Hi all,

I spent a few hours doing some research on BitcoinEXpress yesterday and posted my results here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=790462

I could only find evidence that BCX was hired to demonstrate a GeistGeld flaw back in 2011, and had a genuine exploit for the Aurora KGW difficulty algo, but maybe someone else will find some evidence of these other coins he has apparently "killed".

From the available facts I can only reach two possible conclusions:

a) BCX is operating alone, in which case there is no exploit as he doesnt have the necessary skills, so this is just self promotion and market manipulation.

b) BCX is fronting for another person/people, who may think they have found an exploit. If it did indeed allow them to steal money from private wallets this seems to be a strange way of profiting from it - publicizing the threat in advance.


I have an alternate hypothesis for (b), which is that BCX's crypto-expert contact told him they had found some possible flaws in the Monero code, then his ego took that and ran with it. Does fit in with most of his previous "coin killing" exploits and its then perfect material for all the anti-Monero posters, whereby the magic of the BCX effect turns an unsubstantiated exploit claim into a verified doomsday device.

I'm just listing the facts from post history, I'm still waiting for someone to come up with some links to back up their claims about BCX. Look at the Aurora incident and its clearly documented - BCX repeatedly makes the threat, eventually AUR dev admits the KGW exploit is authentic and does something about it. In fact it would appear that BCX acted responsibly in the end with AUR, you could argue about the morality of his methods but he got a vulnerability fixed. With other coins the pattern is just that BCX makes a threat, people go "oh no BCX is going to kill it", and then nothing happens.

The speculation that BCX is fronting for someone else with this Monero attack is plausible, after all speculation doesnt require many facts and it covers those inconvenient ones like "BCX doesnt know how to code" and "BCX isn't an expert cryptographer". But if you have a genuine Monero killing exploit why do you need BCX to front for you and generate all this hype?

That just leads to more speculation though and this wasn't intended as a speculation thread, I just wanted to separate the myth from reality. Don't just post "I know BCX killed plenty of coins", spend a few minutes finding some evidence and post it.....

I didnt go through every last BCX post, there's an awful lot of them, but I checked all the threads relating to coin attacks and saw a lot of talk but not many results. If there's some evidence for BCX killing more than one coin someone please feel free to post a link or two.

The Artforz link is certainly plausible, I didnt note links but from the comments I recall I would certainly believe they were connected back when Artforz was active. Hasn't been any sign of him for a while but doesn't mean he isnt keeping touch with old friends, but then that would throw a different light on BCX's recent claims.

I think you're missing the point - over three years BCX has done hardly anything to demonstrate he is capable of striking a death blow. You must of seen posts by heavy duty cryptoheads before, they can't resist littering them with esoteric formulas and lots of maths. BCX doesnt go beyond prices and hashrates yet he spots exploits all the other experts missed?

I started this a few weeks back and BCX's recent turnaround on Monero inspired me to finish it. I own around 100XMR so I keep an eye on it and wanted to see why one person appeared to be taken so seriously when countless other trolls are brushed off. People keep saying "he's killed many coins" as evidence of his crypto skills so I decided to take a look at his post history to see for myself what he's done. In brief, seems to be a lot of talking and not much doing.

BCX has been around the altcoin scene virtually since it started, and has been tirelessly promoting himself ever since. Often accused of trolling by
those in his targets, the truth seems more that he enjoys the notoriety of being "the shitcoin killer" and sees himself as the community appointed Sherriff of Cryptoland.
More cynical members may see him as an expert market manipulator who reworks several common themes in his threats in order to cause mass
selling. If he is able to borrow large amounts of his target coin in advance he can then benefit by "shorting", either way he is then able to pick up coins
at a discount price, then sell them later for a large profit when his threat disappears and the price recovers. Tracing BCX's history we can see how he
developed his technique:


BCX was an early BTC GPU miner, who then profited from the first wave of altcoins by mining and selling during their boom phase. In all fairness he probably
got legitimately interested in attack methods and unlike most people potentially had the hashpower to enact a fork attack. In fact BCX admitted to being
paid to test ArtForz's Sept 11th proof of concept attack on GeistGeld (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=43754.0) and then within 24hrs announces the
following:

The NameCoin attack - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=43465.msg519523#msg519523

Back in Sept 2011 BCX picked up on work by Artforz about the possibility of manipulating the difficulty calculation to enable a 51% attack with much less
hashpower. BCX seems to have deleted his initial post so unfortunately we can't see exactly what he was claiming.


The IOcoin attack - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44344.msg529358#msg529358

Funnily enough another missing first post, but the theme is the same.


NameCoin attack relaunched! https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45420.msg541818#msg541818

BCX denies threatening another NameCoin attack (well the first one didnt actually happen) because somebody upset him


"Solidcoin 2.0 - Target acquired and eliminated" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47722.0

Definitely a theme here, but deleting posts and titles doesnt hide everything. Interestingly Tacotime appears in this thread! Seems the launch was a bit of
a mess and plenty of odd happenings, but nothing really proving a BCX attack.


BCX goes fairly quiet for a while, perhaps diverted into other pursuits, but returns in the summer of 2013 when BTC hype increases again, however BCX seems
to be concentrating on mining altcoins. Funnily enough he pops up in Nov 2013 in a "WDC 51% attacked" thread, but only to refute the claim. By the end of
November he is mining Tagcoin, with some impressive hashpower - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=317408.msg3769972#msg3769972 but then he appears to
return to his old tricks shortly after losing a bunch of TAG thanks to a fork:

TAGcoin timewarp attack??? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=317408.msg3762232#msg3762232 - BCX claims to be timewarp attacking one chain and
promoting another to force a fork against Cryptsy.


GameCoin forked? jan 31st 2014 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=435921.msg4823429#msg4823429 - BCX says he "thumped" it for 30 minutes to prove
something


BCX seems to get back into the idea of 51% attacks at the end of Jan 2014, claiming he has developed a modified timewarp attack which is nearly 100%
effective with enough hashpower - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=440201.msg4853175#msg4853175

Interesting bit of BCX history - he got into BTC with an early ArtForz miner - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=472120.msg5231661#msg5231661


BCX the mother forker - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=466601.msg5170050#msg5170050 - BCX says he has forked more coins than he can remember, guess
he must have kept quiet about most of them?


AuroraCoin gravity well timewarp - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504103.0 - the famous attack, BCX starts by reminding everyone yet again that he
has forked more coins than he can remember, and now Aurora is in his sights...

AuroraScam? Whilst promoting his KGW exploit BCX also takes time to tell everyone what a scam Aurora is - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=505534.msg5582018#msg5582018 - certainly was a dodgy coin!


Whilst waiting for AUR block 5400 to launch his KGW exploit, BCX confirms he has attacked "two dozen coins, pools and several exchanges", not sure which
though? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=504103.msg5660878#msg5660878


March 19th 2014 BCX joins in on "OperationShitcoin Cleanup" - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=522235.msg5784604#msg5784604

March 27th - ?BCX KGW exploits AuroraCoin? - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=538085.msg5932754#msg5932754 - As he had proclaimed many times it
appears some form of timewarp exploit screwed the difficulty causing the blockchain to freeze up....although he did keep saying that his KGW exploit was
coming at the block 5400 hard fork?


March 29th - BCX confirms what to expect from his KGW exploit - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=545475.msg5960759#msg5960759

Someone beats BCX to the AUR attack - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=546338.msg5961485#msg5961485 - although it was the planned hard fork point it
seems things went haywire


April 1st - BCX says he had started his KGW exploit but then agrees to hold off to allow a fix after dev admits the risk is real -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=552895.msg6021008#msg6021008

July - BCX has nothing against Monero, despite claiming he has found some major exploitable flaws in the CryptoNote code he thinks it has potential -
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=709197.msg8038023#msg8038023


Sept 14th - BCX has changed his position on Monero, now deciding it is a "scam coin piece of shit" - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=782827.msg8822468#msg8822468

Sept 20th - BCX still has no intention to attack Monero - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=786201.msg8902644#msg8902644

Sept 20th - Gets very confusing as BCX announces a 72hr countdown to Monero attack then appears to retract it. Price still down significantly compared to
previous week though - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789978.msg8907627#msg8907627


So it seems that BCX has only actually completed one attack, and for all we know that was just renting his hashpower to other parties, so we'll have to wait and see whether his Monero exploit materializes.