I can't tell if you are serious?

Also can't figure out why you decided to necro a 9 month old thread.

Still let me get this straight someone will "destroy" Bitcoin by trading hundreds of millions of dollars (or other currency) to acquire Bitcoins.  The very same Bitcoins which would be worthless if/when they destroyed Bitcoin.  Essentially a one way transfer of wealth worth from "Bitcon destroyer" to current Bitcoin users.

Pretty much the same as trying to destroy the gold trade by buying up all the Gold or putting drug cartels out of business by spending billions to buy all the drugs.

DEA: "So we are really going to stick it to the drug cartels.  We have just been authorized to buy their cocaine wholesale for $20B.  So we give the cartels $20B, buy the cocaine and then destroy it.   This has to destroy the drug cartel.  I mean by showing people how much value drugs have that is bound to make everyone stop selling drugs".

This.

All that matter is hashing power.  It is a mathematical certainty that given enough time the subnet with more hashing power will build the longer chain.  My example only refered to larger and smaller subnets.  The larger one would biuild a longer chain and thus overwrite the consensus of the smaller one.

Usage, number of tx, number of nodes, population, geography are all irrelivent.  When there is a split both sides of the split form a subnet and the one with larger hashing power will prevail when the split is resolved.


There is no way to find blocks faster than brute force.  In a dispute the side with more hashing power will always win.


I have no idea what you are saying here.


1) All coinbase rewards on the smaller shorter chain will be orphaned.  So any coins earned directly by miners on the smaller chain will be erased. 

2) The Bitcoin network tries to limit the effect of "accidental double spends" due to orphaned chains by making generation tx unspendable for 120 blocks.  If the split is longer than 120 blocks then they could be spent.  Regardless of who is holding those coins when the network re-orgs that generation becomes invalid and thus any "downstream" tx are invalidated too.

The fact that I own 24 5970s and have taken extensive measurements and shared those in numerous threads says I am right and you are wrong.

Simple ... it doesn't used 350W.  Never has and never will.  TDP =/= power consumption.

The smaller segment (i.e. china vs rest of world) will have a shorter blockchain.  When the network rejoins all the blocks from the smaller subnet will be oprhaned as nodes replace them with blocks from the larger subnet.

Any non double spend tx would simply revert to 0-confirm and would be included in the next block (or blocks because blocks will be very full depends on how long the split lasted).

All coinbase tx will be orphaned.  There is a 120 block limit on spending but a split of >120 blocks would mean any subsequent tx will be invalid. 

Intentional double spends would be the largest issue.

Smart thing to do in a network split like that would be to make a paper backup of your wallet and wait to rejoin the network.

If 1 bitcent and 1 anti-bitcent are destroyed in mutual annihilation how much energy is produced?

No way you are getting 95 MH/s from your CPU so both miners are using your GPU.

Unless you have miners as peers to your local bitcoind it likely wouldn't even get to a miner.
All nodes validate tx before relaying them.  The peers you broadcast it to would see it as an invalid tx and delete it.  
Even if it did get to a miner it would be also deleted as invalid.  End of story.

More complex answer.
Bitcoin doesn't work on the concept of "balances".  
"Address A has a balance of X" = WRONG.
"Address X has received X BTC " = WRONG.

Bitcoin works on the concept of inputs and outputs.
The input of every tx is the output of some prior tx.

Thus you don't send "1 BTC" you sign over a output(s) from some prior tx(s) totally >=1 BTC along with output(s) one of which may be a change address which total the inputs.  To include a fee the sum of the outputs are less than the sum of the inputs by the amount of the see.

The only valid TX with no input is a coinbase tx (coins generated from "nothing" as part of block reward).

Without already knowing the exact output of the tx which funds address 1 you can't include it as the input of the current tx.   Even when address 1 has a balance of 1 BTC the only valid tx is the one which includes as its inputs the EXACT outputs which gave address 1 a balance of 1 BTC.

The key thing to remember is that address balances are simply an abstraction. When you spend/transfer/send coins you are signing over a prior outputs as new inputs.

Yes as dubious as that title is it is nice to see ScamCoin has lost it (at least temporarily).

I am sure King RealScam will use his mom's credit card to buy up 100K coins and regain the title.

Have you tried stopping and restarting your miners. 

I know older version of cgminer have issues if they switch between conventional pools and p2pool.

Can't because Paypal is simply a front for CC.  If a paypal account is hacked and the hacker uses it to purchase $20,000 in a no-chargeback tx (possibly to himself) do you think a) the customer is just going to say "oh well guess I have a $20,000 CC bill" or b) Paypal says "guess we eat $20K"?

The entire credit card model is based around no personal responsibility (except by merchants who take the cost/weight of all fraud).  You can't build an entire economic system w/ no responsibility and then at the highest level make it irreversible.

If you want irreversible tx it needs to be irreversible from the ground up.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.

Ignore - check
Laugh - check
Attack - check
Win -

I don't get the joke.  Death A. Taxes is my legal name. 

Still I think people in this thread might get a little suspicious if I get my order before they get theirs.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67887.0

A good single rail 1250W unit will run 4x5970s (~1050W at the wall) but 1000W is not enough. 
1000W will work for 3x5970 (I measure 850W at the wall).

Got a new one (part of a bet w/ Inaba) to add to the list.

Ordered: 2012.04.12
Confirmed: 2012.0.4.12
Shipped: ? ? ?
Qty: 1

On edit: got confirmation pretty quick (at least that seems to be moving faster).

Ordered.  PM sent for receipt.

I may be the only person w/ an ordered Single which is hoping it arrives in >43 days.

That risk always exists. Thankfully the cost to have even 1% of the network is generally prohibitive as most 0-confirm tx would be low value or easily reversed.    Double spend fraud doesn't have to be 0% just lower than other payment systems.

Wouldn't the risk be the same as any other tx.

i.e. if hypothetically the default option in client was to create tx w/ a void "x" 30 blocks in the future.  Under most scenarios that tx would be included in the next block (b: 1).  If the merchant then waits 6 confirms (b: 7) by the time the kill or fill passes (b:30) it would require a 30 block re-org to void that tx.  If someone is doing a 30 block re-org we likely are facing a massive and well planned 51% attack anyways.

Right?

This is mostly academic because I am under no illusions that such drastic changes to protocol will ever happen.  However Bitcoin may not be the crypto-currency that goes mainstream so it may be useful to some "real" alt-chain (all alts so far w/ exception of namecoin as worthless as they haven't attempted any improvements on Bitcoin).

That is a 10% difference in operating costs.  Over say 3 years the higher energy cost operator will pay 30% more for the same amount of BTC.  The revenue on mining will always follow the costs of the lowest cost operators.  Everyone else will be under margin pressure.   That 10% is likely as "good as it gets" for high electrical cost miners.  The electrical cost is a lower % of total lifetime cost because capital cost of FPGA are so high.   In time ASICS will drive down the capital cost making electrical portion larger.

ASICs have higher NRE and negligible marginal unit costs (possibly as low as $10 per GH/s in 100K unit qtys).  An entity which has paid the NRE has already sunk millions of dollars.  The best thing for them to do is keep the retail price low so they can sell the maximum number of units driving out all competitors.  This is one reason why we only have 2 CPU major makers in the world (and AMD is barely clinging on).

With capital costs being a lower % of lifetime operating costs electrical rates once again become important.  Margins on mining will continue to contract as mining consolidates to lowest cost operators and the risk of Bitcoin failure declines.  The days of 500% ROI are never coming back.  If you gross profit margins (excluding operating costs like electricity is 30% then the difference between 4% and 15% electrical cost becomes much more

Like I said upthread this is on a much longer timeline.  In the next year or two as low cost GPU miners (like myself) cling on and becomes the marginal operators margins are likely to remain elevated to a point where a 30% difference in cost is negligible.  As GPU miners get pushed out and difficulty goes higher high cost FPGA miners become the new marginal miner in the same situation that high cost GPU miners are in today.