Bitcoin Forum

I just learned about the 51% attack.

People say it can't happen because "everyone loves BTC" 

= Who would do that?
= WHO would have that much money to waste just to kill BTC

Seems to me that $60-$100 Million offered @ $10 MILLION Each to 6-10 mine pools would do it...then no more concern about CRYPTO

and BTC is large enough that the media spin on it would count as an EXAMPLE to the masses that crypto doesn't work (perception is reality) and should be stayed away from?

What do you think?

There's too many viable countermeasures, one I have thought of includes known entities signing blocks so that there is a distributed human tiebreaker element to any major rollback in the block chain.  These signatures would only be taken into consideration when one fork of the block chain appears to compete with another, and both are larger than a few blocks.  The signatures would merely assert "I am (identity) and I saw block (hash) at (timestamp)".  There is no big rush to add this to Bitcoin now, but if Bitcoin experienced a bona fide 51% attack, suddenly everyone would be motivated to add this.

Answer this question.
Why would any government spend millions to kill BTC now? And we can just hard-fork it and add more preventive measures if that really happens. Also, even if that BTC is offered to for example, GHASH and BTCGuild, everyone would notice they are carrying out such an attack and miners would switch pools.

Think before you say something.

This, +1 Bitcoin would be hardforked. We would all use that fork, government's attempts would be useless, we would go on our merry way.

get over yourself... ::)

I think you should stop making silly threads and spend more time reading.

You're a noob, we get it but atleast show your effort in learning. Being spoonfed is not gonna get you anywhere. You will however be mislead by hearsay.

Dont you think we would have had discussed these topics long time ago?

Exactly. That's the whole point. And we have countermeasures that we can put into place in the event that this occurs.
We don't even need to hardfork, most miners would switch to another pool anyway.

Noob? How old are you 12?  Do you live and operate in the real world or just online?  Are you stuck in the chair at the computer? do u know how life works?

Are you in the COOL clique for BTC? ooooo-- should I try to be your friend?

Get over yourself...seriously.


FOR AS LONG AS THERE IS BITCOIN - there will be new people coming in.

THIS FORUM IS FOR DISCUSSION -- stay OUT OF THE DISCUSSION if you already know everything and had every possible discussion.

I didn't ask if you had this discussion...why would I care if you discussed these things "a long time ago"?  I DIDN'T it is NEW FOR ME

so I WILL DISCUSS THEM!  

And while your IQ may be so low, that you are easily mislead by hearsay, or your time on this earth so limited that you are easily taken advantage of..some of us have succeeded in life and are STILL GROWING

thanks for your time and have a good day.

Easy, someone who really support BTC just mass produce ASIC that is cheap but is not as fast/cost-efficient than other asic, all bitcoiners buy them and mine themselves.
Then everyone will be investing a little money to prevent any 51%

Sadly the current mentality = mine only for profit.

Wow. You are obviously an uneducated person, and cannot properly start a discussion without raging at people.
We are just answering your questions. Your attitude won't get you anywhere.
You should seriously consider changing your attitude to approach your life, otherwise I assure you that you will make many mistakes.
Please calm down and have a think yourself.

No. You point at p2pool. Solo mining with a miner each won't get anyone anywhere.

https://www.google.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org%3A51%25+attack&oq=https%3A%2F%2Fbitcointalk.org%3A51%25+attack&aqs=chrome..69i57.8877j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

It's all good when you know how to use the tools the internet gives you. Relax.

Not going to happen!

Why would a government want to kill Bitcoin when they can tax it instead and turn it into a cash cow?

The IRS's ruling basically solidified Bitcoin's legitimacy and many other countries will look to the US when it comes time for them to issue their own guidelines.

Let's suppose a government even had the desire to do this - are they going to waste the massive funds required to do so?

I think not  :)

and which one of those is not a general conversation or one with 20 million bunny trails?

which specifically is WHAT I POSITED???

The only entity that can realistically do that is China. Produce lots of ASICs, seize Discus Fish, turn it into an SHA256 "jammer" (because a single 51% event is not enough, that could be healed by a fork)

No one else has the motive and resourecs but China Mainland.

Now, if you believe this will happen, scrypt coins are less vulnerable, scrypt-N even less, and Primecoin/Yac etc. can 100% not be attacked that way because not even China can produce more than 51% of the planet's CPUs. NXT is completely immune to 51% attack by design.

So don't whine, diversify into LTC DOGE VTC HEAVY QUARK SRC XPM YAC NXT or whatever else, if you really believe in such horror stories.

Can't spell correctly, and starts a thread with CAPS on a few WORDS.
That's why no one takes you seriously.

Let me guess, american?

I think it's just a 10 year old kid, raging because he doesn't understand what he thinks he understands.
What question are you asking anyway. You asked for opinions, we gave you opinions, and you started insulting and raging like a psycho.
So... what else do you want?

Relax.... Breath...

Which word is spelled incorrectly, genius?

Ruh-roh, that is one pissed-off, Bitcoin-ignorant tween!

http://bookriotcom.c.presscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/CaryGrantYouMad.gif

You need just to a bit of research before you assume the gov is going to kill BTC, they know they cant win, cause there other currenices they will have to affect, to costy and they dont have the budget for it.

The only child here is you who typed in CAPs like an idiot.

We get it, you're autistic.

I didn't say THE government..I said A government COULD

Why are you still posting? Every post you make only makes this community despise you more.

It's time to create a new account, get informed first, and start over.

/ignored

So? You could go out onto the street and an asteroid COULD crash into your head and kill you.
What you are saying makes no sense at all.


Wow. You seriously need some glasses.

@ Byt411

Its not Alex, its Mr Autistic that you wanted to quote.

Wow. So much hate on here.

In all seriousness, a government CAN destroy bitcoin, just like they can destroy ANYTHING. Thinking they can't is foolish.

Propaganda can spread popular opinion. All a government needs to do is release news bulletins in the AP that are picked up by newspapers which equate bitcoin to something nefarious. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. The more people believe something, the more it becomes true.

In order for bitcoin to become more successful, more people need to use btc. If government keeps slamming it, most of us here will know they're lying - but it will be impossible to spread the word to the majority of people if they just get their information from the newspapers.

It takes a concerted, planned effort by a government to slowly release more and more news articles that equate bitcoin to something bad. They can't outright say a whopper of a lie, or there will be a big pushback. They need to plan and slowly spread little pieces of bad information at a time, until there is nothing really crazily contridictory that people will care to think of it as a scandal.

This is similar to how the republican party in the united states acts. They have half of America believing there is no global warming (either man-made or not) and to think everything scientists say is a lie. This has been 20 years of propaganda that the republican party is winning.

The US can destroy the earth if they want, by sending all their Nuclear ICBMs at somewhere on earth.
The OP is talking about some government launching a 51% attack on a coin.


Sorry Alex. I will fix it now.

UNEDUCATED much guys?

"POSITED"

as in: to POSIT a premise? (someone said Google is your friend...so maybe in this instance it would be valid for you to check it out)

that is not a misspelling

But i understand how if you are still in 8th grade, that was not a word on your vocab list yet...

So if I owned a pool and the Feds paid me ten million bucks to shut down the pool,
And i agreed, so what?  My pool is shut down, and miners would join another pool.
So, nothing was accomplished except breaking up a large pool temporarily.

Wow. You obviously don't understand a 51% attack either.

The gov pays 3 major pools so that they direct their hashrate to create a dishonest chain and make other honest miners' blocks to become orphaned.

No, the whole point is that when someone ask you what you think, you show some respect.

These forums are swarming with kids these days. Grow the f*** up!

LOL. Why start insulting too?
We expressed our opinions and showed the OP other threads where others expressed their opinions.
Then both of you start raging and cursing at us.

unless you owned one of the largest pools, and the other 9 pool owners were paid also (as I said in the original statement)

Why would the government want to kill something they want to tax?  Makes no sense to them don't you think?

Goes against everything you learned in history class...

The thread you responded "exactly" to is a pile of poop.
If the original post was also a pile of poop, I wouldn't care. But it wasn't.

Besides, 51% attack is a real threat imo. So far the best defense would be to switch to a currency that uses X11 hashing or something like that.

For example, the US.
The US sees BitCoin as a competitor to its US Dollar. If everyone treated bitcoin like a currency like the dollar, then it would severly hurt that country's economy, and its government cannot control it.

WOW. Such insult. "pile of poop". And then you say we are kids.

Please explain why you think it is a "pile of poop", otherwise you have no right to say so.

hard to tax something you do not completely control

Let me give you a VERY RECENT and VERY similar history lesson

If you were old enough to be on the internet and doing business on it at the time

check out something that was once called

e-gold

which is a forefather of BTC

and understand WHY the government shuts down such things.

Grow up and you will see what I mean

I love Bitcoin as much as the next guy, but I don't think we're quite at that stage yet.  The government, IRS for instance, is looking for ways to tax it.

In the US government's eyes, it's a "property" not a currency, thus the "property tax" they've included this year for miners and investors.

We're only in year 5, lets get it accepted by Amazon and Ebay first, before we start threatening the US dollar.

No offense, but that sounds exactly what a 9-year old kid that thinks he is grown-up would say.

Yeah, thats what a 9-year old kid that thinks he is a grown-up does to you

So are you seriously implying that you are a 9-year old kid?

I understand what a 51% is lol... Good point but still if they did that, that would pool would be dead, so it would be good for only a short time, the pools would disband and bitcoin would continue.

byt411 is correct.
Thanks for being patient and nice with our new friend.  :)

That wont happen, if it does devs can always use a POS fork.

They wouldn't "disband", just that most of the miners would leave and the bribing would have been worthless.


See, I'm not trying to insult, I am just suggesting something, I'm just trying to help.

if you ask me it isn't that simple to take bitcoin out or it would have been done already.  Even if it was to happen there would be a new coin to take it's place.

surely you jest...right?

I dont think this would work because

- most -if not all- pools are not run by a single person or a small group but by several people. How can you reach them all to bribe them?
- Why? Anyone or any group/government/etc. investing up to 100 Million needs are very good reason to do it. The main reason would be money. I dont see how you can make money off of this. Why would anyone want this?
- "the media" is not a single entity either. Different papers would see it differently and report differently about this. Same with "a goverment" (as stated above). Not many countries a ruled by a single person, thus there are usually several people who would have to decide that this is a good course of action.


tl;dr why? Whats the motive?

-$10 million even among several people is a lot of money.  You only need to reach enough to manipulate 51%

-$100 million for a government is a drop in the bucket and in the USA - we just print it out.  They don't do everything for "money".  They do a lot for POWER and CONTROL.  They would not be looking for a return on investment

- Main stream media is all about promoting government agendas.  When you get involved with local or global economies, you begin to see things like the fed, REITs, IRS etc and how they all are propaganda to promote political agendas (Koch anyone?)  I watched this happen real time during the real estate bubble and could not believe what all the "different" news media were saying while every sane investor was yelling _BUBBLE_ GET OUT_ !


Again, enabling transactions that are not 100% controlled can become a problem in lots of ways.

Thats partly motive anyway.

That's what disband means.  Most of the miners would leave.  Exactly. 

Too many people not thinking it thorough clearly….


1. DDOS one of the major mining pool, forcing the clients to switch to other pools.

2. Take down the work servers for two other major pools and replace with your own tainted code work servers.
3. Use THIER clients to propagate your 51% attack…. (after all there is NO encrypted connection between a pool work server and its engine clients)


No need to 'pay' anyone or even get the compliance of the pool owners………….
all are feasible attacks…. DDos & DNS attack.

I just don't see why people think you have to spend millions on 'out hashing' the network when the current setup has key points that can be exploited.


Really these pools should implement some sort of public key exchange to prevent  being replaced by compromised kit via a DNS attack.


RF