Did you factor in the costs of the hardware and expenses? What manufacturer did you order from, at what price, how much is your electricity and operating costs (cooling/Internet/Ethernet cables/routers/PDUs/C13 to C14 power cables/etc), and how long have they been running?

Moar details please.

It is possible that he has an accomplice that is the brains behind the operation and BCX has the means.

Yep, the clock is ticking.

So far there haven't been any security updates: https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero

If BCX is not bluffing, Monero could be in trouble unless they figure it out in he next 24 hours.

The big time miners can just add hash power if they find themselves becoming unprofitable. They can source equipment much cheaper than normal consumers, they run their farms with the cheapest electricity available, and at cold locations that severely cut down on operating costs.

In other words, if the big time miners become unprofitable, that means the little guys are even more so unprofitable. I don't see any situation where the big time miners will shut down their operations to the point that consumers will become profitable. I think the belief that difficulty will come down to the point consumers will be more profitable than the big time miners is a pipe dream.

I'm tired of all the arguments that a cryptocurrency needs to burn electricity through PoW mining to achieve value.

These arguments can be instantly refuted by the fact there are multiple PoS cryptocurrencies with market caps in the multi million dollar territory.

This argument is whack..

If a cryptocurrency requires electricity to be consumed via PoW mining to achieve value, how have these PoS cryptocurrencies in the multi million dollar range regarding market caps defied all odds and achieved their values without PoW mining?

The answer is that there are more dynamics at play in how a cryptocurrency is valued in the free market... many more dynamics than simply their consensus algorithm. The dynamics are similar to that of those of how different PoW cryptocurrencies are valued on the free market... some are worthless and some are worth millions.

Voting power is directly proportional to the amount of coins you own, so if you own 1% of the money supply your voting power would be 1% of the total votes, regardless of how many nodes you run.

Votes are updated every time someone sends a transaction, or alternatively there is a command/button you can use to update your votes for the cost of a transaction fee.

Ok, well minus my misconceptions on how a Bitcoin 51% attack would go down it seems we are almost on the same page.

There are no guarantees that delegates will act in the best interest of stakeholders, or do as they campaigned that they will. However, they do have something at stake that is incentive to not go against a majority of the stakeholders will.. their job which they are being paid for. They could be bribed or collude to act in some way that is against the stakeholder's wishes, but any action that goes against a majority of stakeholders would be short lived as they can be voted out.

If my understanding is now correct from your insights, it would be much like a 51% attack on a PoW coin would work, they could only double spend one or a few transactions before being caught and voted out. Same with blacklisting or withholding transactions. So, IMO colluding delegates and/or hacked delegates would not be a "coin killer", as they can be voted out with minimal damage done.

I think delegate collusion is highly unlikely for the same reasons some people think a 51% from a government entity is unlikely, people would find out about it. If the colluding delegates contact only one delegate that is not on board with what they are doing, it is very likely he alerts the community to the plan and the delegates are voted out before they can even do anything. Needing 51 delegates I think makes this highly unlikely for someone to be so lucky to contact the 51 delegates that would be on board with their plan and not have 1 that isn't.

If 80% of delegates act differently from the wishes of stake holders, they can be voted out. So, I think the only major worry would be someone gaining 51% of the money supply and attacking. Even then, it would be a stupid waste of money, as you are killing something you own a majority in and spent a lot on to gain that stake.

If 60% of stakeholders decide something should be done differently.. Then that is there choice, no? The ones that don't agree can sell their stake and start a new chain on their own. That makes sense to me because Bitshares looks at cryptocurrencies as a business. If you own 51% of a business, you should be able to do as you please. It is like how a democracy would work or business would work in the real world.

On the other hand, if someone gained 51% simply to attack the coin the non attackers could just move to a new coin and start over. I don't see how that is a bad thing. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely. For one there is almost a certain likelihood that there will not be 51% of the coins on the market to be sold at any point in time. If there is not, then multiple users need to be hacked to gain 51% of the stake.

I just don't see how it makes any sense whatsoever for someone to attack th e chain after gaining a 51% majority, as they would need to spend a fortune to do so, or hack multiple people. There are also cold wallets, which is one thing DPOS allows users to do that other PoS implementations don't and remain just as secure as if the funds were in hot wallets.

Ok, my bad.. I am still learning.

What if an entity (a government, central bank, etc.) could maintain 51% of the hash power for an indefinite amount of time? Couldn't they repeatedly attack the chain? I find it hard to believe that sort of attack could be mitigated without switching algorithms and rolling back the block chain.

It is against stakeholders best interest to roll back the chain on people who are unpopular or doing unpopular things. Just as it is against Bitcoin's best interest to roll back the block chain. An attack on the other hand is easy to spot and you will have no problem convincing others to switch to a new chain, as the old one can be double spent on and valid transactions withheld.

With DPoS, 30% wouldn't matter. You would need 51% of the money supply. Even an attacker obtained 51% of the money supply would not matter.. see the third paragraph of my last post.

Congrats, now hack my computer to find my delegate node and you are 1/51 of the way there.

Then you must do the same for 50 more delegates, and you code an attack script.

Then we notice your attack and vote the attacking delegates out of power, and roll back the block chain to just before the attack started.

Then life moves on and we laugh and tell stories about it for years to come.  

Well, there being more variables to being DDOS resistant I can agree with, which you mentioned in you last post. Admittedly I am not an expert in network security, but I am not a complete idiot and am trying to rationalize the pros and cons and offer my opinion as best I can. If I am wrong on something feel free to point it out to me as I am still learning exactly how DPOS works. You bringing up that if the delegates were compromised, then they might as well steal funds and attack (not produce a block in a timely manner, sign a bad block, or not include valid transactions.) That is true.. a DDoS at that point would be silly, so let's go over that.

Suppose 51% of the delegates happened to be compromised and attacked the network, they could then be voted out and replaced with new delegates. Also.. It is not implemented right now, but there is also the possibility to program it into the client where if a delegate was to sign two blocks (double spend), that the client could automatically vote them out.

If the attacker gains a 51% stake then we can't vote out the attacker and it is similar to a 51% attack on a PoW coin, except it results in the non nefarious owners doubling their stake in the DPoS coin! If someone gets 51% stake, we could then take a snapshot of the attacked chain by identifying the unspent transaction outputs which were voting for the corrupt delegates at the time of the attack, and create a new genesis block from that snapshot with those particular unspent transaction outputs made void. A chain identical to the previous failed one is created using this new genesis block, which takes stake control away from the attacker leaving the other innocent 49% of stake holders with 100% of the stake of the new chain. Those who sold to the attacker should be happy because they made a voluntary exchange and got out before the attack. And those who did not sell to the attacker are also happy because they doubled their stake in the honest chain that will quickly regain its old value, which should hopefully compensate them for the brief outage of the chain.

You can produce a list of names, not IP addresses. You would then need to compromise those people's computers to get the IP address of their delegate server, no? There is an added layer of security there, whereas I can get the IP addresses for all Bitcoin pools with 10 minutes worth of work as pool addresses are much easier attainable. I think you are making it out to be easier than it actually is.

Even if you were able to figure out the IPs of 80% to 90% of the delegate servers and DDOS them, all it would do is slow down the network.. It wouldn't make it vulnerable to attack. When one delegate misses a block, the next delegate includes their block and the previous missed block into the block chain. I believe in the unlikely event that 80 or 90 consecutive (likely it would be less because it is extremely unlikely that the delegates turns for that specific round were in exactly that order) blocks were missed, they would be recorded by the 81st or 91st delegate into the block chain.

It seems like a lot of work to only inconvenience the chain (slow it down.) Whereas a DDOS on the pools of a PoW coin can have security implications because then less hash power is needed to mount a possible attack.

I'd say a DDOS attack is less likely with DPOS than it is with Bitcoin's PoW. It is harder for a hacker to find out delegates IP addresses than Ghash or discus fish IP addresses, as there are many delegates and delegates don't have public facing web sites and pool information. All delegate's identities are not publicly known.

I admit my wording of that statement was poor.

This is a pipe dream...

It seems you don't know what you're talking about. Without 51% of the money supply so you can vote in your own attacking delegates, this is not possible. There are only two attacks that are known for DPoS.. a 51% attack and DDOS of the delegates. DPoS is further protected against a DDOS attack because the delegates are only known to the public through their account names, and no one knows the IPs of all (or even some) delegate nodes.

More about DPoS: http://bitshares.org/delegated-proof-of-stake/
Even more about DPoS: http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS
Old discussions on DPoS: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=4009.0
Discussions regarding "nothing at stake" attacks: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6584.0
More discussion about NaS attack: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6638.0

It is a slimy marketing tactic.. Most other coins do not stoop to this level, at least not officially, but the developers and largest supporters are fully supportive of this slimy marketing tactic. Coins with a fraction of the community, life span, and market cap of Monero have their own forums... It is no excuse.

At least you finally admitted not having your own forums is a form of advertising.... I feel better now since you guys have denied that since I brought it up like I was some kind of idiotic lunatic.

At least one you finally admitted why you will not migrate to your own forums and have multiple threads for discussing spamming about Monero.

This is what annoys everyone else including me, and it is why the trolls have come out against you. I was largely silent about Monero until you guys annoyed me past the point of biting my tongue. I am past the point of extreme annoyance and have joined in with the other trolls that were trolling long before I showed up.