Bitcoin Forum

*Please don't move this thread to alternate cryptocurrencies.  It's not welcome there.*

If someone is smart enough to create a mining pool to take out alt coins I will gladly donate my GPU/CPUs... especially when asics arrive.

Not sure how it would work, but perhaps it mines BTC, then switches over as the owner identifies assailable targets.  Ideas welcome.

Are trying to remove the alt crypto-currencies?
WTF

Just to start a discussion that probably will never end, I ask, why?

They are a significant threat to Bitcoin... now and definitely going forward. 

A threat?

I'm not going to waste my words before you explain why you think that :)

You just did.  

When you tell people about bitcoin, most ask... why doesn't someone with money/power just create an alternative?  Well... they have, and some are starting to get momentum with only minor changes.  Some don't even bother to change the code at all.

Remember, $120MM marketcap is not very much.  When we reach $1B, sophisticated people will create serious alternatives.  If future threats realize they will be wiped out by BTCGuardian pool (or whatever), they will embrace bitcoin instead.

Also--

I would take this a step further and say, that with so many alts floating around, Bitcoin isn't really deflationary.  New alt coins arrive and suck away some the fiat/hash power that would normally go to BTC.

  
Let's raise the barriers of entry and protect bitcoin from these unimaginative clones.  At the very least, it will force alts to do something drastically different.

Do you really know when we are going to the BTC cap?

Also--
We don't need a monarchy, and most of the alts are just speculation, most of them break, SolicCoin and LiteCoin are the most relevant today IMO, and they worth less than 1 penny of BTC.

Having alts isn't a "threat" to BTC, it only makes more money flow, since most of the alt are exchanged to BTC.

i.e. increases BTC float and makes it not deflationary.  Please read my reply.

Litecoin for example has another hashing algo so that it isnt really in concurrence to bitcoin. And why shouldnt there be alts? They mostly dont get real value and sane miner should carefully think about hashing them. so why do you want to play mommy and forbid miners their own decisions?

Anyway... i think very few share your opinion.

Maybe I'm hanging out with different people, but no one I've ever told about bitcoin has ever asked about creating an alternative. And the easy answer is that like any industry, there is no reason not to make an alternative, coke has its pepsi, mcdonalds has its burger king, et has its cetera. They can both do well, and the mainstay will usually have superior standing simply by having been first, or more established, rather than by being better necessarily.

The question I get asked is the flip, when talking about alt currency, most people ask "what's the point of this?" and that's the real question, until alts offer some real benefits (differences in mining rates don't really count except to miners) they aren't much threat.

I would argue that "attacking" alts in order to maintain cryptocurrency monopoly would be more harmful than leaving alts to their own devices, in terms of attracting bad PR and generally making cryptocurrency seem immature and potentially dangerous (more so than people already believe).

This post reminds me why witch burning happened.

I concede this is a valid point.

I concur with Luke-Jr that LTC are "scamcoins". When you have to buy other people's scamcoins with PayPal to get enough scamcoins to trade for BTC and just barely break even on it all, if not lose money... fuck it.

No. One is judgement dictated by fear and ignorance. The other are empirically large-lipped, profit hungry memes trying to suck the goodwill out of something relevant.

TheButterZone... what are you speaking about? Mining Litecoins with gpu is more profitable than mining bitcoins since months. So what are you speaking about worthless coins?

There is great opportunity for Litecoin as well as other alt coins.  As the value of Bitcoin goes up it only makes sense that fractions of it's wealth would be passed around by other means.  They only compliment one another.

Ok, since my previous post apparently wasn't clear enough... Let's say there is a new element discovered that is way easier to mine than gold, but it has no practical application or barter value, unlike most commodities. The miners sell it to people who then sell/trade it to other people and so on, and barely break even on the exchange, if not lose money. Miners must be laughing their asses off at LTC end-users. It's like some crazy world where merely possessing other peoples' feces means you're wealthy.

Youre right... i dont know a place where one could pay with litecoins. But bitcoin isnt much better even now after all that time. I would prefer to use litecoins because of their faster transactions especially when making arbitrage with mtgox or similar. Waiting one hour until the btc are there is a pain and useless. Litecoins would be faster. So they have an advantage.
So its correct. Litecoins cant be used for much. Bitcoins is a bit better now but you cant buy way way more things than you can buy with it yet. So its a general problem. Bitcoin only has the advantage of time.
Most altcoins never will lift off because they simply arent needed. Litecoins seems to be something other because the speed is a unique feature.

NONE of my LTC transactions reached 1 confirm in a shorter period of time than my shortest BTC 1 confirm, let alone almost all of my BTC 1 confirms.

They're a useless, waste of time, distraction. Invest in infrastructure for BTC. Don't fill the Hindenburg with hydrogen.

Hahahahahaha. This thread is hilarious!

Don't you guys see? Successful troll is successful. My guess is that annette786 is just LukeJr's sock.

Just to aggravate the flamewar...
TheButterZone, your argument is completely invalid. Just because one Litecoin transaction you had didn't confirm before a Bitcoin one did, doesn't mean it's always or mostly that way.  ::)

And remember when Bitcoin was in its infancy? Just because there aren't many places that accept it, doesn't make it a bad idea.

Notice "transactionS". Wasn't just one ridiculously long confirm. Add that to the people I was dealing with saying that they never got fast confirms when it counted either, and I have to wonder if anyone but miners are getting quick confirms, as consistently shouted from the rooftops.

There can be only one.
The one cryptocoin to rule them all.
Bitcoin.

Gladamas-- you nematode, are you saying Litcoin is anything near as relevant as bitcoin?  Litecoin is an unimaginative clone coveted by the genetically inept.  It detracts.  It should be culled.

That attitude has probably turned more capital away from bitcoin than bitcoin's current market cap, maybe several times its market cap.

For quite a while bitcoin was growing in value even despite such atrocious attitude, and the very fact it was growing in value faster than most alternatives made it reasonable and practical to use bitcoin as collateral against which to borrow something that wasn't appreciating so fast to use as spending-money (even to buy more bitcoins as more collateral to borrow more spending cash and so on).

Since bitcoin was overtaken by various alternatives it began to maybe make sense to use the even faster appreciating alternatives as collateral but still there are some that are not appreciating as fast as bitcoin so still bitcoin is maybe not the best one to borrow as spending cash.

Having alternatives is good. Maybe some day some of them will become relatively stable against certain brands of fiat even so that one could even begin to hedge against various fiats with them, though attempts so far to accomplish that failed due to their constantly rising above the value of the fiat, it simply became too expensive to try to keep suppressing them back down toward parity with fiat.

-MarkM-

Alt coins are a great testing field, where if a nice feature is developed and tested successfully it can later be merged into Bitcoin making it stronger.

I support alt coins.

I propose that attack work as follows.

1) Add only to the normal chain.
2) Reject all blocks from competing miners.
3) Impose 5% fees on all txns. If 5% of inputs are not offered up a fee. Don't let that the cheapskate put that txn in a block.
4) Sell all proceeds on the exchange immediately.
5) Continue until exchange rate is near 0. Now stop.
6) Rinse and repeat if the exchange rate picks up again.
7) If this works properly. It will trigger a run to the exchange. The attackers will earn 5% of whatever money can be gotten out.
8) Do not conduct any double-spends. The exchanges must be allowed to operate as normal to ensure ROI for the attackers.

If someone tries to close the exchanges. We should open our own.

Another block chain which have 50 coin/block reward forever and see if that helps to stablize the dramatic price swing

The statistical probability of a >10 minute block on Litecoin is much less than the probability of such a block on Bitcoin. Just take a look at http://explorer.litecoin.net/chain/Litecoin. And yes, I am getting quick confirmations in my Litecoin wallet.

If you have a slow network connection or are not connected to any peers then I can see how your client will not show any confirmations. But in reality, the transaction is still confirmed whether your client shows it or not.

I agree completely with this. The fact that the alt coins are mindless clones makes them a bad idea.

PPCoin is the only exception. Of course, you cant 51% it so PPCoin is off-topic.

TheButterZone... your argument with 1! confirmation only shows that you dont understand how block creation works. Of course you can make a btc transaction and nearly instantly you get one confirmation for it. Thats random luck. But bitcoin only gets one confirmation or block created in 10 minutes in average. Litecoin gets one block or confirmation in 2.5 minute in average. So claiming that you had luck with btc-transactions because right after your transaction a block was found and your transactions was included isnt an argument because its simply luck.
It remains that you have to wait in average 1 hour to get 6 confirmations in bitcoin. Litecoin would need 15 minutes for the same in average.

This waiting time is annoying when using mtgox. I wonder when they will change it. There is nearly no higher security to wait for 6 confirmations. For me thats the biggest disadvantage of bitcoin to wait so long for a transaction. I mean when youre awake 14 hours a day doing arbitrage with mtgox you can do a couple of trades daily only. The internet is fast but its currency lame. Too bad. So i think litecoin is addressing this problem even though its still not really fast and not so big like bitcoin is till now.

Wasn't using a client to watch for confirms; hitting refresh every minute on the address's page at http://explorer.litecoin.net/ and it did NOT show a confirmation before at least 7 minutes 100% of the time. So much for "Litecoin gets one block or confirmation in 2.5 minute in average", SebastianJu. I'd have better "luck" flipping a bloody coin.

It's a simple question, really:
Do you mine LTC*? y/n

*and therefore defend it to the death, which Bitcoin doesn't require

Another hint that you dont know how these currencies work. Yesterday night i put btc to mtgox and had to wait 1 hour and 10 minutes for 1! block/confirmation. You probably dont know that the 10minutes and 2.5minutes only are the average time between 2 blocks created. Mining is more gambling than a hardcoded time when a new block is created.

My experience= 100% unacceptably long block times far in excess of the alleged "average" with LTC vs 50% at worst slower times with BTC. LTC=the house always wins. BTC=far more than a snowball's chance in hell.

/unwatch

Why don't you start by making that pool yourself? If people are interested in a bloodbath between chains, they'll join you if work is being done.

I'm looking forward to see the next Bloodcoin.  :)

Make it profitable. Pay for the work in BTC proceeds and use the strategy I suggested above. If we can show that attacks are profitable, then no one will start up these chains again.

The point should not be to double-spend or roll back txns. That is idiotic. It will not yield a positive return on investment.

Instead, you should merely seize all block reward from miners, enforce some tolerable fees on sends, and sell all altcoin revenue for BTC immediately. Kill the coins through taxation and dumping cheap coins on the market, not through vandalism.

People will either
1) weather the storm and accept a total loss (since the value of their holdings will be ~0 once the taxation is over)
2) Accept paying you part of their balance in order to get some money out. Cha-ching!

To make this work better, I would suggest gradually increasing mandatory fees over time. This should provoke a run for the exit. You don't want altcoin value to collapse too quickly. That is not profitable.

Nor is it welcome under mining.  Take your attack crap to the cesspool where it belongs.

i'm still able to send 'old' TRC coins, and see them included in later blocks.

Any chance you can extract the full reject reason from your log file ? (the client log, if you were solo-mining) ; could be some time-sync issue, or your local client/daemin just "saw" the new block too late.
(looks like cgminer output)

There is no reason why a 51% attack needs to affect txns. It can just monopolize mining and have no other impact on end-users. (i.e. unapproved miners get their blocks rejected. other than that everything is normal)

LOL!!!

"Alt-coins are a threat to bitcoin!!! FUD!!! FUD!!! FUD!!!"

Go to any exchange, bitcoin is still king. It's not necessary to kill the alt-chains in order to preserve the future of bitcoin.

In fact, kill the alt-chains and you're only hurting yourself AND bitcoin because right now there are people with hashrates that are entirely USELESS for hashing bitcoin, these people are hashing on alt-coins while simultaneously feeding the market with more demand for BTC because when they go to sell those alt-coins they are selling for BTC thus increasing the demand for BTC without also increasing the supply of BTC which makes BTC more valuable.

Kill those alt-chains and you kill a LARGE percentage of the BTC market because now all of those low hash-rate miners (who are the VAST majority of any given coin's hashing network as well as the VAST majority of people using the exchanges trying to sell off their alt-coins to get their hands on the more coveted bitcoin) will pretty much immediately lose all interest in bitcoin and any/all derivatives of bitcoin because there is no longer a way for them to participate and turn a profit.

Kill the alt-chains and you kill bitcoin as well.

Yeah, you're right, i guess it's because i won't necessarily first prevent other from mining, if i were attacking...

Anyway ... the "tiny, micro, small" pool i've been mining on from time to time found two blocks in the last 24 hours, but .. currently, that pool hashing power is really low, less than 500 M hashes /s :( not unusual then...

i'll wait and see if another one is finally found by this one

If bitcoin cant survive because of alt coins...then it doesnt deserve too. Same with any alt coin.

+1 Makes perfect sense

Step 1. Create special miner for said mining pool to take out alt chains
Step 2. Add trojan to step 1
Step 3. Send all of OPs bitcoins to yourself
Step 4. ???
Step 5. Profit

Thats the best explanation why we should leave the Alt-chains in peace I've heard so far. It's really true. Killing the alt-chains is the equivalent of kicking all the lower-hash rate miners out of the crypto world. And those lower-hash rate miners are important for the economy.

yeah this makes sense to me to and is a nice explanation

Thats not for all alt chains the case, in fact Devcoin is in a legalization process caused by devda.ch. Direct exchange for fiat (swiss bank transfer, sipa, phys. gold and silver etc) is planned for 1. quarter 2013. This means legal cover of a swiss cooperative for devcoin, but means aswell that atacking alt chains is not just a game anymore -  In fact it is a hostile act. Since devda.ch builds on a alt chain, to atack alt chains will be prosecuted by the swiss legal authorities, since it is the equivalent of a atacking the infrastructure of a swiss legal institution. For the atack on a blockchain are two steps needed:

1. You need to dominate the total hashrate of a chain by more then 51%
2. Then You have to follow a certain value transfer pattern, that is causing fraudulent transactions

Just to gain the dominance over a chain, doesnt mean that you attack a chain, or automaticaly do fraudulent transactions. It is not possible to kill a chain as long there is hashingpower. But yes, how you can know when you never dominated a chain.

To say that alt chains are dangerous for btc is simply a expression of not understanding as it is to say to atack an chain is simply done by just dominating it.

Besides all that such activity is disrespectfull to the developers!! It was the opensource developers that brought you not only FPGA early this year as first (no it wasnt BFL) and they now are about to bring you ASIC. So many wonderfull developments was made.. and Bitcoin did strongly profit from that activity as you can see on the actual exchange and hash rate. I remember when BTC was worth like 2 USD a year ago, then FPGA started to rise. Prior to the activity for example there was far less hashpower to secure the btc infrastructure, today we more then doubled the hashspeed. Guys dnt you realy remember wasnt bitcoin 2011 aswell called dead ??

Devcoin is the chain of the Developers, its build protected by cryptochain hardware and software developers (yes BTC developers too), and im sure we will hold against the atacking or even destroying of alt chains. One World one Chain is not the way i see cryptochains working, diversification is the key to stability of crypto.

But this hostile thinking and activity shows me one thing, there could be far more hashpower donated to the altchains. Pool operators why dnt you do something for your miners like offering them merged mining benefit ?? Instead of atacking, you could protect and profit! Attacking a cryptochain is waste of power, and in the long run just expensive and legaly dangerous for the attackers and the pool.

+1

The Growing list of crypto developers sponsored by Devcoin an altchain. So please support us, we develop for you, we keep cryptochains going. https://raw.github.com/Unthinkingbit/charity/master/bitcoinshare.html

Besides that the Altchain Namecoin is backing us all up! In case of a DNS shutdown, there would be still domains with .bit ending working.

Alt chains are varous configurations of the mother chain invented by satoshi nakamoto. By now we had only the time to experiment since 2009 with the unique concept satoshi made the world familiar with. We aproach just in these days the first big mark for BTC, we are still not 1.0 Version.

Some chains run faster, then BTC some has more some less units to give to the miner, what ever there configuration is, the financial power (market capitalisation) is not the main viewpoint from a developers perspective, security and stability is. Various aspects of the system as we use it with BTC are only uncovered and can be tested with alternatively build chains.

We would never know certain things for the benefit of BTC without the alts.

Diversification is the key to security :)

To kill alt chains is like to kill your imunesystem, how long would you survive in a hostile enviroment like the world actualy is without it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztVYTS_Ei8

Guys, OP is a troll.
-"Oh hi, I don't like alt-coins and I'm looking for a guy who took the hassle of making a whole pool for me, so I can click a shiny red button that destroy alt-chains".

Don't take him seriously.

I doubt VERY much that anyone is seriously considering attacking Devcoin as the developers are the backbone, blood, guts and organs of this community, but I do agree with your last paragraph, mining pools could really help solve the problems of security issues by increasing the network hashrates of the alt-chains by offering more merged mining.

Right now BitParking seems to be doing the best in that area offering merged mining of BTC, NMC, IXC and DVC (they were supporting merged mining of I0C as well up until a few days ago).

But BitParking can't support all of the alt-chains alone, there's simply just not enough hashing power there. I think ALL of the exchanges should strive to offer merged mining in as many coins as possible as it will bring more users to their pools and it will bring more hasing power to the alt-chains which can greatly help to protect all of the chains from >51% double-spend attacks.

I didn't know what merged mining was until I went to the bitparking site lol, thanks for your post. Is there any reason for a miner to NOT do merged mining? Do you normally get less BTC than just using a normal pool?

There is no reason not to do merged mining! Cause you usualy get more!

I thought merged mining had facilitated 51% attacks on chains that permitted it? It doesn't seem like a good idea in theory either.

This is a largly part of propaganda, in fact merged mining protects the alt chains. There was one singe dominance of a small young chain, that wasnt yet known to the merged miners. It only was possible to attack that chain cause of the low amount of merged mining and solo mining pools what was mining for that chain.

Merged mining keeps the chains secure, and not only the exchanges will be gratefull for the additional security!

anything else is missinformation

You are operating under the assumption that the currencies are not competing. Or alternatively, that they are competing, but there are certain gentlemens' rules that miners will not violate. Those seem like very bad assumptions to me. These rules have been violated in the past. They will be violated in the future.

Many things has been violeted even in bitcoin history. I strongly suggest you to become more familiar with the concept of cryptochains not crypto economics. Cause you mess that up. No rule was violeted with a simple dominance of more then 51%, that was simply not gentlemen like, but there was no demage caused on the chain from a cryptochain perspective, exept the economic and the image demage. To dominate a chain is not a violation per se.

Merged mining is benefical for all chains, since it supports the diversification of hashing, p2pool is the best example for that, if you dont wanna trust then trust at least yourself, and run your own mining node.

When you donate your hashpower to a pool then well you have to trust the pool operator, only the operator is capable to do a 51% attack these days. its not the single miner :)

Hope you understand now that not the miner is the potential danger, its the pool operator. Merged mining is not the problem a single operator with enough hash power is the thread, thats why p2pool is so great on transparency and decentralization. But a single pool with enogh hash power is a potential thread to all cryptochains not just the alts.

Decentralization of hashpower and merged mining avoids the need of "gentlemen agreements"

I can honestly see no reason for people not to be merged mining. I find that I get the best PPS rates, with the easiest share difficulties and lowest percentage fees with BitParking. In the long run, you make just about the same BTC at any pool you go to, but I prefer BitParking because I can take the same hashrate and hash 4 different types of coins at the same rate as is I was hashing each individually and then I can sell the alt-coins that I've merge-mined for BTC or hold onto them and wait for their value to increase.

...? Cite your source please...

I don't remember the source it was a long time ago. I think the Elgius pool used merged mining to take out one of the early alt coins. The miners didn't even know they were merged mining, lol. He just paid them BTC and simultaneously 51%'d one of the small chains he didn't like. ;D

That is the problem with merged mining. One guy can just aim the pool at some currency he doesn't like. The miners are none the wiser and probably don't care anyway.

I don't have a problem with pools doing this. They're gonna do what they want. I do have a problem with currencies supporting merged mining.

Well, at any rate, if there more pools offering merged mining it wouldn't be a problem. The more pools that offer the more chains to mine on the more protection each of those individual chains gains.

But they won't. You should have to give up some resources to destroy something. It shouldn't be free.

Wait... What...? What are we destroying here...?

Destroy wasn't the right word. I meant control.

I see a much better way for you ALL to ensure that bitcoin isnt marginalised......

Instead of pumping the coin round and round start getting your local merchants to accept it! Start creating the economy. You cant eat an asic, a gpu or a fpga. You can convince the local pizza /coffee / late night store to accept payments. Acceptance always begins at ground level when all the little stores start accepting it, only once the bigger stores have seen a working model will they get involved. In this way demand for BTC will outstrip demand for the alts.

Watching all the debates in this and other forums reminds me sadly of the gold currencies of the last decade, a very good idea destroyed by infighting and profiteering. Crypto currency is in its infancy and each currency created will rise or fail depending on popularity. This thread seeks to destroy all other by waving the biggest stick in the playground..... Isn't this what we need to get past? Isn't it the same philosophy that has led to the creation of trillions of fictional bank notes which become more worthless by the day? At the moment i see a lot of argument about how to make the most "x" coin so that we can sell it for "y" coin and then dump it to a bank account in dollars yen shekels whatever. Isn't that ultimately the biggest threat to crypto currency?

How much is 12 dollars worth today in terms of its worth in 2009? Look at your shopping basket and work it out. Stop wasting time trying to protect our favourite currencies and start spending that time trying to make them into a currency. If mastercard and visa can do it (not officially a currency I know but the same idea) surely the creative people in this realm can do much better

No. The biggest threat to cryptocurrency is bad design choices.

True, but then those badly chosen designs will fail wont they?

Yes, the bad design choices will fail. It may take many years for this to occur, however. Failure of a widely trusted system could inflict lasting damage on the reputation of all similar technologies. It would be best if we produce something that is secure at the outset before going around screaming how wonderful it is.

This thread aims to accelerate the testing process. If we can't destroy something ourselves, then anyone else who tries will find it difficult too.

But I thought bitcoin was invincible?  :o

Another illusion shattered.....

How big a test team do you need? There's 7 bn potentially out there?

Fiat is fallable, it decreases in value daily
Cash is fallable it burns gets stolen
Plastic is fallable you decrease in value every day
Bitcoin is fallable because (at the moment) it buys you nothing but more of the above 3 and some legendary socks and pizza if you live in new york.

I agree and exactly thats the reason why using alt chains, they fasten the speed of developments up and we can discover failures allready now not when it would become critical.

Bitcoin is still standing very well, and even bolder with the help of the merged minined alts.

We already have one. Altcoins are vulnerable to 51% attack, so is bitcoin. Now act on it.

Thats common knowledge since 2009 - Not realy something to worry about.

http://blockchain.info/pools look at the unknown block list, this one looks more diversified then ever. Besides that, legal institutions mine for bitcoins, there are a lot of single blocks that wasnt present a year ago. We would not be the devs if we would act only upon request, in fact that process you demand for,  was iniciated as deepbit was allmost reaching 51%. At this time pool software became public domain and a lot of new mines and miners with various hardware appeared on the btc scene, FPGA was developed and p2pool started to rise. The cryptochains worked early this year flawless until a certain individual made a chain and a certain pool operator did not like that, this guy caused to a small alt chain prior it even could realy start a 51% attack, a image thing nothing realy dangerous. But today people keep saying since then that 51% is dangerous.. You can beleve me the situation with deepbit was more critical then the small alt chain that was killed by reputation destruction, not by harming the chain in any way.

But you see we are still here stronger then before. Diversification is the key to security.

Actually all luke really did to CoiLedCoin was grab all the coins (refusing to build on other people's blocks, orphaning them) while requiring high transaction fees, supposedly.

He didn't keep it up for long, and the coin has chugged along fine ever since as one of the under-the-radar "sleeper" coins.

When the masses think a coin is "dead" that is the window of opportunity for the little people to "post-mine" it, basically it simply goes into "early adopter mode" and the longer it stays in that mode the more coins the early adopters of the 'late' coin are able to quietly pick up.

A far more egalitarian distribution of initial coins can happen that way, in principle, at least until those who hate and oppose egalitarianism decide egalitarianism has gone too for or gone on too long and it is time to assert their superiority again by bullying someone...

-MarkM-

The FUD is strong in you annette...

You are a fake...

G.I.R.L = Guy In Real Life

#LitecoinsPwn
#PPCoinsPwn
#iXCoinsPwn
#NamecoinsPwn

I think you just need a hug girlfriend

http://guycodeblog.mtv.com//wp-content/uploads/clutch/2012/07/Hillbilly-Jim-Loves-You-11.jpg

Watches, and waits for the hundreds of rage induced reports to come in.

So, like SolidCoin Mafia (http://solidcoinmafia.com/) (now defunct), but for other cryptocurrencies?

Annette must of been successful in finding friends to take out the ALTs. They are starting with LTC! OH noes!  :D