Bitcoin Forum

"A lot of people like to say that you can't really take down Bitcoin but you can. You just have to raid the 3 or 5 big mining installations around the world and you're done."
                                          - Jackson Palmer at The Future of Money & Technology Summit 12/2/14


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBvwUT3u31g&feature=player_detailpage#t=2930

At 49:00


Huh?  I believe one of the biggest mining farms, Cloudhashing in Iceland for example, has about 5% of total mining capacity. Suppose you suddenly shut down 25% of total mining capacity. Wouldn't that just slow down block confirmation time 25% until the next difficulty adjustment or until other miners joined in? I suppose in the future, if and when bitcoin mining becomes more and more centralized, this could represent a transient vulnerablity but even then wouldn't the network simply adjust and continue?

Wouldn't the worse case scenario be if a 51% attack were successfully launched concurrent with a shutdown only resulting in an eventual fork and a resumption of the pre-attack blockchain?

Yeah wouldn't confirmations just be (very) slow for a few days while home miners or smaller outfits grab all the block rewards? Then the difficulty would plummet at next adjustment and we'd be back to normal...

I don't think this is possible.  Like you mentioned, maybe confirmations would take a little longer than usual, but with a lower network hashrate (like the current difficulty decrease) would mean difficulty readjusts and larger block rewards for the rest of us.

Everything would just scale down accordingly, and for the small home miners would actually be a boon.

By the way, is Dogecoin still relevant?  I mean it's below Bitshares and barely above Maidsafecoin:

http://coinmarketcap.com/

Pretty embarassing...

I don't think he's with Dogecoin anymore.

Anyone that has 51 percent would be a huge player (pool or other party).   Assuming they want to stay in business a 51 percent attack would not be logical for them to do. 

I just don't see it happening even if 25 percent of network was taken down.  Companies are to invested to just do a attack, they would lose their future earnings.

This was mentioned in the context of a governement trying to shut down Bitcoin. What if a government were able to simultaneous launch a mining farm raid and a 51% attack? I think it would cost them a fortune with little result.

People like to scare others with this.   It's used to cause fear.   What government could get 51 percent without notice, and actually preform this attack?

I will sleep easy and don't worry about the 51 percent attack on BTC at least.  Some small coins.... maybe.   BTC is not going to happen.

The bitcoin network is also more powerful than the top 500 supercomputers, or so people claim.

why bother attacking bitcoin ?  the market cap is 375 usd x 13,000,000 = 4,875,000,000 or 5 billion usd.  Apple has a market cap of 700,000,000,000 or 700 billion usd.

 I would say BTC won't get those kinds of attacks anytime soon.
 Bigger danger is price drops very slowly while diff stays very flat.

So in 6 months price is 300 usd a coin and diff is  45 vs the 40 it is now.

This would really hurt btc.

another fear is paycoin catches on fire as a better thing then BTC

If not paycoin some other coin.  with truly better features.

for now I mine. and wait.

Why are you guys even dignifying this comment by posting about it?

I would welcome a raid on the big mining farms so I can turn on my rig again. Many home miners around the world will turn on their mining gear again and the result will be that mining will have become actually more decentralized and Bitcoin comes out stronger. That's the anti-fragile nature of Bitcoin in action, this guy has no clue.

This is an entirely deceiving metric to use insofar as bitcoin computational power is concerned.  Bitcoin asic's are extremely efficient that is true.  But the only thing they are good at is sha-256 calculations.  Try running any kind of weather simulation or cellular automa systems on a bitcoin mining rig and see how far you get.

If that is what he claimed then why has it not already happened?

The guy obviously is speaking on something he doesn't 100% fully understand.

Assuming what he says is true, Dogecoin would even be more vulnerable.

wouldnt it just be like whacka mole or the war on drugs?

Soon an ASIC miner will be enabled as smart property, it will only mine to its owners key unless instructed by a signed message from its old owner to mine to a new address.

Still the majority of mining is coming from pools and thy have thousands of miners so it's not that simple to shut everything down.

Also consider that mining centralization is entrepreneurs taking advantage of economics of scale, this type of risk taking is most viable when there is little competition and lots of reward.

With the recent drop in difficulty we can assume mining isn't growing as fast. The cost to setup a data center, staff it, cool it, secure it, and get electricity to it isn't trivial.

While we are in this price and difficulty zone it is more profitable for small miners to setup as the overheads are lower. And for ASIC manufacturers it is less risky to sell mining equipment than mine with it at this price point.

So mining should start decentralizing in this market at this price zone.

 Should the Bitcoin price shoot up ASIC manufacturers will not sell but deploy there own hardware, so the time is now for the small guys.

Nonsense. First, who would raid them, the world police? Secondly, would other mines spring up and start hashing within hours? Of course they would. What a load of crap.

I love these "take over the bitcoin network" theories from the altcoin makers.  If dogecoin was more popular, it would suffer the same sideways attack vector.  No one is going to swoop in and buy all the large mining farms.

These possible raids may cause some dump, after that market can heal itself no problem for BTC supporters! :)