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Author Topic: Few basic random questions about bitcoin  (Read 621 times)
EuropaAUV (OP)
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December 02, 2016, 07:42:34 PM
Last edit: December 02, 2016, 09:25:59 PM by EuropaAUV
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1# In general how do miners pick a nonce? Obviously if everyone started at 1 only the fastest miners would win. Do they just pick a random very large number and start incrementing from there? How often do they update their block (if you do it with every single new transaction the instant it comes in it seems you might take a performance hit on your hash rate).

2# Once a miner solves a block, how can they prove it was them who solved it? If Bob tells Alice the solution, what stops Alice from taking the solution and quickly trying to tell more people quicker it was her who solved it?


edit: Removed two questions above as the miners use their own bitcoin address to create the header hash which is used to solve the block.

3# Seems the single largest miner is about 20% right now. Let's say I want to know how safe I am after 5 validations in the worst case scenario. Does that mean .2^5= 0.00032 (aka 0.032% or 1 in 3125) is the chances that a block with 5 validations will later fork if that 20% decided to try to cheat the system at that moment?
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December 03, 2016, 01:03:53 AM
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You are correct that there is a  0.032% chance that a 20% miner will solve 5 blocks in a row.  In doing so they were pretty lucky and made a lot of BTC for their efforts.

So your next question would need a bit more detail.  Given that they just made about $50,000 please explain what they would do to "cheat" that would make economic sense.  In order to make economic sense they would have to be able to make way more that $50,000 by cheating.

Our family was terrorized by Homeland Security.  Read all about it here:  http://www.jmwagner.com/ and http://www.burtw.com/  Any donations to help us recover from the $300,000 in legal fees and forced donations to the Federal Asset Forfeiture slush fund are greatly appreciated!
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