Are the USA scamming the world again?

[giszmo]

If the FED can happily print 40,000,000,000 USD (40G$) per month, how can we assume our pet project can withstand even one day of these spendings worth of effort? That would be 1.3G$.

The current total value of mining gear is 25TH/s * 72ct. / MH * s = 18M$ (if you use quite expensive BFL equipment). Thus a democracy attack would cost only 25M$ (Far less if combined with other tricks).

Hiring a team of 100 experts for one year to spread fud, play the evil pirate, hack into exchanges and sabotage Bitcoin^{(p. 28)} from within would cost 100*150k$=15M$.

Oh, damn, we still have 1.3G$ - 25M$ - 15M$ = 1.3G$ to spend.

So what would you do with the remaining 1.3G$ if your job were to attack Bitcoin? Launch and fail every thinkable and unthinkable project with seemingly great teams to not get competition even started, only to scam users out of their bitcoins and get more people frustrated? Maybe some child porn exchange with massive referral spam would get people disgusted? Very publicly pay a bitcoin bounty for a dirty bomb somewhere?

The ways to bring Bitcoin down are endless and comparably cheap. All of the above would still not even get close to 10 hours of FED's quantitative easing budget.

Ok, so why the title "Are the USA scamming the world again?"? Well, my conclusion is that Ƀ might survive because it already has the full faith and credit of an issuing government. The FED could essentially pay freshly printed 1G$ per Ƀ if it knew it will abandon the $ anyway. Oooops did we debase the world's reserves? Sorry, didn't mean to. Hope you also bought some bitcoin. If that's the evil master plan, Satoshi and many of the early miners might all be the same entity painting a nice picture of a democratic open source money of the people for the people. Designing it as a world currency with 80% of all holdings in the USA would put the USA at the same unfair advantage it had since the Nixon Shock.
I think this possibility should at least slow down some evangelists' enthusiasm of advertising Bitcoin as the holy grail of fair and sound money and Satoshi as the mysterious god of the church of Bitcoin.
_{(Disclaimer: This post was written by my paranoid twin.)}

[1714747614]

1714747614

[1714747614]

1714747614

[1714747614]

1714747614

[phelix]

while that is a really spooky idea I would go with occam's razor: governments are still in Gandhi's "ignore" phase.

but even without government there is quite an imbalance in bitcoin distribution among the countries in the world.

[cunicula]

If the FED can happily print 40,000,000,000 USD (40G$) per month, how can we assume our pet project can withstand even one day of these spendings worth of effort? That would be 1.3G$.

The current total value of mining gear is 25TH/s * 72ct. / MH * s = 18M$ (if you use quite expensive BFL equipment). Thus a democracy attack would cost only 25M$ (Far less if combined with other tricks).

Hiring a team of 100 experts for one year to spread fud, play the evil pirate, hack into exchanges and sabotage Bitcoin^{(p. 28)} from within would cost 100*150k$=15M$.

Oh, damn, we still have 1.3G$ - 25M$ - 15M$ = 1.3G$ to spend.

You cannot protect yourself from a determined attacker with more resources than you. The best defense is too make sure the attacker loses money off the operation and the defenders gain money. You can ensure this by requiring the attackers to buy the currency from the defenders.

In the stock market this is known as a hostile takeover, it is good for shareholders.

In cryptocurrency this is known as proof of stake, it is good for coinholders.

[farlack]

The government has a super computer.

I think they can do it with that, and I doubt they will.

And the government has control of the internet. I feel they can use a botnet.. And I doubt they will..

[benjamindees]

For the record, you can search through my posts over the last year and a half or so to see I am 100% certain that someone, perhaps the US government, has been attempting to sabotage and perhaps gain control of Bitcoin.

I don't know how successful they have been.  But it is awfully quiet around here lately.

It could very well go back farther than the time I have been here.  I don't know how far back.  But I would guess not since the beginning, since if the US government had control of Satoshi's Bitcoins, we would not have seen the level of disruption there has been since then.

[Bitcoin Oz]

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081

[giszmo]

For the record, you can search through my posts over the last year and a half or so to see I am 100% certain that someone, perhaps the US government, has been attempting to sabotage and perhaps gain control of Bitcoin.

I don't know how successful they have been.  But it is awfully quiet around here lately.

It could very well go back farther than the time I have been here.  I don't know how far back.  But I would guess not since the beginning, since if the US government had control of Satoshi's Bitcoins, we would not have seen the level of disruption there has been since then.

If destroying bitcoin were on the agenda of the CIA since the last 18 months with more than 10 experts, bitcoin might well be dead by now. 18 months is enough to get a new core programmer positioned and sneak in some backdoor. Yes, bitcoin has very good hackers and some are surely paranoid about this to happen but I doubt that really every capital weakness would get caught. I assume that still too few academics are interested in bitcoins security and especially the security of release candidates. What would we do if some day all connected Satoshi clients were sending their coins to one address?

[chewie]

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081

Excellent book.  I'm in the middle of reading it right now. 

[FlipPro]

Lets take this a step further...

Who invented the Internet? 

Who has all the big tech companies by the balls? 

Who went and visited the CIA last year and gave a very promising presentation? 

[phelix]

For the record, you can search through my posts over the last year and a half or so to see I am 100% certain that someone, perhaps the US government, has been attempting to sabotage and perhaps gain control of Bitcoin.

I don't know how successful they have been.  But it is awfully quiet around here lately.

It could very well go back farther than the time I have been here.  I don't know how far back.  But I would guess not since the beginning, since if the US government had control of Satoshi's Bitcoins, we would not have seen the level of disruption there has been since then.

If destroying bitcoin were on the agenda of the CIA since the last 18 months with more than 10 experts, bitcoin might well be dead by now. 18 months is enough to get a new core programmer positioned and sneak in some backdoor. Yes, bitcoin has very good hackers and some are surely paranoid about this to happen but I doubt that really every capital weakness would get caught. I assume that still too few academics are interested in bitcoins security and especially the security of release candidates. What would we do if some day all connected Satoshi clients were sending their coins to one address?

cancel these transactions in the next release.

[Lethn]

Pissing off the world's hackers is quite easily one of the biggest mistakes that America could make.