Bitcoin Forum

I was having an argument in the speculation sub-forum when someone said "the only way to stop Bitcoin would be to ban the entire internet"... see I often hear that, but being in IT as a profession that statement give me a real hard time, so I thought it is time to discuss it, maybe there is something I am not aware off !!

So if Bitcoin becomes a real threat to governments, and if they agree on banning it and killing it, one way to go would be just changing regulation (FCC) for internet service providers and force them to ban the port that Bitcoin uses (8332 now), this would mean certain death to Bitcoin.


I want to hear your opinion, and how do you think this could be prevented ?

change the port to 80, use SSL.
now bitcoin is indistinguishable from any SSL website, good luck banning it.

Tor is already implemented in bitcoin core.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin

(-onion command line)

change the port to 80, use SSL.
now bitcoin is indistinguishable from any SSL website, good luck banning it.

This, or use Tor. What we today understand as the Internet will have to cease existing in order to stop any specific service or protcoll. Youd have to ban encrypted data in general in order to be able to inspect and filter every package. Thats what certain corporate networks do along with restricted hard- and software.

What does "block bitcoin at ISP level" mean? Bitcoin is not a single IP or Server an ISP can block and as long as me and the nodes I connect to use Tor the ISP might be able to detect the use of Tor (AFAIK not even that is possible) but has no ideawhat the traffic actually is. Could be recepies for cake, could be bitcoin, to the ISP its basically noise. Thats why I said youd have to dissallow encryption and thats not an Internet thats a corporate network with limited services.

you cant kill Bitcoin

it will die itself, because the cost of supporting decentralized technology is too high comparing with the alternatives

Presuming that you are talking about the current financial system then that is just incorrect. Presuming that you are talking about some other cyptocurrency that nobody uses or supports, then, good luck with that line of thinking. There is no other (current) viable solution to the Byzantine generals problem, which is the primary reason that bitcoin (or any "cryptocurrency") has got anywhere. Without that, all other flavours of crypto are useless (unless build on top of bitcoin).

change the port to 80, use SSL.
now bitcoin is indistinguishable from any SSL website, good luck banning it.

I am talking about decentralized vs centralized systems.
The cost for immutable transactions in any crypto-currencies is too high.
And we can not decrease it.
When the hashrate will stop growing it will be easy to collect old switched off asics, turn them on for an hour and gain 51%
Sorry. No way.

because the cost of supporting decentralized technology is too high comparing with the alternatives

It's the most idiotic statement I never read on the internet... astonishing, could you please elaborate on what are the alternatives (I guess centralized) and what do you understand by the term "cost of supporting decentralized technology" vs "cost of supporting alternatives"? And if it's not to much what does cost mean for you ($ term I guess)?

Thx a lot.

BTW I don't think Bitcoin is undefeatable, you can always destroy it by 51% attack. And that's why I think it is amazing: you can choose.

There are solutions for the 51% attack situation. When the fix needs to be implimented it will be. Gavin and others have had the solution ready for awhile now. The whole 51% thing just makes good press, it's all about selling fear, thats why you never hear that a 51% attack would be noticed immediately and the fix would shut the attack down almost immediately making all the attackers blocks invalid. To the normal citizen Bitcoin user it would be a small "hiccup" and banks have big "hiccups" all the time and no one really complains. Banks even close on the weekends and are getting hacked/fraud/ID thefts daily.

I don't know where you get your delusions, laser brain.

http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html?m=1

^The other two systems I like are:


This idea is ok:
https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/07/mining-decentralisation-the-low-hanging-fruit/


This one's good:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281180.0

^ I just caught the Star Wars quote :D That's a really good one!

It's possible using DPI equipment at ISP.
For example China right now can ban bitcoin in their country if they would want to. Same way as they banned tor and i2p.

http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html?m=1

Gavin: "The code already has a notion of (bitcoin priority) that it uses to prevent transaction spam (sending gazillions of tiny transactions to yourself, just to make everybody else do the work of validating and storing them); extending that to influence the chain-fork-selection code wouldn't be hard....something like....ignore a longer chain orphaning the current best chain if the sum(priorities of transactions included in new chain) is much less than sum(priorities of transactions in the part of the current best chain that would be orphaned)” would mean a 51% attacker would have to have both lots of hashing power AND lots of old, high-priority bitcoins to keep up a transaction-denial-of-service attack. And they’d pretty quickly run out of old, high-priority bitcoins and would be forced to either include other people’s transactions or have their chain rejected".

In Andresen’s post, he notes that such a solution would be “Not To Be Used Except In Case of Emergency”.

Surely you can....why suppose people always kill Bitcoin for profit?

It may be a newbie question but ...
I mean Bitcoin is P2P ? Right ? can't ISP just block ports ? just like for torrent  :-[

Only a better Bitcoin can kill Bitcoin.

The corollary is that making Bitcoin worse can also kill it.

I was having an argument in the speculation sub-forum when someone said "the only way to stop Bitcoin would be to ban the entire internet"... see I often hear that, but being in IT as a profession that statement give me a real hard time, so I thought it is time to discuss it, maybe there is something I am not aware off !!

So if Bitcoin becomes a real threat to governments, and if they agree on banning it and killing it, one way to go would be just changing regulation (FCC) for internet service providers and force them to ban the port that Bitcoin uses (8333 now), this would mean certain death to Bitcoin.


I want to hear your opinion, and how do you think this could be prevented ?

perhaps they think if bitcoin is dumped into oblivion all the way down to the point that even the biggest of miners cant afford to mine it would essentially break bitcoin.. image if all the small guys drop out on the way down leaving say 5 mega miners, then btc sees the biggest dump off all collapsing from the hundreds to double or single digits forcing all the last 5 to shut up shop... difficulty would be left way to high for anyone to mine preventing any conformations (im guessing) for days?

this would leave behind only the "unknown entity" with complete control over the network. one entity that could turn on and off raising the difficulty and then crashing it again. while also keeping the price of bitcoin so unprofitable that no one in their right mind would try to mine or buy it.

a malicious entity does not need to buy enough mining power to get 51%. they only need enough to continuously suppress the price and push it down gradually forcing out other miners, getting back some of the money invested and also raising their percentage of hashing power as other miners drop out. it would be a slow process and costly but not even close to impossible.

 for someone with millions with a seriously high vested interest in the old money status quo it would probably be the best way to go about destroying bitcoin. if you fight a decentralized network you may harm it but it will come back stronger in one form or another. but if you crush it with out revealing yourself as a malicious entity and crush every little hope of the people they will not be so keen to fight back a second time. and once an idea fails the first time it is much harder for it to catch on a second time thus also suppressing the hopes of a reincarnation in another form.

not only that.. but with some(wouldnt take much) of the bitcoins they mine they could slowly acquire massive amounts of all the coins they cant do that to (PoS) and then just royal fuck with their respective markets for years to come as their little play toy. no investor in their right mind would buy crypto ever again. isnt it strange how many altcoins are actually not crashing (against bitcoin) while bitcoin plummets... not the norm right? i say fuck with their markets because it would be far cheaper than acquiring 50% in a PoS system - not impossible - but way too expensive an option when all you want to do is prevent adoption.

im not saying this is whats happening.. but it is certainly a possibility. dont underestimate the ones pulling the strings behind the current financial system. governments learnt their lesson about decentralised networks when file sharing effectively took down the music and film industry. why would they let a threat grow to the point that it could actually challenge them. if i were them i would invest the "pennies" to protect the pounds. and it would take fewer pennies now than in 5 years time.

a malicious entity does not need to buy enough mining power to get 51%. they only need enough to continuously suppress the price and push it down gradually forcing out other miners, getting back some of the money invested and also raising their percentage of hashing power as other miners drop out. it would be a slow process and costly but not even close to impossible.

governments learnt their lesson about decentralised networks when file sharing effectively took down the music and film industry. why would they let a threat grow to the point that it could actually challenge them. if i were them i would invest the "pennies" to protect the pounds. and it would take fewer pennies now than in 5 years time.

If government goes for core dev team it will kill it easily. You don't need to attack the application, get people who works on it and you are done.
You don't even need to kill it. Just install enough hooks and backdoors and whole purpose is defeated. No one really checks what is running except few developers, there are no audits or checks and balances to insure code integrity.

If government goes for core dev team it will kill it easily. You don't need to attack the application, get people who works on it and you are done.
You don't even need to kill it. Just install enough hooks and backdoors and whole purpose is defeated. No one really checks what is running except few developers, there are no audits or checks and balances to insure code integrity.

I was having an argument in the speculation sub-forum when someone said "the only way to stop Bitcoin would be to ban the entire internet"... see I often hear that, but being in IT as a profession that statement give me a real hard time, so I thought it is time to discuss it, maybe there is something I am not aware off !!

So if Bitcoin becomes a real threat to governments, and if they agree on banning it and killing it, one way to go would be just changing regulation (FCC) for internet service providers and force them to ban the port that Bitcoin uses (8333 now), this would mean certain death to Bitcoin.


I want to hear your opinion, and how do you think this could be prevented ?

netcat -L 127.0.0.1:666 -p 8333 -vvv

If government goes for core dev team it will kill it easily. You don't need to attack the application, get people who works on it and you are done.
You don't even need to kill it. Just install enough hooks and backdoors and whole purpose is defeated. No one really checks what is running except few developers, there are no audits or checks and balances to insure code integrity.

It remains the only implementation with a miner, yes?
So, also a single point of failure.

When you say "the government", you're implying that the US, the Netherlands, and Belgium will join forces to extort all of the core devs (to say nothing of other eyes on the project) to insert a back door? If that's likely to happen (it's not), I doubt any additional audits (which could also be influenced in the same way) would be of any help. (I agree you're correct in principle though.)

I think governments trying to kill bitcoin would make grow even faster. Then Bitcoiners could buy politicians.

I was having an argument in the speculation sub-forum when someone said "the only way to stop Bitcoin would be to ban the entire internet"... see I often hear that, but being in IT as a profession that statement give me a real hard time, so I thought it is time to discuss it, maybe there is something I am not aware off !!

So if Bitcoin becomes a real threat to governments, and if they agree on banning it and killing it, one way to go would be just changing regulation (FCC) for internet service providers and force them to ban the port that Bitcoin uses (8333 now), this would mean certain death to Bitcoin.


I want to hear your opinion, and how do you think this could be prevented ?

The government just need to force some of the giant miner in US to group up for 51% attack and its done..

The government just need to force some of the giant miner in US to group up for 51% attack and its done..

What exactly would happen if they did this? 1-3 double spends? The ability to prevent a few transactions from being propagated, temporarily?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWTQgmCuiCw

What exactly would happen if they did this? 1-3 double spends?

It will be more than enough to double-spend just one significant amount.
After it everyone will see that bitcoins cost nothing because can be doublespended.

This never happens elsewhere, right?

This happens everywhere and everytime.
But the offline communities have a laws and rules to protect people and punish dishonest persons.
Bitcoin onlline community does not protect a person from an attacker.

Who protects people from the lawgivers? Police seizure laws, government overreach, overambitious regulators, to name a few.

Why not to vote for another persons on elections?

Why not to vote for another persons on elections?

This happens everywhere and everytime.
But the offline communities have a laws and rules to protect people and punish dishonest persons.
Bitcoin onlline community does not protect a person from an attacker.

Why not to vote for another persons on elections?

Was there an actual technical question here?

Moderators? Can we keep at least this section free from the speculative FUD, games and other dross? Place is getting pretty noisy (crapped up).

Was there an actual technical question here?

Moderators? Can we keep at least this section free from the speculative FUD, games and other dross? Place is getting pretty noisy (crapped up).