another concensus system (such as a hybrid POW/POS like proof of activity) once another concensus system is well studied, tested, understood and has obvious benefits for Bitcoin. This could significantly change this situation.

Also this factoid isn't very useful. The blockchain is designed to store transaction data, which is typically under 1KB in size. Why don't you ask your bank how much they charge for storing your stuff in their vault :D



I am kind of confused by this statement. I think you are saying that the market cap of Bitcoin was paid out to miners as a fee over the last couple of years.

Please name me one currency that doesn't pay out it's newly minted currency to someone for work done.


You are right, depending on what aspects of Bitcoin you see as an advantage. Centralized systems are more efficient. However such a system would end up just like e-gold, libertyreserve, digicash and all the others who tried to make centralized payment systems similar to Bitcoin in the past.


I hate some of the pro-Bitcoiners, in particular the ones who think that Bitcoin is some kind of untouchable God or something. Bitcoin has advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.


This is something that really bugs me. We do need a more defined protocol, but we are getting there. We have BIPS for many things now, which is a good start but we do need better documentation.


What are you talking about? This is not the disaster recovery plan and It is not possible for them to shut anything down.


Why do you think it needs to be guaranteed?


This is so true and it is such a joke, take for example the Dorian Satoshi incident or the "Bitcoin CEO is dead" reports, however it's not just Bitcoin. The media are so incompetent at their jobs period.

If all the miners shut down their hardware machines the blockchain will "stop" and die. Because who confims all the transaction? The reply is the miners.


I agree with you and I have stopped to watch the mass media on the television. My unique source of info is internet.

You are both wrong:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork/

It is posts like these that I don't particularly like, people stating facts about Bitcoin that seem true, others see them and also believe them, yet they are furthest from the truth and the answer was already posted in the thread. This is the reason that people like patio11 exist.

FTFY

That's usually what is meant when someone says "impossible to shut down".

What a nerd.

https://i.imgur.com/zO2x7JO.jpg

^ @patio11

It appears that OP has no common sense. Everybody knows that a P2P network with 7000 connected peers can not simply be shutdown.

It appears you are the one without sense as you haven't even read the thread.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork/

Anyone remember Napster?

If you want to forcibly shutdown the bitcoin network temporarily, you can do so with a 51% attack, a Sybil, or exploiting bugs/exploits in Bitcoin Core (which is arguably what the March 2013 issue was, someone could've exploited the situation to double spend coins, IIRC OKPay had a transaction double spent). It is incredibly difficult to do, but it is POSSIBLE, and those who say otherwise are misinformed.

Or ignorant.

I don't think "double spend" and "shut down" mean the same thing to most people.

Bitcoin CEO found dead somewhere deep in Amazon.
Is bitcoin doomed? Is it going to die now?

I'm sure you're talking about Bitcointalk instead of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is also bankrupt.  It's true.  It was in the news somewhere..

Was that after bitcoin CEO's death, or before? Maybe he committed a suicide after he went bankrupt?

He seriously needs to know the difference between the Bitcoin network and bitcointalk.org
It is true that the website is down for several hours, but the bitcoin network isn't. If that happens, that means all the miners in the world turned of their hardware or a major hack happened (which are very unlikely to happen). Get some facts straight before posting anything to the social media or else you'll get criticized by many people.

So, we're establishing facts here.

It's incredibly difficult/highly resource intensive to do, and only temporary. Whereas, when everyone is convinced to co-operate, the network can be shut down very effectively.

"Impossible to shut down" makes it sound like some kind of perpetual motion runaway train, and that's clearly absurd.

So, in summary, the network is exceptionally resilient in practical terms, but also not so unwieldy that it can't be stopped when the actors agree to do so. And also that absurd comparisons are absurd.

It was before.  Bitcoin had no CEO that's why it went bankrupt.

Yup.  Looking at the big picture, 10,000 years from now, civilization as we know it has been shutdown.

Not a nerd, he is uneducated....
Nerds know the difference when a website is down and when a P2P system (that cannot and will not ever be down) being down.

Apart from that, the answer to this crap was already given by Franky:

51% isn't shutting down, it's just a cintrol over the network, if you stop the attack the network will return alive

let me rephrase it, it's impossible to shutdown bitcoin permanently

With a 51% attack you can prevent people from spending coins by not confirming their transactions. If you can't spend your Bitcoin I don't see how you can say the Bitcoin network is up.

Yes you are correct, you cannot shut down the network permanently unless you kill every Bitcoiner and destroy all Bitcoin clients and any evidence of bitcoin ever existing, probably would also be a good idea to outlaw all forms of electronic communication, encryption and privacy to prevent anyone from building something similar to Bitcoin. Anything less than that can be recovered from with enough time and resources. One copy of the Blockchain would be needed to preserve balances, we have atleast 7000.

But the Bitcoin network CAN be down and has been down in the past, it isn't magic, it is vulnerable to attack just like everything else in the world.

Okay kids, now that the truth is out, I will show you how easy it is to switch off Bitcoin:

Here's how it's done: http://tinyurl.com/ik7r (http://tinyurl.com/ik7r)

Its possible if everybody decide but doesnt seem possible from a single entity or worth the hassle.

What other users don't know about is the fact that hacking or compromising bitcoin's security is theoretically possible. But to be able to achieve such a feat, one must have a very powerful machine or machines to aid them in computing the necessary prerequisites before you can disrupt the whole network. I doubt it is achievable within a span of 10 years, but who knows? With the technological advancements mankind had within the last century, everything is possible.

I call this FUD

The OP, and the person posting to twitter need to invest more time researching the Network. I doubt they have spent hundreds of hours reading material, watching videos, and writing computer code to interact with the Network in any shape or form, to develop original abstract thoughts on the technology and how it can play out in our society. However they are certainly quick to inform others on their baseless uninformed opinion. I have always wondered why people are so quick to accept the given 'truth'. Sounds like someone who likes watching television and blindly accepts what they hear as factual.

Bitcoin's fundamental solution is going nowhere, it will only be improved and matured as we have seen over the past 5 years. FUD ::)

That's exactly what I thought. I mean, this tweet should say enough about that person: "4/ Bitcoin presently costs on the order of $6.5k per megabyte of data added to the block chain" or "5/ The entire market cap of Bitcoin as of 4/1/2015 is a fee paid to someone for work already done between 2009 and 4/1/2015". Dafuck does 5 even mean? Is he trying to say that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, that we are redoing work?

That guy clearly has no idea what Bitcoin is and how it works. I have no idea how someone like that could be "generally well respected" like OP said.

Negatives are misrepresented or overblown.

Positives are entirely omitted.

= Politically motivate troll

No, this is not possible and it did not take place. This is just another nerd searching for attention, twitter followers etc.

No. Theoretically, shutting down the Bitcoin network is possible. It's just that he got confused between bitcointalk.org (which was down for 10 hours, at least for me) and the whole Bitcoin network.

Napster was nothing alike blockchain. Napster was p2p network with CENTRALIZED core service. It is easy for US government to kill services like that. Just unplug server and whole p2p network is dead.

I wasn't referring to anything other than his supposition about it happening this time around. It didn't. I'm sure there are clever ways to do it but I'll leave that to experts or three letter agencies.

the network is still up, but just for the dude who is attaccking it, this isn't shutting down, it taking under control like ai said above, if he can double spend then it mean that the network is up(for him only, but still up)

i think people are not following what i'm saying

I actually wonder if Patio11 is talking about the March 2013 fork? This lasted 6 hours and the fix was coordinated via IRC.
I remember this fork, but don't remember it as Bitcoin being shut down.

As I recall, everyone was told not to make any transactions due to the fork in progress, so I guess it was a shut down of sorts.

I witnessed this pretty much as it happened, and I can tell you that the network carried on running (albeit in the forked state, so running but not really functioning). IIRC, an alert was posted with the emergency alert system in the actual Bitcoin Core client, but that probably wasn't the majority of users even back then. So some people carried on mining and transacting regardless, possibly unaware, possibly seeing whether they might be able to exploit the situation somehow .

Most miners leave their hardware running 24/7 and have to sleep. The smaller miners asleep when the fork happened could have slept through the entire fork and carried on mining it. As you say, the network was not shut down, it was running but not really functioning. There were miners not immediately aware of the problem who kept the network alive.

More than likely a paid disinfo agent for western union or other place similar since he has 15K followers. A real nerd would not be as ignorant about how bitcoin actually works. I think he watched a 60 second special on Fox News and then came to his conclusions.

That whole tweet string rant was pretty ridiculous. Lots of buzzwords without saying anything worth reading

Yeah, that was an interesting few hours. The technical scenario which led to the fork was basically bitcoin's consensus disaster scenario; such a version conflict (which is more or less what led to the fork) was theoretically possible, but unlikely and had never happened before. But it was the resolution to it which, in my opinion, contributed to the spring 2013 rally. The community came together and quickly and rationally resolved the problem through community consensus, thereby relieving the ecosystem of one of the more severe theoretical concerns.

In his tweetstorm, @patio11 seems to attack the method by which the fork was resolved. People running the big pools, Gavin and other devs, plus a bunch of industry ppl, etc, agreed that the best resolution for the integrity of the network would be if bitcoind v0.8 was not the majority version. Since BTCGuild has just upgraded to v0.8, Eleutheria agreed to downgrade to v0.7 so that the v0.7 fork would overtake v0.8. Problem solved, completely within the bounds of expected system behavior.

Nothing on the network level was "shut down"; @patio11 is being both careless and hyperbolic with his words.

The title is misleading, bitcoin is decentralized thing, how can it be shut down? It's not a company or exchange, you could say bitstamp shut down for 8 hours, but btc is impossible to be shut down.

Do you refer to 51% attack shut down the blockchain running? I don't think so, btc won't be stuck for 8 hours.

I would call that above in bold a smart guy.  The patio11 character is just a plain nerd.

What a nerd.