Bitcoin Forum

I've been telling people around the forum for many months already that the Chinese miners have over 90% of hashing power under their control, but most people were refusing to accept this truth. Given the nature of the political regime in Beijing, Chinese miners controlling Bitcoin mining basically means that it is the Chinese authorities which are essentially controlling it. Now that Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, is going to impose hefty tariffs on the Chinese exports, what could the Chinese government retaliate with, for example, through exerting their control over Chinese miners? What immediately comes to mind is the rejection of all or most Bitcoin transactions that stem from the US...

So how likely is this, and what are the remedies, if any?

The Tariff Act of 1930 (codified at 19 U.S.C. ch. 4), otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff,[1] was an act sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930. The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels.[2]

How would they determine where the transaction originates?

china has less hash power then you think
wake up and drop the racist card and start talking about the technical truth

waffle

hashpower distributed world wide
statum servers  distributed world wide
domain names not .cn, but .com meaning not chinese
administrators distributed world wide.

you do realise that your concern is out dated. the pools mitigated your concern about 2 years ago.

chinese government cannot take down the domains because they are not .cn
chinese goverments cannot slap the admin because the admin are dotted around the world
chinese goverments cannot take down the statum servers because they are dotted around the world
chinese goverments cannot shut off 51% of hashpower because 90% of hash power IS NOT IN CHINA!!

How would they determine where the transaction originates?

Maybe, by web wallets from which the transaction is coming? I guess a lot of bitcoiners are using the Coinbase web wallet (I use it too, for the record) which is the US company, so the Chinese miners may just start rejecting all transactions that are coming from this wallet. I also suspect that a few other notable web wallets (Xapo anyone?) are also primarily the US companies...

There may also be American exchanges and mixers which could be heavily hit by this

Chinese miners are rich. Begin rich means they have power, also in China.
Satoshi always assumed rational miners, the miners need American transactions, without them their block reward will be worth less money. Less money for the miners means other miners take over, their 90% hasing power goes down, and Bitcoin becomres more decentralized again.
The Chinese government cannot control Bitcoin.

All Exchanges keep track of your Name / Email Address  /IP Address , even if you use a fake name and email, using cross reference techniques your location can be determined by your IP alone.
All China has to do is get an approved list of BTC address from the Chinese Exchanges and just block the rest.
EASY.

 8)

So everyone else but China will get their transactions confirmed slowly? Slowing down the adoption rate and crash the price? Wow. Chinese miners who are looking for profit will DEFINITELY agree to this.

Bitcoin Mining in China
China is a world leader in Bitcoin mining and trading.
Chinese mining pools control more than 60% of the network hash rate.
Massive mining farms are located in China and pointed at these mining pools.

55%

60%

70%

Everybody can see the actual numbers here:

https://blockchain.info/pools

And a quick search will indicate you where each pool belongs.

51%, 55% 60%, 70%

your just making up numbers
in just 8 hour you have been throwing out random numbers backed by no researched evidence. but instead quoting others who have not actually researched.

quoting an article that quotes an article is not proof.

go research properly

f2pool. has ZERO chinese government influence.
hashpower not in china, servers not in china administrators not in china domain not in china.
so discount f2pools from your random number

bitfury. has ZERO chinese government influence.
hashpower not in china, servers not in china administrators not in china domain not in china.
so discount bitfury from your random number

actually do the research beyond biased human opinion. look at where the adminstrators are, servers and actual hashpower.
and come back with a factual number that doesnt change 4 times in 8 hours

[waffle and showing no technical proof]
[just shouting china many times]

china has less hash power then you think

BW..  are in mongolia aswell as other locations
haobtc.. are in tibet aswell as other locations
BTCC..   are around the world
bitfury.. are in Finland, Iceland, and the Republic of Georgia.
f2pool.. world wide miners

put down your racist hats and put on some research glasses

take f2pool. largest pool there is..
its hashpower is spread out across the world. its stratum servers are spread across the world.
even the guy that runs the pool is not even in china

he is in thailand

Admin Name: Wang Chun
Admin Organization: F2Pool
Admin Street: Soi Naklua 16, Naklua Sub-District,,
Admin City: Banglamung
Admin State/Province: Chonburi
Admin Postal Code: 020150
Admin Country: TH
Admin Phone: +66.973040750
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:+66.973040750
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: admin@f2pool.com

Amsterdam Office
Spaces Zuidas
Barbara Strozzilaan 201 1083
HN Amsterdam. The Netherlands

San Francisco Office
456 Montgomery St., Suite 1350
San Francisco, CA 94104
United States

Washington DC Office
600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20003

London Office
Level39
One Canada Square
Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AB

lol
a wiki link (facepalm)
research properly

try your hand at the realisation that BW / bitbank / antpool have farms in mongolia
f2pool have farms all over the world
bitfury have farms predominantly in georgia, finland iceland

etc
so hash power is not all chinese!!
do some number crunching

they are also not administrated in china.
do some number crunching

then come back with some actual rational, realistic and factual numbers

have a nice day

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/F2Pool
F2Pool is a Chinese mining pool,

You know my links are to factual articles by people smarter than you stupid.

You post a little domain info and spout some BS and want people to believe you, sorry you are full of shit.

The US has many companies in different parts of the world, but the other branches follow the orders of the main US Office.
Why are you so Stupid ,
you can't see a company that calls itself a Chinese company can open branches in other countries, but will still follow the orders of their Main Chinese Office.

 8)

Guys, calm down a little, please

The question is not so much about what exact percentage of hashing power the Chinese miners are controlling at the moment, though everything shows that they do already control substantially over 51% of it. In any case, the Chinese government can at any moment pour enough resources (which they have with a vengeance) into mining if they think it worth the effort, and grab as much hashing power as they see appropriate. The questions which I think worthy of debating here are as follows:

1. Could the miners potentially make the transactions coming from the US substantially more expensive than all other transactions, or even totally discard them?
2. Is it ever possible to circumvent such discrimination should it happen for real, and if it is doable, what can be done exactly?

Let's assume that the Chinese authorities do control Bitcoin mining, and they are eager to retaliate in the way I described (e.g. through raising fees)

F2Pool owner is in Thailand - https://th.linkedin.com/in/wangchun

Are you intending that the Chinese miners already have control of more than 51% of the Bitcoin hashing power? If they already have so much of the mining power in hand what's already stopping them from creating their own fork of Bitcoin blockchain, mining that and reversing transactions on the blockchain? They could also then currently have the power to prevent confirmations of transactions. I honestly don't think that's possible unless all the chinese miners come to a consensus of doing so and that they have about 51% of the hash power with them. Also would be nice to know what's a way to counter this type of an attack?

If this is true and they really control more than %51 of the hash power, then bitcoin is not decentralized anymore. They can crash the system just by pressing "the red button". On the other hand, that may be a good thing too. Since they own it, they wouldn't want to ruin it. What will they gain out of it? They will just lose money if anything happens to bitcoin.

https://www.f2pool.com/regions
and over 92% of F2Pool Hash rate is directly from China.  :P
Don't let franky1 BS fool you.

 8)

OP is the one who is spreading BS with a wrong title. China has a little more dominance in hash power. It is true. But that is not a problem to Bitcoin. Hear it from Andreas...

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

In his Bitcoin paper, Satoshi identified several issues, with the 51% attack being the greatest.

So what is the 51% attack? To understand that you have to understand how Bitcoin works. Essentially Bitcoin is a collection of nodes performing “virtual work”, the more work you do the higher your rating on the network. So what happens when malicious users get together and manage to do more “virtual work” than the “good people” ? Well that is the 51% attack, and it basically means you can wake up tomorrow with zero Bitcoins in your wallet. It means any business that accepts Bitcoins can get robbed and have all their goods taken with fake Bitcoins. It also means if they wanted, governments, large corporations or hackers can “shut down the network” by refusing to accept any new transactions. Complete network shutdown. Can’t do anything with your Bitcoins, neither can anyone else.

Yes it's an interesting video but his hypothesis of gradual decentralization of mining is just that for now, a hypothesis. You could even go as far as saying it's wishful thinking.

You forgive me if I believe Satoshi over this Guy who probably has a lot more to lose if People realize the truth.  ;)
http://www.btcpedia.com/bitcoin-51-attack/

Can we stop arguing about something that never happened before and - as I see it - has very slim chance of happening.
Because this thread become another battlefield for people who think that China controls bitcoin and why it is bad for everyone else.

I wan't to know:

1. Is it possible to reject only US transactions?

2. Why Chinese miners would want to risk it? After general public would learn that they done something like that it a huge shitstorm would start, effectively destroying Bitcoin price

I don't think that the chinese miners can identify that a transaction is from US, if yes how can they do it?

As far as I know when a transaction is being made its IP is not public (at least most of the time).

With Trump as president I don't think that he will make restriction or affect the bitcoin industry.

Are you intending that the Chinese miners already have control of more than 51% of the Bitcoin hashing power? If they already have so much of the mining power in hand what's already stopping them from creating their own fork of Bitcoin blockchain, mining that and reversing transactions on the blockchain? They could also then currently have the power to prevent confirmations of transactions. I honestly don't think that's possible unless all the chinese miners come to a consensus of doing so and that they have about 51% of the hash power with them

Also would be nice to know what's a way to counter this type of an attack?

It also bothers me, how can they know it is originating from US. Can they really reject transactions? Though this is more on technical issue and i am not an expert on this, I leave this to those who are knowledagle enough to explain.

There is always a way to hide your real IP even when making bitcoin transaction (it the IP is stored anywhere which I doubt)

For example I can use web wallets like coinbase or xapo and they do not store my IP when making a transaction and making this IP public.

The entire topic is based on the predication that those contributing the offending hashrate:

a) are not only all residing in the same borders, but also colluding
b) would willingly act as a hive mind and follow instructions from their government
c) are willing to accept the consequences of an attack which could put their financial future in jeopardy

Many would view this as unlikely, to put it mildly.  Even one of those conditions would be a bit of a stretch, but all three?  Take off the tinfoil hat, please

This topic is bordering on science fiction  ;D How can the Chinese miners and pools filter out USA traffic and deny foreign transactions? Is this even possible to segregate an entire country or continent from the Blockchain?

I've been telling people around the forum for many months already that the Chinese miners have over 90% of hashing power under their control, but most people were refusing to accept this truth. Given the nature of the political regime in Beijing, Chinese miners controlling Bitcoin mining basically means that it is the Chinese authorities which are essentially controlling it. Now that Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, is going to impose hefty tariffs on the Chinese exports, what could the Chinese government retaliate with, for example, through exerting their control over Chinese miners? What immediately comes to mind is the rejection of all or most Bitcoin transactions that stem from the US...

So how likely is this, and what are the remedies, if any?

I've been telling people around the forum for many months already that the Chinese miners have over 90% of hashing power under their control, but most people were refusing to accept this truth. Given the nature of the political regime in Beijing, Chinese miners controlling Bitcoin mining basically means that it is the Chinese authorities which are essentially controlling it. Now that Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, is going to impose hefty tariffs on the Chinese exports, what could the Chinese government retaliate with, for example, through exerting their control over Chinese miners? What immediately comes to mind is the rejection of all or most Bitcoin transactions that stem from the US...

So how likely is this, and what are the remedies, if any?

You really do put a lot of faith in the idea that Bitcoin would even play a role in current world politics,  ::)  get your head out of the bitcoin world man, its really not that important yet, its only an $11billion market cap, if the Chinese destroyed it tomorrow which is a load of crap anyway (why would they do that) the american government wouldn't bat an eyelid and most Americans would prob say, "whats bitcoin"  if they even heard about it on the news....... :D  lol

the op lacks research and understanding and is just trying to sell his racial mindset. not any real technical details

I sincerely hope that Bitcoin won't become a tool in the international politics. I myself reiterated it a few times that Bitcoin is negligible at worst and marginal at best, at least, for the present, but this alone still doesn't exclude the possibility of China manipulating Bitcoin this way or another. We already heard rumors about the Chinese authorities going to set up capital flow barriers preventing Bitcoin from leaving China. These rumors seem to have not been confirmed, but why would they even care if Bitcoin is thus insignificant? If transactions cannot be traced to the country of origin by any means possible (which I doubt), then it's fine, and we can safely forget about the Chinese miners discriminately raising fees as part of the future tariff wars...

But as I understand the matter, it is still possible to distinguish transactions by the wallet address of the source, right?

Apart from the topic, it is actually not really clear what percentage of the global hashing power is controlled by chinese miners, and which of those could possibly be coerced by the chinese government to refuse to mine such transactions (if they can reliably be identified as originating from the U.S.A. at all). Pools might not get away with such a change - as a pool miner, you can switch pools relatively quickly if you don't like their behavior, making the pool irrelevant in a short time. Operators of actual mining hardware within China would be more susceptible to such a coercion, but even though they control quite some mining power, they would most likely only cause some delays in transaction processing

So unless we have hard evidence that a significant percentage of miners implement policies that discriminate against some group of bitcoin users, I would file this concern under "What If?". There are probably a dozen "What If" posts each week on BCT, and it just does not make sense to act on them. One should probably look at the more realistic scenarios and think about possible workarounds, but worrying about the rather unlikely cases won't help much

The Miners are not mining to dominate the world, they are mining to make profits. The two biggest users of Bitcoin is the USA and China at the

moment, why would they stop accepting tx's from US users, and cut their profits in half, and possibly become unsustainable? Even if this was

possible, it would push business into the pockets of other nations/global miners.  ;D

The problem is when mining is centralized beyond a certain point in one single country, it becomes worrying. I remember some time ago most of the mining power was in Ukraine (with Ghash.io I believe) and people were concerned (rightfully) with that. Nothing bad happened but it's better to anticipate potential problems than to burry one's head into the sand.

The Miners are not mining to dominate the world, they are mining to make profits. The two biggest users of Bitcoin is the USA and China at the

moment, why would they stop accepting tx's from US users, and cut their profits in half, and possibly become unsustainable? Even if this was

possible, it would push business into the pockets of other nations/global miners.  ;D

That's why this discussion makes no sense as such and will take wrong direction every time

This topic is bordering on science fiction  ;D How can the Chinese miners and pools filter out USA traffic and deny foreign transactions? Is this even possible to segregate an entire country or continent from the Blockchain?

They might not reject these transactions altogether, they might just increase the fees exactly by the amount that Trump sets his protective tariffs to for the Chinese goods exported to the US markets, i.e. accept certain transactions only if they have a high enough fee.

And even before we even reach that stage, what difficulty would be involved in the Chinese government physically tracking down the owners of all this hashpower before attempting to bend them to their will?  There's likely a significant number of people involved.  And how would they prevent word of this getting out, giving the community a warning in advance, if it was happening?  Not exactly the easiest thing to keep quiet on the internet, again considering so many participants.  Someone's bound to spill the beans.

Pure fantasy

1. Could the miners potentially make the transactions coming from the US substantially more expensive than all other transactions, or even totally discard them?
Easily thru approved address lists, any address not approved would be charged the higher rate.

All Exchanges keep track of your Name / Email Address  /IP Address , even if you use a fake name and email, using cross reference techniques your location can be determined by your IP alone.
All China has to do is get an approved list of BTC address from the Chinese Exchanges and just block the rest.
EASY.

Further, you seem to address only the points which you find easiest to challenge. What about the case when the majority of Chinese miners decide to retaliate by raising the fees on certain transactions entirely on their own (which I spoke of earlier)? But please don't speak about being rational since in that very case it will be perfectly rational to raise the fees for a certain group of Bitcoin users from an economic point of view...

Then they're raising the fees for everyone, not just the US.  There isn't a practical way to single out or target the US alone.  

All Exchanges keep track of your Name / Email Address  /IP Address , even if you use a fake name and email, using cross reference techniques your location can be determined by your IP alone.
All China has to do is get an approved list of BTC address from the Chinese Exchanges and just block the rest.
EASY.

 8)

That doesn't answer how you're going to target the US alone and not every other person on the planet.  And you can't answer that because it isn't possible.



And for those not using an exchange?  You could still easily block half of China doing that.  It's only "easy" if you don't stop and think it through to conclusion.  Anyone in China could make a new address right now and move some funds to it without using an exchange.  How are you adding this new address to the approved list?  New addresses are created constantly.  How are you going to catch them all whilst also making sure none of them are American?

Huh?  That does not break Bitcoin. It would just mean that blocked transactions are processed not in China but somewhere else.

It would mean that China is disconnecting itself from the BTC network, not the "rest"

Correct me if I'm wrong but blacklisting only works if the blacklisters control (almost) every block and (almost) every node  ???

Byzcoin is also flawed because the splitting of the fees between all of those in consensus block can be subverted by offering lower fees to transactions which pay a well-entrenched miner out-of-band, thus the blockchain doesn't know that those fees were supposed to be split up. Paul Sztorc is correct (https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4w5klp/byzcoin_securely_scaling_blockchains/d64e749/) here, and Emin Gün Sirer is incorrect (https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4w5klp/byzcoin_securely_scaling_blockchains/d656v0q/).

Emin Gün Sirer is trying to argue that other mines won't mine on the block (or will reject its transactions) which doesn't fully share fees, but there is no way to objectively determine this since the offending transactions can still include a small fee (that is shared) in addition to the (discounted!) fee paid in the side band. Also Emin Gün Sirer is referring to Bitcoin-NG there, but the discussion is really about Byzcoin. In Byzcoin a miner with for example 25% of the hashrate is going to be in the consensus group 25% of the time (i.e. 10 out of every 40 minutes approximately). It will be worthwhile for users to establish an account with this large miner and send an offending transaction when that miner is in the current consensus group (and send non-offending transactions the other 75% of the time, but note there may be another 10% miner offering the same and so then it is 35% of the time, etc).

So this means the minority miners are starved of income and go bankrupt. This is yet another example of why profitable proof-of-work will in every conceivable design variant always be a power vacuum winner-take-all non-equilibrium.

Sorry profitable proof-of-work can never be stable.

Please elaborate how you plan to identify all these US transactions in real time?  I'm not in the US, so please list every single address I've ever been associated with so that I'm not charged more.  According to kiklo, it's really easy

I don't know really. And that's the reason why I started this thread and openly asked about that in the OP. To be honest, the technical impossibility of such discrimination (based on IP, or wallet address, or anything else) is the only true reason why the Chinese miners might not raise the fees on a selective basis as an act of revenge even if Trump lives up to his promises and unleashes a trade war with China. All other arguments like irrationality of such actions, coercion by the government, lack of hashing power, etc are weak and can only somewhat limit the fee riot if things get serious. On the other hand, if things do get serious after all, the miners from China could still indiscriminately raise the fees for all...

What consequences would such events have?

Impossible to you maybe,
If I am China all I have to do is request every Chinese Exchange report their BTC Address & every Chinese person ,
these addresses are then placed in a database that is checked whenever a transaction is attempted, if your address is in the list  it is approved because it is in the approved list, if it is not in the list , then it can be denied .
They could even charge a monthly fee to be in the approved list.
If you know anything about how computers work , you know this is not a complicated task whatsoever.

iamnotback also sees the flaws in BTC, I suggest the rest of you research it , and make up your own minds.   ;)

A transaction is not associated with an IP address. There is no way to know where a transaction originates, but the Chinese government could identify transactions not originated in China

I got it. But what about wallet addresses? Some wallet explorers show which service a given address belongs to. For example, my own address, which you can see in my profile page and send your funds to (lol), is correctly determined as part of a Coinbase wallet. If we look at the home page of walletexplorer.com, we will see a list (https://www.walletexplorer.com/) of services like exchanges, pools, web wallets, casinos and so on, with pages (https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/Xapo.com) of addresses that belong to these services. As far as I understand it, most such services (if not all) have api's that allow to check if a given address is theirs. Otherwise, how could these wallet explorers determine the service a given address belongs to? If they can find that out, why can't Chinese miners do essentially the same?

And I guess this is not the only way to check which country an incoming transaction comes from

Online wallets usually do not provide the list of address they control or they would be compromising on privacy. Wallet explorer uses the known address of the various services and use taint analysis to determine which addresses are likely connected to which. For example, Bitfinex is a well known exchange and they have a cold storage and hot wallet address. If your address always sends the funds to those addresses, it is very possible that the address belongs to Bitfinex.

This has several limitations however. If the user were to use a desktop wallet or an online wallet that does not send their fund to a known address that is controlled by them, it would be close to impossible to identify who the address belongs to.

Online wallets usually do not provide the list of address they control or they would be compromising on privacy. Wallet explorer uses the known address of the various services and use taint analysis to determine which addresses are likely connected to which. For example, Bitfinex is a well known exchange and they have a cold storage and hot wallet address. If your address always sends the funds to those addresses, it is very possible that the address belongs to Bitfinex

This has several limitations however. If the user were to use a desktop wallet or an online wallet that does not send their fund to a known address that is controlled by them, it would be close to impossible to identify who the address belongs to.

Yes, I do know that describing fantasy scenarios is not a complicated task whatsoever.  Implementing them in a functional and practical manner is, though.  The sheer scale of the operation as you've described it is phenomenal.  It's like publishing a global phone book where the phone numbers change every minute.  If you know anything about how computers work, you're crazy if you think that's as easy to physically make and maintain as it is for you to imagine it.  And again, we'd see it coming a mile off and fork the network before they had a chance to implement it.  They can block or charge more fees for whatever transactions they like because there wouldn't be any.  The rest of the world would quite happily leave them to mine an empty chain that none of us would be transacting on.  

I dont think this is really true. There's seem to be no logical connection. Maybe you could say there have been one or two incidents but I think you have blown it out of proportion. I feel Bitcoin market is to huge and both the super powers can Co exist. Maybe China is rolling out more btc, but let trump use btc and then you see or let America just accept it's use. Boom time. So relax, he shall make btc Americas new currency lol😂

I dont think this is really true. There's seem to be no logical connection. Maybe you could say there have been one or two incidents but I think you have blown it out of proportion. I feel Bitcoin market is to huge and both the super powers can Co exist. Maybe China is rolling out more btc, but let trump use btc and then you see or let America just accept it's use. Boom time. So relax, he shall make btc Americas new currency lol

Trump is a loud mouth, this is beyond any doubt

So far he has been threatening to outlaw the Chinese exports to the US (well, not really outlaw but quite close to that). If Trump is going to return American jobs back to America as he promised, he should first start the production of asics (or whatever equipment is used nowadays to mine Bitcoin) and then wrest the control over Bitcoin from the grasp of the Chinese miners. So, if he is going to outmine China and make Bitcoin great again, then more power to him

Trump is a loud mouth, this is beyond any doubt

So far he has been threatening to outlaw the Chinese exports to the US (well, not really outlaw but quite close to that). If Trump is going to return American jobs back to America as he promised, he should first start the production of asics (or whatever equipment is used nowadays to mine Bitcoin) and then wrest the control over Bitcoin from the grasp of the Chinese miners. So, if he is going to outmine China and make Bitcoin great again, then more power to him

Actually the problem with that plan,

1.  ASICS are only a part of the issue, and they are almost worthless in a year or so
2.  Electricity would have to be subsidized like China does
3.  China just has to large of a lead to worry with BTC, easier to start a new one with a different algorithm

Imposing a Tariff on BTC , would earn money for the US without any expenditure on the US part.
All they have to do it Charge a Fee on any BTC when it is send to a US Exchange to be traded.
The US collects extra revenue no matter who controls BTC

I've casually proposed this for Bitcoin in the past, but there's no way that something as experimental as this would ever be done in Bitcoin without at least a successful altcoin example, so it'd be cool to see it implemented in an altcoin, if any altcoin devs are interested. I have not rigorously examined this scheme for any flaw, so maybe it won't work well at all, but maybe it will.

One problem in Bitcoin is mining centralization. To solve this, I propose that the PoW be changed to the following:

 - If the block height mod 4 is 0, the PoW for that block is SHA-3 (or similar), an ASIC-friendly algorithm.
 - If the block height mod 4 is 1, the "PoW" for that block is "follow the satoshi", a form of proof-of-stake described in the Proof of Activity (https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf) paper.
 - If the block height mod 4 is 2, the PoW for that block is cuckoo (https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo), a very ASIC-unfriendly algorithm.
 - If the block height mod 4 is 3, the "PoW" for that block is again "follow the satoshi".

Most likely:

 - The SHA-3 group will be controlled mainly by a handful of centralized ASIC miners as is the case with mining in Bitcoin today.
 - The cuckoo group will be controlled mainly by a handful of botnet operators, though ordinary users might also participate to some extent.
 - The PoS group will be controlled mainly by a handful of early adopters, though ordinary users might also participate to some extent.

However, importantly, all three groups need to cooperate in order to do anything majorly evil such as rewriting many past blocks. And since the three groups seem very likely to be independent, this significantly increases the decentralization and security of the system's mining.

The reason that PoS appears twice is that if you had a PoW step followed by a PoW step, the miners in the first PoW group would be incentivized to try redoing the block in their group whenever a block is solved, since otherwise they just have to wait. Adding a quick PoS block after each PoW step makes this less likely to succeed.

There should be two PoW difficulties: one based on steps 0 and 1, and one based on steps 2 and 3. PoW must be combined with PoS in the difficulty calculation because the nature of "follow the satoshi" leads to blocks often failing due to offline nodes in PoS, and this must be taken into account in the difficulty calculation.

"Follow the satoshi" is a particularly good PoS method because you can only participate if you run an actual full node. There's no way to cheat. As suggested by the Proof of Activity paper, participating in PoS using a particular address should require the participant to have the ability to spend at least a large percentage of the address's coins. The ability to risklessly delegate PoS authority leads to pooled PoS, an undesirable point of centralization.

Since PoS appears twice, it should have to redistribute at least half of its total block rewards to steps 0 and 2. It might also be desirable to change the reward distributions even more, since ASIC miners will probably be much more expensive than cuckoo miners, which will certainly be much more expensive than PoS miners. Redistribution of the mining reward can be done in a simple way by requiring that a block with x coins of total reward (subsidy + fees) must be accompanied by a transaction that spends the entire total reward, and this transaction must have a fee of at least y% * x. The next block will then include this transaction, taking its fees, and maybe again redistributing the fees if necessary.

This can save the day.

When it gets Nasty, don't expect BTC to be left out of the Tariff war, by either side

If his proposal ever gets implemented

As theymos himself said, this is highly experimental and would require at least one altcoin implementation to test the scheme in practice (personally, I think that two independent implementations would do even better). What right now seems to be more important is the recognition of massive Bitcoin mining centralization, something that many posters flat-out disagree with here. If theymos is right, and he most certainly is, this basically means that Chinese miners do control Bitcoin, so my question set forth in the OP basically boils down to whether and to what degree the miners from China could trace Bitcoin transactions to the country of origin


Some might not have enough courage to accept that

In emergency you suggest here there could no choice, someone will implement it. It will be up to the users to switch to the new client.
There is a Myriadcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=483515.0) where they got 5 independent PoW mining algorithms, it has been running for a long time, so it's possible. Some altcoins have a hybrid PoW/PoS. It has been done.

All Exchanges keep track of your Name / Email Address  /IP Address , even if you use a fake name and email, using cross reference techniques your location can be determined by your IP alone.
All China has to do is get an approved list of BTC address from the Chinese Exchanges and just block the rest.
EASY.

 8)

Well let's stop disagreeing with you and say you are correct.

What would happen? A new coin or a switch to a different coin.

As a USA citizen I would find another coin to mine and if you see the growth of all coins such as Zec and eth the shift to another place to mine has happened as I type.

This is why alt coins have purpose to keep other paths to mining open.

I would love for China and Trump to fight it out.

Btw China has more then 4 trillion in USA bonds.  And we all know Trump has done a lot of renegotiation of debt over the years.

So he has a stick to poke China .   Should be fun to see it unfold.

So what will happen if I use a fake Chinese name, e-mail address, residence address and a fake IP provided by a VPN? Will the Chinese still ban my sorry ass?  ;D Beating the Chinese in the faking game that is actually awesome  ;D

Dude I can pay someone to open an account at a Chinese exchange so my transactions will keep going through. There are a lot of hungry Chinese students looking for a quick buck every day.

you must renounce your original citizenship and passport.

Is it serious? They can ban transactions by a country?

What about using an VPN? It can hide your real location?

Btw if they are doing that, I think it's useless, Trump neither use bitcoin  ::) and a lot of people don't voted on him.. Digital war? useless...

I reallly cant understand if that is true why they are doing that maybe dont like that they see how Donald Trump is in American head so they want push him.

I've been telling people around the forum for many months already that the Chinese miners have over 90% of hashing power under their control, but most people were refusing to accept this truth. Given the nature of the political regime in Beijing, it is the Chinese authorities who are essentially controlling Bitcoin mining through the miners, not the miners themselves.

Now that Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, is going to impose hefty tariffs on the Chinese exports, could the Chinese government retaliate with, for example, through exerting their control over Chinese miners? What immediately comes to mind is the rejection of all or most Bitcoin transactions that stem from the US...

So how likely is this, and what are the remedies, if any?

I've been telling people around the forum for many months already that the Chinese miners have over 90% of hashing power under their control, but most people were refusing to accept this truth. Given the nature of the political regime in Beijing, it is the Chinese authorities who are essentially controlling Bitcoin mining through the miners, not the miners themselves. Now that Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, is going to impose hefty tariffs on the Chinese exports, could the Chinese government retaliate with, for example, through exerting their control over Chinese miners? What immediately comes to mind is the rejection of all or most Bitcoin transactions that stem from the US...

So how likely is this, and what are the remedies, if any?

Get a Dual Citizenship , and you won't have to fake anything. But the costs will probably not be worth it.
Opps nevermind , they don't allow dual Citizenship.
http://onestop.globaltimes.cn/how-can-i-become-a-chinese-mainland-citizen/

I am aware that there is a sort of mining cartel going on in Bitcoin, but I was not aware that the Chinese authorities are directly controlling the Bitcoin miners. It would be nice if you explain a bit more why you think this and if this is really a fact or just your theory

I don`t know how will they control all the btc transactions between China and USA.

Is this even possible?

I don`t think that Trump will keep his promises.

Americans need the Chinese import.

The prememir of China has spoken with Trump on the business Co operation part. Since trump has said there will be a tax on all China products, couldn't it be possible China pays them in btc or offers America a greater share in btc business and that allows them tax reliefs. I believe they will come down to some pact and btc will be a part of it. Matter of time now before details Come out

Well I guess I agree with OP, since many are chinese miners and China's government might start to mine bitcoin themselves but IMO, they can't refuse the transactions that the americans make since it will mean less money for them. Maybe they will just dump bitcoin in retaliation to trump and try to control it's sending fee when a transaction originated from United States. That's another possibility they will do.

I've been telling people around the forum for many months already that the Chinese miners have over 90% of hashing power under their control, but most people were refusing to accept this truth. Given the nature of the political regime in Beijing, it is the Chinese authorities who are essentially controlling Bitcoin mining through the miners, not the miners themselves. Now that Donald Trump, the president-elect of the US, is going to impose hefty tariffs on the Chinese exports, could the Chinese government retaliate with, for example, through exerting their control over Chinese miners? What immediately comes to mind is the rejection of all or most Bitcoin transactions that stem from the US...

So how likely is this, and what are the remedies, if any?

Having given it some consideration, I think the more likely scenario is that *if* China opt to place tariffs on the US in the fiat world, Bitcoin, as usual, will be a safe haven from that.  Most people are involved with Bitcoin precisely because they don't trust their governments or traditional financial institutions with that crumbling, debt-based, IOU lunacy.  We're all here to bypass that.  Goal achieved.  This thing works.  So regardless of their locale, miners aren't going to lower themselves or this wonderful new economy with demands from on high, because it goes against everything that's been built here

Incentives are aligned and no law, government or regulatory pressure is going to change that.  If anything, Chinese companies would be smart enough to see it as an opportunity to do increased business with the US, potentially driving further Bitcoin adoption and gaining an edge over their fiat-based competitors.  "No tariffs here, trade with us".  Let the money flow.  It's the path of least resistance and it doesn't involve any highly improbable fantasy whitelists that would only serve to harm miner profits.  They'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they engaged in such political manoeuvrings.  Far better to go against the wishes of the fiat dinosaurs, give them the finger and keep raking in the dough

Well, this thread got lost somehow, but now it seems about time to resuscitate it

What I warned about in the opening post might have finally come true. Could I hypothesize that Chinese miners have been colluding all that time which has passed since after Trump was elected as the new President of the US, and now they have all started a transaction war on the US by massively rejecting transactions, even without particularly distinguishing between them? Or are they nevertheless discriminating them in some intricate way, after all?

They are not rejecting transactions, blocks are full.

Except empty or tiny blocks of those miners who are not confident their block will not be orphaned if they spend time on validating and including transactions up to the block limit. These are the blocks that should be discounted from calculating median block size. There is no politics here... yet, these miners don't want to take a risk in mining transactions and having their block orphaned. The reason for a huge pool of pending transactions is a simple traffic jam in a rush hour, not sufficient transaction space and too many people who want to transact at the same time. A situation Bitcoin Unlimited could have prevented. But we have what we have.

I have already addressed the point of "blocks being full" in another thread

You may want to read it here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1690349.msg16967166#msg16967166) and here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1690349.msg16966881#msg16966881). In short, the blocks are not full, they are not even as full as they were about a month ago. Have you heard anyone complaining about their transactions rejected (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1690349.msg16966766#msg16966766) or massively postponed (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1690349.msg16966388#msg16966388) back then? I don't know about you, but I haven't heard anything similar what we see today. And just in case, a month ago had been before Trump got elected

Before the US elections we also had a similar event with 60000+ unconfirmed transactions

https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-count?timespan=60days

At the time of this Post

66319 Unconfirmed Transactions


 8)

This is so funny.  When I first came to this forward everyone was bragging how bitcoin transactions only took a couple of minutes and how slow Western Union another like services were.  Now is a complete role reversal, everyone else is faster the Bitcoin.

I just sent my son money from California to North Carolina for an emergency. I went to a Walmart and he was standing in a Walmart when I sent the money. It took 20 seconds for him to be holding my cash.

I guess you should read the thread first

You are free to believe anything you want

A simple check-up of blockchain.info shows blocks are full with the exceptions I've explained above

How would they determine where the transaction originates?

I see where you are getting at. And no, this is not a matter of belief. Since it is actually a matter of disbelief. Hope this helps better understand my point


I have already posted the chart which basically shows that the blocks are not full. And if you somehow missed my post (or just chose to ignore it), I also showed what the fill-up ratio would be if we discarded the empty blocks altogether. The real value is still a far cry from what I got. In any case, there are only around 144 new blocks mined daily, so it shouldn't be a big deal to post exact data with actual block sizes that have been mined since this congestion has started...

These stats would answer the matter in question in a most definite manner, wouldn't they?

That's true,bitcoin is decentralized is there a way for us to know where transactions is originating?if they are going to increase the fees,it should be on all transactions.

https://blockchain.info/blocks
Exact data with actual block sizes with convenient pagination links all the way to how long ago you need.

Okay, that's what we need, and what do we see there?

Today there are only a few blocks which are not filled to the full, but yesterday their number was much bigger. I found a few blocks which are half empty at ~300Kb, and a dozen at around 750k. One block has (https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000001a65db1f68313b6cee87dc4770ff9bef3b553bce499f302) only 82 transactions in it. The day before yesterday, there were only 5 such blocks at ~750k, and no blocks below that (just in case, I completely excluded empty blocks from consideration). The inference is that yesterday we had a significantly lower fill-up ratio than today and the day before yesterday (you guess what it means), and that seems to be the straw that is breaking the camel's back

750 kb blocks are an old configuration setting in the mining pool software, some pools keep using it because incompetence, laziness or both.

I've explained the reason for blocks that hardly have transactions in them here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1679109.msg16967755#msg16967755), very often such a barely filled block comes shortly after a previous block, indicating the miner is in a hurry to release it to acquire the coin base block reward. It's pure profit motive to release early including few or no transactions, not a conspiracy. Some day censoring transactions could be a thing, this isn't the case yet.

I also strongly suspect that it doesn't make much difference if you include 82 transactions or 820, or the max number, provided the mempool is not empty (which is obviously not the case). I can only explain such behavior by deliberate choice not to include other transactions into the block. If someone was in a hurry, as you suggest, he would most certainly choose to keep the block completely empty, right?

A miner has solved a block and is busy validating transactions to add to the block before he releases it. While doing this the miner receives a block from the network with some of transactions he'd been working on already added to it. Scared that his block may be orphaned if he spends more time on validating new pending transactions from the pool, he discards txs that the other miner has already validated and releases his block with whatever txs he had validated up to this point in time which aren't yet in any of the previous blocks

The number and choice of transactions in these empty to barely filled blocks depends on factors such as network topology which affects transactions and blocks propagation, on the choice of transactions the previous block's miner had validated. Default choice for miners if based on the fee/size ratio, the more you pay for a byte of transaction size, the sooner your transaction is mined. I read that some Chinese pool sells a subscription to one Chinese exchange to prioritize their transactions which is also a profit-based approach to mining transactions, not a politically motivated one. I hope my explanation of empty to barely filled blocks makes sense. If it doesn't you should find a more technical explanation in the Technical and Mining subforums. This is where I got it from, I didn't make it up, but my wording may be confusing. Since these empty to barely filled blocks are out of service to users, for any practical purposes we can only count other blocks and most of those are 1MB. The Black Friday holidays have made the problem more acute, but this is far from the first backlog of 2016.

How do you plan on determining a transaction is from the US?  This is such a ridiculous idea that would never happen. China doesn't control every single pool and mining operation. How did you make this stuff up?

...The Black Friday holidays have made the problem more acute, but this is far from the first backlog of 2016.

Mining pool software automates transaction validation. Noone does it manually, the speed of validation is a few millisecond per transaction. I don't see how the blocks you have linked to defy the explanation I have given. As been said there is a number of factors in the state of network: the last blocks, transactions are changing all the time, nodes observe previous blocks, some blocks may have been already solved and are propagating, block orphaning.
Bottom line: all blocks can never be 1 MB, blocks can be considered full when backlog starts growing faster than it can be processed. It's been happening in the past few days.

You simply can't buy me into that

...the higher the load on the Bitcoin network (i.e. more transactions coming in) the more empty blocks we will see on the blockchain

[snip] then what you say doesn't sound persuading

What you say effectively comes down to stating that the higher the load on the Bitcoin network (i.e. more transactions coming in) the more empty blocks we will see on the blockchain.

I don't have motivation to have you buy into that. You prefer to reject a technical explanation in favor of a conspiracy theory

The speed of one tx validation may be 1 millisecond or faster, this depends on CPU power of the mining pool node, it was just an example that no one does it manually. Again, this has no connection with your strange conclusion of millions of unconfirmed transactions.

Err, no.  That's not what he said.

Mining is fiercely competitive and miners aren't going to risk squeezing in more tx than they have to if that means jeopardising their block reward and allowing someone else to beat them to it

That's not what he said, but I never claimed otherwise in the first place. That's what it comes down to.

Forget about Boogeyman, you just said essentially the same

Again, no. that's not "what it comes down to".  Stop reading what isn't there to warp the meaning into whatever you want it to say.  Higher loads on the network do not, in any way, shape or form, result in more empty blocks.  It's down to which transactions were included in the previous block, network topology and fees.  Volume is not relevant

Thereby miners don't have to validate these transactions again, right? If so, this is in direct conflict with what has been said before. Namely, that a miner after solving a block "is busy validating transactions to add to the block before he releases it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1679109.msg16979755#msg16979755)". If these transactions have already been included in the previous block, why would the miner have to validate them again and add them to the new block? Why doesn't he validate them before (if he really has to), that would be more logical and efficient, wouldn't it?

I guess you should first come to an agreement between yourselves which transactions are validated and when exactly

We do agree between ourselves, we're just having some difficulty in getting you to comprehend it

When a mining pool receives a new block from a competitor, it needs to perform a few actions: download the full block, validate its transactions and define a new block to mine on. During this - albeit short -interval, so as not to waste hashing power, they start mining a new block. Only the coinbase transaction is included, so the previous block does not invalidate theirs with a duplicate transaction

Let's cut the crap, this is absolutely not what I've been told before. I've been told that miners are validating transactions that they are going to add to the new block they found, not transactions in the previous block.

They do both, in fact.  I'll make one more attempt to try and explain it, but after this, if you're still not satisfied, I'm afraid I'll have no alternative to declaring you a lost cause.  It's really not that complicated.

Roughly every ten minutes, a new block is created and added to the blockchain through the mining process.  This block verifies and records any new transactions.  Once that block is created and the new transaction is verified and included in that block, the transaction will have one confirmation.  Approximately every ten minutes thereafter, a new block is created and the transaction is reconfirmed (or validated again) by the Bitcoin network.  While some services are instant or only require one confirmation, many Bitcoin companies will require more as each confirmation greatly decreases the likelihood of a payment being reversed.  It is common for six confirmations to be required which takes about an hour.

So, not only do miners validate transactions in the mempool to include in the new block, they also validate (or "confirm" if drawing a distinction helps make it clearer) the transactions from the previous block.  You seem to be under the impression that "validate" applies purely to tx in the mempool, but this is not the case, hence no exploding mempools.  Confirmations are a repeated validation

I don't think it is realistic. I don't think Trump will really make some sanctions connected to China or that China will reject transactions. I am not sure if it's even possible. Isn't TOR supposed to deal with the problem of tracing transactions?

I feel it is possible and you never know about Trump mate. Sometimes he realizes what he has done after years.  :o

the law of bitcoin

I can't understand what the hell this Chinese are trying to prove. They should be kicked out from bitcoin or china should ban bitcoin i know Chinese have maximum hashing power but why not USA don't dominate bitcoin world.

Because speculation has always been phenomenal in China. China's stock market reached its highest point at over 6000 in 2007, then fell straight down to 1600. The government dominates the stock market so bitcoin is the only thing left for them to play with.

I can't understand what the hell this Chinese are trying to prove. They should be kicked out from bitcoin or china should ban bitcoin i know Chinese have maximum hashing power but why not USA don't dominate bitcoin world.

Also I don't see China now stopping to accept Bitcoin transactions from USA

This thread should be treated purely as a hypothetical 'what if?' scenario.  Not based in reality.  It isn't actually happening.  Nor is it ever likely to

Chinese miners rejecting transactions from the US? Is this true that China can take control of BTC transactions from now on.

They already took control.  China owns bitcoin.

It has been so for at least two years already

I think I can safely assume that many people would disagree with that claim, but if they (I mean the Chinese) control Bitcoin in such a way that it rises 50 dollars every month on average without devastating plunges, many other people would happily agree to this type of control. Let's face the facts, the majority of people are here for profits, and Bitcoin is no more than a speculative vehicle for them. They don't particularly care about who controls Bitcoin as long as they are well off with their Bitcoin investments

Well its not that easy for China to retaliate against USA for increasing the tariffs by filtering transactions and disallow US bitcoin transactions. First, since you cannot determine who and where the owner of the btc address. Second, if they want really to retaliate and if filtered or selective mining for transactions is possible they will eventually mine even if it is coming from the USA, why because USA is large and it means big income. So if they earn big in bitcoin soon they will replace USA at the top of the economy.

Not only are you right but you are even underestimating the number of people. I believe it's not just a simple majority but almost all people are using Bitcoin simply for profit. I have run across very few people that are using Bitcoin for ideological reasons and I have attended dozens of conferences and meetups.