the attacker with unlimited computing power could just commit enough resources to keep at about 49% of the total network capacity and steadily accumulate some BTC's and commit the rest of computing resources to find aliens with seti and fold whatever is it they are folding with folding@home maybe some more good deeds too.
True. But the attacker in my scenario doesn't care one bit about accumulating bitcoins. They only care about crushing it's existence. |
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Guys... whether or not it is "profitable" to generate bitcoins in my ridiculous manner mentioned is beside the point.
If and when a large government entity wishes to destroy bitcoin. Is this one of the ways they could go about it?
The idea was... that they would generate 2016 blocks within a matter of nanoseconds, and then disconnect from the network entirely. Thus setting the generation difficulty bar so high that they "ruin" basically everything.
Even transactions would cease to occur would they not?
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Thanks for the insight guys! But let's not try to stray too far away from the original question/problem at hand here.
Is this a semi-valid doomsday scenario for Bitcoin?
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Technically I could find 6 blocks in 1 hour. Even with my paltry CPU.
Anything is possible. But the more power you have the more you will consistently win.
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Another possibility besides super computing would be a custom-made chip that only generates bitcoins.
Create 10,000 or 100,000 of these (for $25-$50M USD) and cluster them into one board and you could probably pull off a similar effect. (As opposed to a quantum computer).
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Maybe somebody with a little more technical knowledge of the bitcoin generation algorithm can chime in?
I was thinking...
Bitcoin's goal is to have a block generated every ten minutes, correct? So it could wait at least 10 minutes before it created the 2017th (1st) block... That would have the negative effect of slowing down the network transfer speed (to a maximum of 10 minutes)... But at least we could maybe negate the attack this way in an attempt to possibly locate the attacking machine and block it from the network?
But then again... who has the authority to deem one computer "too powerful" for the network...?
I am beginning to become seriously worried by this possible problem.
Re: Holy-Fire's post just above... The attacker's incentive may not be to make bitcoins worth more, or "steal" bitcoins... but to ruin the bitcoin network/authority in general.
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You need to spend money to make money, Lou.
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0.01 minimum fee will be changed over time.
That... and nobody will be sending micro payments of 1 penny (that is literally what 0.00000001 bitcoins works out to if it was indeed worth 21 trillion USD or the equivalent)... Especially not in the year 2025 by the time we actually take this to a global scale. Honestly, tell me. For what reason would you need to transfer a penny across the ocean? Not to mention fees are not required. If you really want to send a penny, you can probably afford to wait an hour for a confirmation. |
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Send me a PM with your site idea/intentions. There may be some room at my inn.
I run a fairly powerful (and under used) dedicated server that I use to host my own personal projects.
I even have a few hundred domain names lying around we could maybe attach it to.
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...theoretically if this happens, could it happen again after the difficulty reset? What would stop it from happening again and again... Good eye. My thoughts exactly. The attacker could easily sit quiet for a few years while we struggled to solve the problem. (Literally). Or if we ever did manage to convince the entire world to accept our new difficulty rate... the attacker could spring again in an instant. (I'm sure they'd be watching...) Eventually, the general public would become tired of this "nonsense". And bitcoin would die. |
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Aha so it also serves as proof that work is being done by the miner?
clever..
So the 'F':s in the middle also guarantees that it holds no bitcoin value?
When I originally read your username, I read it as "nim-rod". Just thought I would mention that for a laugh! It's late, forgive me. |
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I doubt you'll be able to build a quantum computer large enough to do this, before anyone else builds a smaller computer which will convince us we need to upgrade the protocol.
Also, is SHA-256 known to be cracked by QC? QC are notorious for being assumed to solve things they're actually not known to.
Holy-Fire, obviously I cannot build a quantum computer with my knowledge alone. Feel free to exchange "quantum computer" with "super computer", "super cooled computer", "super fucking fast computer", etc... |
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Well, yes, but this is a catastrophic scenario where it would be easy to get all developers of all clients to agree on resetting the difficulty to the last known good value. As long as we can get 50%+ to use a client we can do whatever we want with Bitcoin ^^ Kind of tough to do when the creator of the super fast computer is the Chinese government and China is the largest user of bitcoin. (Which is probably one of the more plausible scenarios for my given example). |
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Yes, a minted gold coin is legal tender.
Not by any definition of that term that I have ever heard. Even an American gold Eagle isn't legal tender because of the gold content of the coin, but because of the face value stamped into the side of it. Boy we're getting technical here! Yes, that is what I meant. I live in Canada. In Canada, our mint sells "$100", "$200", "$500" gold coins... etc... they are 24k gold. They are worth a shit load more than $500 each. And they are legal tender. Meaning you can spend them anywhere - because technically they are worth $500 at a bank - (ie. for a car, which was my original argument) but you would be a fool to do so. They're generally collectors items. Sorry I didn't explain myself better the first time around my southern friend! |
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I am a corporate whore, but I plan to change that once I have gained enough experience. Curious to know where other Bitcoiners stand.
..? You plan to quit your job once you know enough about... bitcoin?  I'm a mid twenties web entrepreneur. |
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I develop a quantum computer super fast computer that generates bitcoins rather quickly.
I solve 2016 blocks in a matter of nanoseconds.
I then disconnect myself from the network and never tell the world about my super fast bitcoin generating technology. My aim is to ruin the bitcoin network. I am a rogue government or central bank with almost unlimited funds.
In theory, would it not take years/decades for us "average computers" to then solve the next sequence of 2016 blocks once I removed myself from the network? Thus "ruining" the bitcoin generation mechanism at least?
EDIT: Not only could they ruin the generating mechanism, but they could cease all transactions from taking place on the bitcoin network for a matter of years/decades because the difficulty level to solve a block would be raised so "artificially" high that we could not generate one for the life of us.
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Thanks Cryptoman! You've been quite a help to me today |
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Indeed, that does help. Thank you very much Jim!
Also you were correct in noting my spelling error in the OP.
See you around!
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Thanks for that grondilu, do you have the link to your original post on hand?
Is the "networking part" that's missing simply grabbing the next block "todo" from the network?
That is the part I am having trouble with mentally, is where/whom do I contact to download the block chain?
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I am interested in trying to write my own open sourced miner. But have no idea where to start. I have read through the forum quite a bit and asked a similar question before, but to no avail. Can anybody provide some pseudo code for generating bitcoins? I assume it goes something like... $hashed_string_to_crack = grab_new_hash();
while($hashed_string_unknown === true) {
//try to crack hash?
if($hash_cracked) {
$hashed_string_unkown = false;
}
}
submit_cracked_hash_to_bitcoin_network($hash_cracked);
repeat;
Or am I better off just to examine the poclbm source code? |
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