Howdy Bitcointalk - it's been FAR too long since I last visited!

I've recently spent some time looking through a number of threads and felt the need to chime in on Symbol (XYM) https://symbolplatform.com/xym/ - NEM's long promised Catapult project . Catapult was initially intended as a monumental upgrade to the NEM blockchain, but the NEM Foundation opted (or needed) to implement it as a fork of NEM - creating Symbol. Anyone who held NEM at the fork is able to redeem XYM at a 1:1 ratio and effectively migrate to the new chain (without losing any NEM of course). NEM continues to exist and remains supported by the NEM Foundation, but with years of additional development behind it, XYM is pretty clearly the way forward..

Surprisingly, NEM remains priced above XYM - I believe largely due to NEM's name recognition and a broad lack of awareness of this transition.. I'm a longtime crypto enthusiast and fully understand just how easy it is to lose track of the myriad of projects out there; it seems to me that many NEM holders and buyers may still expect that Catapult will someday launch NEM to the moon, completely unaware that it launched a few months ago. NEM has long been referred to as the 'Sleeping Dragon', and it seems the lack of big news for Symbol since it's launch has largely kept it under the radar for now.. Once news of partnerships and business adoption begins to trickle in, I suspect more and more people will start connecting the dots and realize that XYM is in fact NEM 2.0, and wildly underpriced as such.

What's more - NEM's fee-based harvesting (staking) reward system was never particularly lucrative. I harvested NEM for years and the rewards have always been laughable. Symbol completely changed this with a hefty block reward system. I might have received up to 6-8 NEM in transaction fees on a LUCKY block, with most blocks netting little or no rewards; harvesting Symbol presently nets a consistent 128 XYM PER BLOCK plus transaction fees.. Four months of harvesting has netted a 2+% return on my delegated (staked) balance!

I must admit that I am a long time fan and supporter of NEM (among other green cryptocurrencies), and my opinions here are undoubtedly influenced by this.. Biases aside, there is no arguing that XYM is NEM 2.0, is priced below NEM, remains largely unknown, provides much better block rewards than NEM (more incentive to hold), and has the potential to grow considerably as adoption and recognition of its place as NEM's successor grows.

[Prerequisites]

I see a LOT of talk about the horrors of a 51% attack and very little understanding of what that entails..

This is my understanding of a 51% attack based largely on Satoshi's original white paper. PLEASE do not hesitate to correct me on any of these points.

The Anatomy of a 51% Attack

Prerequisites:

1. A 'Bad Actor' gathers enough hash rate to outpace the rest of the network's block creation for at LEAST 6 blocks (Approx 60 or 120 minutes based on 2 scenarios below)
 Scenario a) Bad Actor participates in the network prior to their attack and gradually builds hash rate until it accounts for ~51% of the network's hash rate (luck plays a role beyond sheer % hash)
 Scenario b) Bad Actor wishes to go completely undetected and does not participate in the network prior to the attack, in which case he needs %101 of the network's hash (enough hash power to outpace the entire network)

2. Bad Actor has Bitcoin. Probably a lot of it.

Motive

The most likely reason for a 51% attack is to renege your Bitcoin transactions; you can't really steal bitcoin from other people's wallets, but you can send someone Bitcoin in exchange for something else of value then make that transaction disappear.

Another reason for a 51% could be to block transactions -- you could effectively control who is able to send bitcoin by only encoding your desired transactions in the blocks that you solve during your attack, though odds are that the transactions will make it into the blockchain later.

The Attack

If the bad actor is participating in the network prior to the attack (Scenario A above), they would have to pull all of their resources 'offline', effectively disconnecting from the public Bitcoin network and continuing to mine bitcoin in a closed network, creating an intentional 'fork' in the blockchain that would have to outpace the public blockchain. It's notable that this would result in a ~50% reduction in the public network's hash rate, which would be quite notifiable and would double the time to solve blocks (up to about 20 minutes).. 6 Confirmations would now take 2 hours.

The Bad Actor then submits transactions through the public Blockchain, for which they receive compensation; likely something non-physical and of immense value so as to make this a worthwhile endeavor AND to remain anonymous once the attack has been discovered (it may be possible for them to actually get bitcoin in return and retain it; I'm unclear on this) - this would notably require a significant amount of Bitcoin to begin with. On their private version of the blockchain, they move the SAME Bitcoin that was used to purchase their bounty on the public network into another wallet, likely one they own.

Once they have received their compensation / purchases (likely after a number of confirmations on the public network) they open their private version of the blockchain up to the public network and the two different accounts of the Blockchain merge. Assuming they've managed to keep ahead of the public network in block generation, the Public network's Blochchain is nullified and the Bad Actor's version of the Blockchain overwrites it on the public network.. We now have a conflict: the bad actor's Bitcoin was spent differently on the two Blockchains, and as the bad actor's version now overwrites the public network's version of things, he not only keeps whatever he purchased, but he also keeps his Bitcoin (which will likely devalue now that a 51% attack has occurred) safely tucked away in another of his wallets.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it's simply very challenging to imagine just how anyone could make this a profitable endeavor. Even if you don't have to purchase and operate millions of dollars worth of mining equipment (i.e. you manage a pool and create your alternate blockchain using other miners' hash power), you'd still be hard pressed to assure your safety and anonymity and turn much of a profit.. The presumption is that you begin the attack with significant Bitcoin holdings (which you would retain) and your own actions would serve to devalue this investment. In terms of rewards, there are only so many things of great value that one can purchase anonymously, and a cryptocurrency would probably be one of the most likely candidates, though you would still devalue the markets such that getting a return on this kind of scheme probably wouldn't pan out.

At the end of the day, the people most likely to perform such an attack would effectively be people with a vested interest in severely damaging or destroying the cryptocurrency landscape; people who were not looking to turn a profit and likely are willing to take a substantial loss in order to cause such damage.

Anyhow, I need to go to sleep, but this has been irking me and I wanted to hammer it out.. Would love to see some thought provoking discussion on this!

Cheers
Zachamo

[Please don't bother replying if we're past post 50!]

Giving away 7,500 Kitteh Coins to the first 50 posters only (150 kittehs each, just enough for a full-length fur coat!).

Please don't bother replying if we're past post 50!

You ask why? Because I think Catcoin was a flop and Kittehcoin is the cat's ass.

Thread here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=383068.0

Compiled wallet here:
https://mega.co.nz/#!7ZhWTAAa!R0BFFWkk-YQdJTLDgO8pemp55KcygsvFVPnjAOlRDrU

Solo mining quick instructions here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=383068.100


Give-away starting.......MEOW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7B3x7kuG5M

God knows why, but I always think of this commercial when transacting in BTC!

Sorry folks, I know there are other forms out there but I'm not registered to dog-specific forums (and hate registering to forums for one or two posts)- this is where I've been doing the most haunting recently so I figured I'd throw this one to you folks.

I've got a beagle-foxhound mix (Bowser B. Bellows - partial Simpsons reference) that we rescued from the Humane Society who's about 5 years old and recently started to favour one leg.. Eventually this turned into a limp and the Vet's since advised it's a torn ACL.. He's in for surgery as I type this, but before they started the operation they noticed that his OTHER leg has at least a partial tear.. I'd noticed he was iffy on both feet recently, so this doesn't totally surprise me.. They don't want to fix both legs in one operation, but suspect that he'll need a second surgery once he recovers from this one (~3 months).. At around $2500 per surgery it's got me cringing (and looking at pulling out of Bitcoin & Litecoin to afford it =/ )..  On top of that, we have 2 kids under 4 who take up most of our time, and helping poor Bowser recover.. Apparently he won't even be able to get up to pee for the first week or two..

Anyhow, sorry for the rant / vent, just shitty times between that and other things and I figured there might be some likt-minded folks out there who've been though this whole mess and might have some thoughts.

Please, no trolling.

Cheers
Z

I've played with mining a bit and started wondering how profitable mining has been historically. I pulled some data on the Blockchain and from Gox to see closing prices and difficulty at the time - graphed prices and difficulty separately, then another that is Price / Difficulty * 1,000,000 (to make the numbers easier to read).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnrzSC4C8ZZedEN3SFl3UEp4YnVpNzdEemNJb2hwWnc&usp=sharing


This all ties into the argument that it's often better to buy bitcoins rather than investing in mining hardware, as the value of bitcoins purchased now will likely exceed the ROI from mining hardware.. For example: I purchased a BFL Jally 7+gh at $274 shipped (maybe not the best example, but it's mine!) - That price tag could have bought me 2+ BTC at the time. Now the Jally will only likely mine 1 BTC meaning my ROI is less than half of what it would have been.

Anyhow - I just wanted to see Difficulty / Price over time, and now you can too!

I have data dating back to 2009, but getting reliable pricing that far back is impossible.. Remember - these are Mt.Gox closing prices.

Data is from:
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD  [using the raw data export]
http://blockexplorer.com/q/nethash
     Used (time1-time2)/24/60/60 to get  'Days Passed' then added them up starting at 1/10/2009 (Approx block 288).. Then A little more magic to strip out time