Those with an incentive to attack the bitcoin network

[monsanto]

These recent stress tests have made it clear that if they want to, groups can attack bitcoin. Which brings up who in the future would have an incentive to do this.  There could be many groups with an incentive to continue these attacks:

1. Established payment systems.

2. People who want to highlight a weakness in btc and force a change (i.e., larger block sizes).

3. The supporters/investors of a competing alt coin.

4. Bitcoin shorters.

5. Bored billionaires.

6. Exchanges. Any volatility increases the income for exchanges.

So, IMO without a change in the system, it seems like these attacks will continue.

[RodeoX]

Such attacks cost money, and while they may disrupt the network temporarily, it does not hurt the network for long. I doubt they will keep it up because it serves no ones interest. Even an entity that wants to crush bitcoin can only suppress it a bit as long as they keep paying. What can they do? Pay forever?

[monsanto]

Such attacks cost money, and while they may disrupt the network temporarily, it does not hurt the network for long. I doubt they will keep it up because it serves no ones interest. Even an entity that wants to crush bitcoin can only suppress it a bit as long as they keep paying. What can they do? Pay forever?

They could make money doing it, even with the transaction fees (or in collusion with miners), so if they did it intermittently they could keep it up indefinitely. They can short bitcoin or make money from the volatility, etc.

[pereira4]

Such attacks cost money, and while they may disrupt the network temporarily, it does not hurt the network for long. I doubt they will keep it up because it serves no ones interest. Even an entity that wants to crush bitcoin can only suppress it a bit as long as they keep paying. What can they do? Pay forever?

For a wealthy individual with an agenda the ongoing attack is chump change. We need to strengthen the network before a disgrace happens. They could keep the attack going for as long as they want, whoever is doing this is definitely a millonaire with money to waste.

[Possum577]

An attach may also lead to bad press, "bad business" as they say for the company, industry, or political/business figure that launched it. It would demonstrate an establishment attack on what could be characterized as "the people's system"...giving Bitcoin more credibility, if only in an activist sense.

[commandrix]

Such attacks cost money, and while they may disrupt the network temporarily, it does not hurt the network for long. I doubt they will keep it up because it serves no ones interest. Even an entity that wants to crush bitcoin can only suppress it a bit as long as they keep paying. What can they do? Pay forever?

Ask yourself which entities are considered "too big to fail" and can get a tax bailout if they lose too much money and you'll probably have your answer.

[Alley]

It may have a inadvertent positive effect as well as it apears usage has exploded as were over 190,000 tx per day now.

[achow101]

It may have a inadvertent positive effect as well as it apears usage has exploded as were over 190,000 tx per day now.

It isn't real usage. That is just the spammer spamming the blockchain incessantly, causing it to seem like usage has gone up when in fact it has not. Most of those extra transactions are just dust transactions between the attacker's own addresses.

[coinableS]

Such attacks cost money, and while they may disrupt the network temporarily, it does not hurt the network for long. I doubt they will keep it up because it serves no ones interest. Even an entity that wants to crush bitcoin can only suppress it a bit as long as they keep paying. What can they do? Pay forever?

I agree with Rodeo. Eventually the attacker(s) will get board and start running low on funds. Once they realize the large impact they are trying to make is actually very small and is not worth the effort.

[Undermood]

Such attacks cost money, and while they may disrupt the network temporarily, it does not hurt the network for long. I doubt they will keep it up because it serves no ones interest. Even an entity that wants to crush bitcoin can only suppress it a bit as long as they keep paying. What can they do? Pay forever?

Great points. Bitcoin's network is resilient and robust, which is proved by the stress test!

[chennan]

These recent stress tests have made it clear that if they want to, groups can attack bitcoin. Which brings up who in the future would have an incentive to do this.  There could be many groups with an incentive to continue these attacks:

1. Established payment systems.

2. People who want to highlight a weakness in btc and force a change (i.e., larger block sizes).

3. The supporters/investors of a competing alt coin.

4. Bitcoin shorters.

5. Bored billionaires.

6. Exchanges. Any volatility increases the income for exchanges.

So, IMO without a change in the system, it seems like these attacks will continue.

I cannot understand why the points you made is an incetive to continue these attacks. By spamming the network, their transactions wouldn't get confirmed without meeting the required criteria, such as the minimum fees, lowest input and output amount. It will really affect their business's operation.

[gogxmagog]

couldn't these attacks have more to do with some bad actors working to exploit the activity of the stress tests? I dont understand the tech at a dev level so I cant say, but it seems plausible, maybe. It also means it wont last, after the stress test bru-ha-ha settles down the opportunity to game the system will end.

does what I say make any sense? Like I say, I'm not tech enough to know for sure, but these things happening concurrently sure seems a little iffy to me.

I came to this idea because I also wondered who might be behind the whole thing and couldn't find a good reason why anyone would spend so much BTC on such a silly game.

but if it is a bad group, its probably the guys who want the block limit increased, and they\re mostly devs who have shitloads of coin from mining way back when it was super simple to get 1000s of BTC easy.

other than that, who could be bothered to spend that kinda coin??

[afriezalie]

These recent stress tests have made it clear that if they want to, groups can attack bitcoin. Which brings up who in the future would have an incentive to do this.  There could be many groups with an incentive to continue these attacks:

1. Established payment systems.

2. People who want to highlight a weakness in btc and force a change (i.e., larger block sizes).

3. The supporters/investors of a competing alt coin.

4. Bitcoin shorters.

5. Bored billionaires.

6. Exchanges. Any volatility increases the income for exchanges.

So, IMO without a change in the system, it seems like these attacks will continue.

Hmm altcoin value depends on bitcoin too. This attack needs many people and huge cost to do this. And the electricity cost. So just wait for them. They will stop it in several days

[OROBTC]

...

Make these kinds of attacks hurt the perps.

Raise the miner's fee to, say, BTC0.0001 or BTC0.0002.  I did two small transactions and paid BTC0.0006 just to see if they would go through.  BOTH were confirmed on the next block.  One of these was on July 6 (first day of latest eruption), the other one today.

I already hear the fans of micropayments and ZERO miner's fees though.  

I would rather have a system that WORKS even if I have to pay 5 cents or even 13 cents for an important transaction to go through.

[kakugou]

Me Too~~

[Amph]

it's obvious that we are talking about point 2, there is no other starting reason for what happened, but i believe that some spammers have seen the opportunity of doing a sneaky attack, because of the strong possibility of being ignored at first, while the other are testing fairly

but they are are only rewairding miners in this way, they are securing more the network

[omahapoker]

I think this ongoing attack is really bad press. I mean they still go on spamming and the unconfirmed transactions don't get worked up. And what happens? Numerous question threads on bitcointalk about what happens, exchanges and services get accused of scamming their customers and so on.

The people attacking the network might show a problem but they attack many businesses and bitcoin adoption might be hurt too on the way because of bad experience.

I hope they lost all of their coins soon.

[johnyj]

bitcoin.conf

minrelaytxfee=0.0002

 

[Borisz]

You need capital and knowledge to pull such a sustained attack and/or you have to coordinate multiple groups to act at the same time.

I doubt that e.g. competing altcoins would do something similar, mainly as they probably don't have the necessary funds to do it. Also, it wouldn't do much good for them as they would know that they cannot bring down the network, in the best best case simply cripple it for the time being. Hence if they wanted to make their coin come out as a winner they would need to sustain an attack indefinitely. Which is probably not economical for them, not even to pull a pump & dump on their coin.

Established payment systems probably don't yet view bitcoin as a high threat as it has only a fraction of their business. Also, their analysts would probably also tell that the network cannot be stopped, only slowed by an ongoing, indefinite attack.

I'd say the most likely is a group trying to pinpoint or find weaknesses in the system and does a temporary force demonstration.

[S4VV4S]

You need capital and knowledge to pull such a sustained attack and/or you have to coordinate multiple groups to act at the same time.

I doubt that e.g. competing altcoins would do something similar, mainly as they probably don't have the necessary funds to do it. Also, it wouldn't do much good for them as they would know that they cannot bring down the network, in the best best case simply cripple it for the time being. Hence if they wanted to make their coin come out as a winner they would need to sustain an attack indefinitely. Which is probably not economical for them, not even to pull a pump & dump on their coin.

Established payment systems probably don't yet view bitcoin as a high threat as it has only a fraction of their business. Also, their analysts would probably also tell that the network cannot be stopped, only slowed by an ongoing, indefinite attack.

I'd say the most likely is a group trying to pinpoint or find weaknesses in the system and does a temporary force demonstration.

And I'd say it's probably the same group that was running the stress tests.
It makes sense considering their messed up schedule (running the test on different dates/times than announced).