Right now we're only accepting credit card payments from the US and Canada, but bitcoin payments can be made from anywhere in the world. emphasis mine   |
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No I mean, is the part of the code of a miner that deals with adding transactions and building blocks according to the rules backed into the chips and an attacker who would want to do a 51% would have to get new chips or is that part of a miner just software that can be easily changed to perform the 51% attack?
That would be in the software. The ASICs would just hash whatever they are fed. Feeding the ASICs values to hash is all in the software. Ouch, so ASICs made Bitcoin quite a bit more susceptible to an attack since it's likely they'll be in less hands than GPU and FPGA miners were. Of course someone would have to be determined enough to waste a bunch of money on something he wont be able to use for anything else once Bitcoin is disrupted and likely destroyed. in the GPU/FPGA days, a malicious entity could have developed their own ASICs and relatively easily performed a >50% attack. once asics are widely available, it will be much more difficult. Yeah, you're right. |
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No I mean, is the part of the code of a miner that deals with adding transactions and building blocks according to the rules backed into the chips and an attacker who would want to do a 51% would have to get new chips or is that part of a miner just software that can be easily changed to perform the 51% attack?
That would be in the software. The ASICs would just hash whatever they are fed. Feeding the ASICs values to hash is all in the software. Ouch, so ASICs made Bitcoin quite a bit more susceptible to an attack since it's likely they'll be in less hands than GPU and FPGA miners were. Of course someone would have to be determined enough to waste a bunch of money on something he wont be able to use for anything else once Bitcoin is disrupted and likely destroyed. |
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No I mean, is the part of the code of a miner that deals with adding transactions and building blocks according to the rules backed into the chips and an attacker who would want to do a 51% would have to get new chips or is that part of a miner just software that can be easily changed to perform the 51% attack?
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A 51% attack on the network could reverse transactions.
As far as I understand how Bitcoin works this is false. What could happen is they could get unconfirmed as blocks in which they were confirmed become orphaned but they'd still be valid and pending for confirmation. This of course exposes some of those transaction to a double spend attack but it doesn't reverse them. I think that is the point jerfelix was making. If someone had more hashing power than the entire combined honest network (51% of the total that includes their own hash power), then they could spend bitcoins and then re-mine the blocks and include a double spending on the previous transaction that now sends the bitcoins back to an address of their own. In this way the earlier transaction would be "reversed". But how many of the hundreds of thousands of transactions now unconfirmed was the attacker a counterparty to? Likely very few, which I'm not trying to downplay as a weakness but saying that he can reverse transactions is just as inaccurate as saying it being impossible with mathematical certainty to cheat Bitcoin. Btw mathematical certainty in my guide primarily refers to the ability to fake obeying the rules. It's true it doesn't account for an attacker obeying the rules and still defrauding people, but it's a fact that rules in Bitcoin must be obeyed, even by an attacker and this is mathematically certain. |
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A good government should:
1) Prove it with data.
Since when to thugs that call themselves the government bother with pesky things such as facts?  |
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Someone please answer me this: Does an ASIC have to be built differently if one wants to use it for malicious purposes, specifically a 51% attack?
I'm not entirely sure how ASICs work but I thought the chips have the mining code backed in meaning if someone would want to change that code to do something malicious they'd need new chips with the new code backed in? Is this so?
If not, how hard is it to use ASICs for malicious purposes? Are there any barriers?
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A 51% attack on the network could reverse transactions.
As far as I understand how Bitcoin works this is false. What could happen is they could get unconfirmed as blocks in which they were confirmed become orphaned but they'd still be valid and pending for confirmation. This of course exposes some of those transaction to a double spend attack but it doesn't reverse them. |
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It's almost like they're intentionally trying to drive people into Bitcoin's arms.
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Bitcoin has value because you can cash out to USD.
I think you have that backwards. You can cash bitcoin out to USD, because it has value. Bingo. |
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Nice writeup  I noticed this typo: Bitcoin simply ignores those who don't follow it's its rules Gah.. I hate it when I miss mistakes like that  |
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A company may be worth a 100 bitcoins today, and after growing, it may be worth 90 bitcoins next year. It has still grown, becausr these 90 coins can buy more stuff.
But.. assume there are two people, One person setup a company, worked his butt off and after a year, his company "grew" from 100 btc to 90 btc. Another person saved his 100 btc, lay on the beach everyday, he still have 100 btc after a year. What's wrong with this picture? Nothing. Savers, i.e. people who purposefully underconsume their wealth are suppose to be left with more than those who consume more. Also in your little story you forget that the company may now be worth 90 BTC but it could be earning 20BTC in yearly profits. |
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This is silly. Stop harassing them guys. I'm pretty sure it's counter-productive.
It's harassment to send them money after they asked for it? |
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Ok thanks. Is the thought that you would rather not link an account on our site, and could just initiate a transfer from your own bank account?
I don't think you'll get a big enough sample of request with regards to options on this forum so if you ask me it's best to just figure this out for yourself, a find a couple of good options for fiat deposits and stick with your decision  |
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Just send them a donation via the email function on blockchain or coinbase or coinapult even.. Then it's up to them to claim it, or let it expire and be returned to them. I really wonder if they'll let money they received just slip back away from them.  Is there any difference in me asking you to give me your btc adress so I can give you some money and simply just e-mailing you a link saying, look, here's your money donation ? Is it harder to reject in the latter case? And how so ? To me, logic dictates that the cases are identical, but perhaps when people see the bill in front of them on the table, it's different than you asking them to have it while it's still in your pocket ? The psychology of people never stops to amaze me. Of course it's different. Right now all the emails they're getting they could very well think that only a low percentage of these would actually turn into donations if they accepted bitcoins and that the onslaught of emails they're getting is just a grassroots PR campaign. But when they get the actual payment there's no doubt someone wants to send them money and it becomes a completely different matter when rejecting it. |
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Just send them a donation via the email function on blockchain or coinbase or coinapult even.. Then it's up to them to claim it, or let it expire and be returned to them. I really wonder if they'll let money they received just slip back away from them. |
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I could definitely imagine a company like Mt. Gox, who is holding a lot of Bitcoins on account for people, accidentally locking themselves out of one of their reserve cold storage wallets (or having one wallet stolen by an employee). At that instant, they have fractional reserves. But they could easily set aside a small portion of profits each day to re-fund that wallet.
Which would be worse? Announcing to the world, "We locked ourselves out of one of our wallets, but rest assured...." (potentially causing a run that puts them out of business), or to quietly build the reserve back up?
Pretty much this has already happened to one business (or that is his claim). I forget the name off the top of my head. His action was to suspend all accounts. The last I heard he's intending to pay everyone back but it's hard to see how, it was a lot of bitcoins lost. |
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