Is Bitcoin really unbreakable?

[amaclin]

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

OK, 1000 satoshi per tx
There are 100k daily transactions
And 6k fullnodes
The daily revenue for each node is 16667 satoshi = $0.04 - great results 

[Amph]

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

OK, 1000 satoshi per tx
There are 100k daily transactions
And 6k fullnodes
The daily revenue for each node is 16667 satoshi = $0.04 - great results  

well you are not taking into account the potential of bitcoin, and the much greater number of TX per sec and the price, for the future,. that 0.04 could be 40

also it was only an example, you can tweak it to suit it better, but bears in mind that it isn't something that aim at replace your job....

[ranochigo]

i believe that those that are running a full node should have the same power, and should be rewarded too

Who will reward them and for what? 
Are you crazy?
There is no free beer! Every bottle is paid by somebody else!

well it could be done that instead of sending all the fees, from any transactions, to the miners only, you send a portion to who is running a full node

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

IMO, that's hard to do. If you're going to allow nodes to get fees, you have to split the fees around 5000+ nodes and the miners would receive less incentive to mine. Running a node is significantly less expensive than mining. They can easily just host nodes and stop mining. The security of the network would be reduced significantly. Many people also would like to send transactions with no fees.

[ajareselde]

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

OK, 1000 satoshi per tx
There are 100k daily transactions
And 6k fullnodes
The daily revenue for each node is 16667 satoshi = $0.04 - great results 

That's considering that people are using default transaction fee per size, but it should be much more if the number of transactions continues to grow with time i think.
imho the reward process should both include reward to nodes and PR efforts through some organ, but then it would make it more centralized, which most people don't want,
although it would make bitcoin itself much more spread out and therefore more secure.

cheers

[lockshop11]

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

OK, 1000 satoshi per tx
There are 100k daily transactions
And 6k fullnodes
The daily revenue for each node is 16667 satoshi = $0.04 - great results 

That's considering that people are using default transaction fee per size, but it should be much more if the number of transactions continues to grow with time i think.
imho the reward process should both include reward to nodes and PR efforts through some organ, but then it would make it more centralized, which most people don't want,
although it would make bitcoin itself much more spread out and therefore more secure.

cheers

The miners are securing the network and getting the transactions inclued in the blocks. They should be paid. But for nodes, we needs nodes as well to broadcast the transactions out. As bitcoin's adoption rate increases, more and more nodes will arise. This is not a concern for me!

[ranochigo]

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

OK, 1000 satoshi per tx
There are 100k daily transactions
And 6k fullnodes
The daily revenue for each node is 16667 satoshi = $0.04 - great results  

That's considering that people are using default transaction fee per size, but it should be much more if the number of transactions continues to grow with time i think.
imho the reward process should both include reward to nodes and PR efforts through some organ, but then it would make it more centralized, which most people don't want,
although it would make bitcoin itself much more spread out and therefore more secure.

cheers

The miners are securing the network and getting the transactions inclued in the blocks. They should be paid. But for nodes, we needs nodes as well to broadcast the transactions out. As bitcoin's adoption rate increases, more and more nodes will arise. This is not a concern for me!

Full nodes are important too. They help to enforce the network rules and allow other nodes to download blocks from them. The rise of adoption rate doesn't guarantee that people are going to open port 8333 to allow outgoing connections. The block size issue would probably make people use SPV client instead which does nothing to contribute to network and it relys on miner to follow network rules. A problem we seen from the recent fork.

[Kprawn]

I think what OP is trying to say is... If changes could be made to increase the 21 000 000 Bitcoins and a majority of the nodes accept that, like the Chinese miner pools just did, for a while... could that break Bitcoin?

Well, I guess it's not impossible... but the incentive to add more coins would negate the advantage of doing it. More coins being released, would push the price down. {The more coins that are available, will push the supply up, and IF the demand is not enough, the price will decrease}

So there is no incentive to do that.... The miners benefit from the scarcity of the coin too. 

[Amph]

i believe that those that are running a full node should have the same power, and should be rewarded too

Who will reward them and for what? 
Are you crazy?
There is no free beer! Every bottle is paid by somebody else!

well it could be done that instead of sending all the fees, from any transactions, to the miners only, you send a portion to who is running a full node

maybe something like 1k satoshi, 10% of the default fee

IMO, that's hard to do. If you're going to allow nodes to get fees, you have to split the fees around 5000+ nodes and the miners would receive less incentive to mine. Running a node is significantly less expensive than mining. They can easily just host nodes and stop mining. The security of the network would be reduced significantly. Many people also would like to send transactions with no fees.

well as i said above you can tweak it to have an appropriate reward, if 10% is still too high you can reduce it a bit, for example i doubt that mining activity is worth more than x20 in comparison to running a full node

the point is that running a full node should be incentivated, they could help against sybil attack and reinforce the network, therefore they need something as a reward

[jonald_fyookball]

if 51% agree(actually i read that you need 90% for that, i don't know if it is wrong or what) then it mean that the majority want bitcoin to be changed and so it will be, the point is that there isn't a single entity that can change everything as he wants, that's the beauty of bitcoin

It's 51% for usual fork, and 90% for xt fork, since it has that limit for activation in code.
Bitcoin is safe, but it's not immune to attacks, but then again, neither are other alternatives. Considering how much one would need to "attack" the network, it's safe to say that it's futile.

The biggest problem is the client-side security, where most people get infected by mallware of all sorts, and don't know how to protect their coins from theft.

cheers

I'm not sure why there is so much confusion about consensus.

~90% is more accurate than 51%.  51% is just the amount of hashing power needed to consistently mine the longest chain, which is consensus WITHIN the protocol.  But you need everyone on board for consensus of the protocol itself.

If "the majority want Bitcoin changed", well you have to consider that 1) this means the majority of EVERYONE using Bitcoin, including users, investors, and merchants, not just miners and 2) unless there is an overwhelming supermajority, the substantial minority left behind will continue running Bitcoin in its previous state.

[johnyj]

Hmm those are some good points. Technically, the Fed runs on "consensus" too by means of who people vote for, but they vote on other issues too and then there are levels of appointments from Yellen on down. The main advantage I suppose is the transparency, so that were a large percentage of miners to attempt to increase their mining (which would decrease the overall value of bitcoin but increase *their* percentage of it, much like the gov't printing money), it would instantly be public news and the bitcoin market would factor it in quickly. Nodes that don't generate blocks might not accept the changes, but what if all the miners did? Then there would be no other alternative blockchain for the full nodes to use.

At least two group of people won't change their stance: Austrian economic school supporters and libertarian

In fact many miners are still learning theories about money creation (What they do is money creation), and I think many of them will realize that limited supply is the only way for a consensus based, voluntarily participated currency to succeed. Without this property, bitcoin does not stand any chance before the competition of fiat money (If both currency are inflative, then most of the people would rather use FED's notes instead of a group of greedy miners' coin, at least FED's coin is backed by the US national debt )

[Jhacker]

I think what OP is trying to say is... If changes could be made to increase the 21 000 000 Bitcoins and a majority of the nodes accept that, like the Chinese miner pools just did, for a while... could that break Bitcoin?

Well, I guess it's not impossible... but the incentive to add more coins would negate the advantage of doing it. More coins being released, would push the price down. {The more coins that are available, will push the supply up, and IF the demand is not enough, the price will decrease}

So there is no incentive to do that.... The miners benefit from the scarcity of the coin too.  

It wouldn't completely negate the advantage. That is why the gov't prints money. Say that the miners (collectively) decide to double the number of bitcoins to 42 000 000. And just for the sake of example, let's suppose the value of a bitcoin starts out at $1 (the value itself is irrelevant). After doubling the number of bitcoins, a bitcoin is now worth only $.50, but the miners have $10,500,000 that they didn't have before. Actually, at the real price of $250 per bitcoin, that's $2.5 billion for the miners. That's why I say the incentive is rather large.

Miners are the new bankers.

[Jhacker]

Hmm those are some good points. Technically, the Fed runs on "consensus" too by means of who people vote for, but they vote on other issues too and then there are levels of appointments from Yellen on down. The main advantage I suppose is the transparency, so that were a large percentage of miners to attempt to increase their mining (which would decrease the overall value of bitcoin but increase *their* percentage of it, much like the gov't printing money), it would instantly be public news and the bitcoin market would factor it in quickly. Nodes that don't generate blocks might not accept the changes, but what if all the miners did? Then there would be no other alternative blockchain for the full nodes to use.

At least two group of people won't change their stance: Austrian economic school supporters and libertarian

In fact many miners are still learning theories about money creation (What they do is money creation), and I think many of them will realize that limited supply is the only way for a consensus based, voluntarily participated currency to succeed. Without this property, bitcoin does not stand any chance before the competition of fiat money (If both currency are inflative, then most of the people would rather use FED's notes instead of a group of greedy miners' coin, at least FED's coin is backed by the US national debt )

Heh. I think that that fiat being backed by the national debt is an argument FOR bitcoin. Plus the ease of use.

[jubalix]

you miss the point even if BTC was broken, then another crptocoin would swiftly take its place, and BTC core would likely update to that tech. Eg POS if miners failed.

So yes BTC coin as a crypto, the idea is unbreakable. Go and take a look in alts if you doubt this.

[lorylore]

you miss the point even if BTC was broken, then another crptocoin would swiftly take its place, and BTC core would likely update to that tech. Eg POS if miners failed.

So yes BTC coin as a crypto, the idea is unbreakable. Go and take a look in alts if you doubt this.

I think since the bitcoin was one of the first digital currency(crypto currency) it's not much breakable.
Since it is so popular it takes time to break it.
There are more other coins(inc. crypto 2.0) that are much faster but not so pupular like bitcoin

[amaclin]

you miss the point even if BTC was broken, then another crptocoin would swiftly take its place

Are you sure?  

Since it is so popular it takes time to break it.

Are you sure?  

[lorylore]

you miss the point even if BTC was broken, then another crptocoin would swiftly take its place

Are you sure? 

That is for sure. If there is no bitcoin there will be something else replacing it immediately. Arent there many many other coins?

[amaclin]

That is for sure. If there is no bitcoin there will be something else replacing it immediately.

Fiat, gold, jewelry etc.

Arent there many many other coins?

And all of them have the same flaw: they can not be used as financial tool.

[Coinshot]

That is for sure. If there is no bitcoin there will be something else replacing it immediately.

Fiat, gold, jewelry etc.

Arent there many many other coins?

And all of them have the same flaw: they can not be used as financial tool.

what is the reason for that? why they cannot be used as a financial tool,, they are currency to all effects
plus they can be used as a great investments, they have the right to be used in the same way as fiat
but with a store of value and better fee and security

[amaclin]

they are currency to all effects

No. There is one significant problem: cryptos like bitcoin takes too much energy to prevent doublespends comparing with any other ways.

plus they can be used as a great investments

great? are you crazy? 

[ranochigo]

they are currency to all effects

No. There is one significant problem: cryptos like bitcoin takes too much energy to prevent doublespends comparing with any other ways.

I believe that Bitcoin is one of the first to implement cryptography to prevent double spending in p2p technology. Other ways would just make it more decentralized. The Bitcoin network hashrate and energy consumption rate can be huge but ASICs are getting much more efficient and slow miners are gradually shutting them down. Basically, to get cheap power, most of the mining farms are located at places which have renewable energy. POS might be a solution but 51% attack would be made much easier with much less expenses. I would say that Bitcoin miner consume less electricity than all the datacentres.