It is possible the researchers had some error in the their analysis but lets assume the profit is on the ORDER of $6K.  i.e. it might be $12K or it might only be $2K.  But it is very unlikely that it is $60K or $600K a day.

Pirate's interest obligation is $50,000 per day (and more like $75,000 per day at the Bitcoin peak).    Even IF SR generated $50,000 per day in profit the owners certainly wouldn't give it all away as interest to third parties.   Even IF SR generated say $100,000 per day and for some reason had to use Pirate @ 1% per day (and give up half their profit) they could pay down the debt in a mere 10 weeks and thus no longer need Pirate.

Of course you also need to consider that the 1% per day is what Pirate was paying lenders gamblers.  If it was a business obviously he isn't doing all the work and paying out 100% of net profit to the lenders.  Say he decided to split it 1/3 to himself and 2/3 to lenders.  That puts the profit required at more like $75,000 per day and ~$125,000 at the Bitcoin peak.

Starting to see that while the researchers may not be able to say down to the penny exactly how much profit SR operators made the cashflow of Pirate's operation is so much larger that even using the most unrealistic assumptions you can fit that square peg into that round hole.

I think the summary explains it in a way that even non technical people can grasp the implausibility of brute forcing a 256 private key.


"until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space"
...
"until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space"
...
"until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space"

Simply put 256 bit might as well be a quadrillion quadrillion bits from the standpoint of a brute force attack.  This isn't to say SHA-256 can't be defeated.  Like all algorithms it is vulnerable to potential cryptographic flaws.  A hashing algorithm is designed to be one way so the only way to find the input of a particular hash is to try all possible inputs and look for a match.  As discussed above we can conclude that implausible based on all current or even theorized future technology (like a Dyson sphere or capturing the entire output of a Supernova).   A cryptographic flaw breaks that assumption (usually by allowing the attacker to eliminate some possible inputs and thus reduce the search space by many order of magnitudes).  

Is SHA-256 flawed?  Will a flaw be discovered?  Can't prove that it isn't however it is probably one of the most researched algorithms in modern history.   Finding a credible flaw in SHA-256 would elevate a cryptographer to the elites of the field so it certainly isn't for a lack of trying.   

+1 Can we get an answer on this.

I would imagine Windows VPS supports RDP login otherwise it horribly crippled but official answer would be nice.

Since Matt will be locking the thread in 24 hours I am offering a Matt Crazy Bet Passthrough  (MCBPT).
In honor of how asininely stupid the Pirate Passthrough were you can wager by proxy if you want.

Has Matt turned down your bet for insufficient rep?  
Want to wager more than the max (250 BTC)?
Want to wager anonymously so nobody will laugh at you if you lose ("team PONZI idiot")?

For a low fee of 5%, D&T is proud to present the Matt Crazy Bet Passthrough (MCBPT).

How to wager indirectly.
1) Drop me a PM with the amount you want to wager and a refund address (in case I can't place your wager)
2) I will give you a unique deposit address.
3) Deposit the funds you wish to wager before 2PM EST.
4) At 2PM EST I will place the combined amount in a wager against Matt.  
5a) If we lose well that's it.  
5b) If we win you get the doubled amount back (minus the 5% Matt Crazy Bet Passthrough fee)
5c) If Matt loses but fails to payout the wager you have no recourse (except against Matt). 

There is no insurance offered on this MCBPT.  
I would offer an alternative "investment" the Insured Matt Crazy Bet Passthrough (I-MCBPT) but well that is just too stupid to do even in jest.

Care to explain this logic.
Who is going to create this additional selling pressure to drive prices down?

The investors who have no coins to sell because they weren't repaid?
People who didn't invest who will suddenly feel the urge to sell because other people got scammed?
Pirate? Trade a lot of easy to hide/transport BTC for a lot more easy to track USD?

Totally misleading.

Those appear to be facts not fud.

rjk did someone hack your account?  Usually you are so cool and logical.

bitlane withdrew funds PRIOR to the shutdown.  He wasn't paid, he ranted about it, Pirate closed his account and promised to pay him on Monday (which is already fail because he should have been paid promptly).  Pirate then shuts down the entire operation and promises to start repayment on Monday.  72 hours go by and he has no only not repaid bitlane (a normal account closure prior to the shutdown) but hasn't repaid anyone a single cent. 

Pirate who is supposedly this great business man threatens his lender saying he will pay him last.  I mean WTF?  Is that honestly acceptable to you?  I don't care what bitlane did.  He lent money and it is ok for pirate to repay him last? He then says he is going to make an example out of him?  Remember the only person who violated the terms of his own contract is Pirate and because bitlane calls him out on that Pirate can just choose to make an example out of him and not pay him back?  Really?  I mean even if there is no ponzi that is kinda stuff that gets someone a scammer tag.

Your response to that entire unprofessional behavior from pirate is to call his lender a whiny bitch?  Really?

Given how out of charecter that is I am going to take a guess that have more invested gambled than you can afford to lose and the reality is you probably have already lost it all.  Bitlane (annoying as has can be at times) isn't the person you should be angry at.  

I mean your mad at him for Pirate not paying him on time?
I think when you calm down you will realize how insane that is.

Only if you can print more money.  Now if Pirate figured that out and made himself the Federal Reserve of the Bitcoin network, well he deserves my respect. 

That is the wrong quesiton to ask.  It likely can't be answered and that is what the investors hang their hat onto.  The correct question is WHY?  Why would he keep paying out 7% every week on hundreds of thousands of coins?    

For the sake of argument let say this is a real biz (legit or otherwise) which throws off real profits of >7% per week, and happens to need 500K BTC.  Pirate has a great idea but no money so he does what plenty of other business men do... he borrows.  Implausible but certainly possible.  However he is the one taking the risk (especially if not using an alias, running a ponzi and planning to run off with the coinz).  People losing $5M tend to do implusive things.  So a sane business man taking that kind of risk would want a solid reward.  High risk, high reward and that means a solid cut of the profit.  I doubt his "business" is making 8% gross and he is paying out 7% taking all the risk.  Say he is making 14% gross, needs to borrow 500K and is willing to give away half of that to get the operation off the ground.   A stretch but certainly possible.

So yes a business could be making that kind of profit, and could be paying out massive amounts of interest, and could need 500K BTC BUT:
Nobody, not a criminal, not a scumbag, not a oil tycoon would voluntarily pay 7% interest on a principal he can pay down.
Like any businessman (legit or otherwise) he would plough his portions of the profits into repaying the principal and thus week after week get a larger and larger share of the profits.   At 15% gross, 7% interest in 10 weeks he would have the full 500K (all his profit), 0 BTC in debt, and still have the mythical 15% per week of future profits. Win-win-win.

The only reason to not pay down a multi-million dollar debt with the juice running at 3,400% APR is ___________.

(The "investors" simply never filled in the blank)

Yes if they started at close to day 1, never compounded, and never increased their "investment".  How many people do you think fell into the category?

The ponzi scheme works because the classic distribution model is.
Day 0 - "7% that has to be a scam"
Day 14 - "Wow he made two payment.  Well I will risk 100 BTC.  Call it a gamble"
Day 21 - "Got me 7 BTC - I will withdraw it play it safe"
Day 28 - "Another 7 BTC.  Hmm.  I mean if I compounded these I could make 3400%. What if he caps deposits?"
Day 29 - "Depositing another 100 BTC plus the 14 BTC interest."
...
Day 80 - "Wow on paper I now have 500 BTC.  Ok time to go big.  Let me deposit 500 BTC more and compound everything".
...
Day 150 - "PIRATE WHERE IS MY MONEY YOU OWE ME 2500 BTC"

Of those two cashflows which do you think is the overwhelming majority of the 500K BTC?  

"All this has happened before and all it will all happen again."

The network uses loose time syncing.  The node finding the block includes a timestamp in the block header.  This can't be altered without altering the block hash.  Other nodes don't require that timestamp to be exact (obviously unworkable) but they will reject new blocks which have a timestamp that deviates by more than 3 hours from the expected.  Yes this means blocks can have timestamps "in the past".  If you check blockchain.info they show both the block timestamp and the detected timestamp.  Sometimes block timestamps will be out of sequence.


So some manipulation of the timestamps and difficulty is possible but the real world effect is minimal.  A miner trying to exploit this would need to solve either the first or last block and even then at most could manipulate the difficulty by ~1% (3 hours vs 2016*10/60 = 334 hours).

Step back for a second.  When you sell something (anything) to me what am I doing?  If you buy something from me what am I doing?

You sell a can of coke.  I buy a can of coke.
You buy a can of coke.  I sell a can of coke.

If 100,000 BTC changes hands then 100,000 BTC were sold AND simultaneously 100,000 BTC were bought.  The "net" difference between bought and sold is always exactly 0.

The terms of the contract are based on a Pirate default not a Deadterra default.

At 100 GH/s you would increase the power bill of the computer lab by about $4 to $6K per month (depends on the efficiency of the hardware).   I think the University is going to notice that.

Bitcoin has an additional layer of security.   Shor's algorithm requires the public key to be known to solve for the private key (an unknown).   

Bitcoin addresses are hashes (with checksum) of the public key.   For example even with a 256 qubit quantum computer, properly programmed to apply Short's algorithm against ECDSA (using the specific rare curve that Bitcoin uses) you couldn't determine the private key of this address:

14dsL2KKeHhMFYqTkATz8cpQWs5pqqRVFp


To do that you would need the public key and that is unknown until the owner of the private key spends the coins.  At that point the public key becomes part of the blockchain and is trivial to lookup.  The only addresses which would be vulnerable are ones where funds have been received, spent, and then more funds received to the same address.

It is currently recommend to use an address for a single use.   There is no need to re-use addresses but many users do.  If (and we likely are decades and decades away) Quantum computing gets powerful enough to apply shor's algorithm to 256 bit numbers one can be quantum resistant by ensuring they never use addresses more than once.   Wallets could easily be programmed to warn users of actions which would leave funds vulnerable, even auto-sweeping funds received at an address where the private key is known.

It will require some changes in how individuals and companies use the network but it wouldn't fundamentally break the network.  The largest change would be processes where periodic payments result in address re-use.  Some examples which would need be converted to dynamic addresses would be tipping or donation address,  a single payout address for pool mining, vanity addresses,  a debtor making multiple interest payments to a single address.   None of those are particularly difficult.  They could be changed today through the use of APIs or bulk loading addresses.

Wait what?  Donation implies the person shouldn't expect a return. 

How about investment?  Both the principal and interest are an obligation not something nice which may or may not happen.

Maybe it is Pirate creating the distress and then buying the distressed assets.  

The combination of closing up shop abruptly on a Friday (when fiat flows are now frozen for 72 hours), and then dumping a decent amount of coins on the market might have worked.   Cause a panic and buy some of the owed coins at half off.  Then cause some vague delays for 3 or 4 days and cover the rest of the liabilities by scooping up the "nearly worthless" PPT shares at a deep discount.  On paper everyone is paid in full, while in reality a lot of wealth gets siphoned off. 

It might have worked but there was no capitulation.  No desperation sales at sub $5.00 prices.  Lets hope that wasn't the game plan because the shock has worn off.  There will be no cheap coins.

In the US it varies a lot by state but it is pretty easy to register a company and states don't do any real validation.

https://ourcpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/servlet/cpa.app.coa.CoaGetTp?Pg=tpid&Search_Nm=GPUMAX%20TECHNOLOGIES%2C%20LLC%20&Button=search&Search_ID=32046504976

In the case of GPUMax a registered agent was used which means the paperwork was filed by a third party.  You will notice the filing is innacurate as the "principal place of business" is the registered agent's address (a common inaccuracy). The state should ensure that principal place of business is the principal place of business.  The simplest check would be to ensure it isn't the same address as a registered agent.  Also the information on directors or owners is missing.

Registered agents tend to be even more lax than states as they get paid per submission and don't want to discourage paying customers.  You can usually have one file for you by submitting info online without providing any proof of anything.  Hell you probably could find one which would register "We steal your money, LLC" with sole owner being "John Hamburgler Doe".

For the record, I not saying this means it is a scam, or that the identity of "Pirate" can't be determined.  I am just saying a company registration doesn't mean a whole lot, especially not for newly formed companies (which is why banks will often require guarantor if business has less than three years of records including tax filings).

You should be getting closer to 15 Mhps with a PhenomII x6 (if using all 6 cores).
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#AMD

That being said even 15 Mhps is worthless. 

CPU mining is dead.
GPU mining with NVIDIA GPUs is dead.
Hell GPU mining will likely be dead all together in 6-12 months (FPGA/ASICs).

I know you won't listen (no new miner does) but don't waste your time trying to mine with that hardware.

That is correct.  IIRC Amazon has only ~10K of those GPU instances.  Also Amazon puts limits on the number of instances one person can purchase.  It isn't completely anonymous (they don't want the bad press of say Iran finally perfect nuclear detonation timing using EC2 instances).  After the Sony hack, in which the attackers used Amazon instances, there is a lot more cross checking of instances.  Large number of similar instances run by "different users" is very likely going to get audited/halted.

If you need 100 nodes EC2 is viable.  If you need 1,000 nodes you might be able to get away with it if very clever (multiple identities, careful IP proxying, camouflaged instances, etc).  More than that EC2 is a dead end.