20 articles on 'Bitcoin is broken', researchers warn' doesn;t move price? why?

[BitcoinAshley]

The reason there haven't been panic sells is because - and I can think of no other explanation - the majority of bitcoin investors and traders are intelligent enough that they don't automatically believe everything they read on the internet at face value.

I am truly surprised, and OP, you might have trouble believing this. But it is the only feasible explanation I can think of.

Another option would have been that "bitcoin really IS broken and people are just ignoring it and trying to make money b/c 'greed.' " But that is impossible since it is widely known that it is the research paper that is broken, not the bitcoin protocol.


If you're anything like me, you read the article, read core dev's response, read the coding community's response, read the non-coding community's response to the coding community's response, looked at the market's response, determined that the authors of the paper were pretty much full of shit, and went on about your merry business. Had there been any legitimate threat I may have reduced my bitcoin position, according to the severity of the threat, either into fiat or some altcoins which did not share that security issue. Or I would buy something nice for myself.

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[dnaleor]

I don't claim to know the technical details of why the article in the OP doesn't work, although I've seen lots of people talking about that in the past.

Can somebody shed some light? Why won't that "selfish miner" strategy work?

check my post. It works, but it isnt a problem.

As long as those selfish miners behave, there is no problem...

[notme]

If you're anything like me, you read the article, read core dev's response, read the coding community's response, read the non-coding community's response to the coding community's response, looked at the market's response, determined that the authors of the paper were pretty much full of shit, and went on about your merry business.

yup

[dnaleor]

The reason there haven't been panic sells is because - and I can think of no other explanation - the majority of bitcoin investors and traders are intelligent enough that they don't automatically believe everything they read on the internet at face value.

I am truly surprised, and OP, you might have trouble believing this. But it is the only feasible explanation I can think of.

Another option would have been that "bitcoin really IS broken and people are just ignoring it and trying to make money b/c 'greed.' " But that is impossible since it is widely known that it is the research paper that is broken, not the bitcoin protocol.


If you're anything like me, you read the article, read core dev's response, read the coding community's response, read the non-coding community's response to the coding community's response, looked at the market's response, determined that the authors of the paper were pretty much full of shit, and went on about your merry business. Had there been any legitimate threat I may have reduced my bitcoin position, according to the severity of the threat, either into fiat or some altcoins which did not share that security issue. Or I would buy something nice for myself.

any links would help

[BitPirate]

I don't claim to know the technical details of why the article in the OP doesn't work, although I've seen lots of people talking about that in the past.

Can somebody shed some light? Why won't that "selfish miner" strategy work?

I haven't looked in detail, but the idea seems to just be a 51% attack that you do in secret -- not very likely. The very premise of "don't communicate your bitcoin find to other miners" makes no sense, as your bitcoins are only bitcoins (and are only redeemable) if they are in the public blockchain.

[dnaleor]

I don't claim to know the technical details of why the article in the OP doesn't work, although I've seen lots of people talking about that in the past.

Can somebody shed some light? Why won't that "selfish miner" strategy work?

I haven't looked in detail, but the idea seems to just be a 51% attack that you do in secret -- not very likely. The very premise of "don't communicate your bitcoin find to other miners" makes no sense, as your bitcoins are only bitcoins (and are only redeemable) if they are in the public blockchain.

the point of the article is that they release their valid nonce with a delay, so they have a head start for the next block, so they have a larger chance of finding the next block and so one...

But indeed, it is almost impossible to keep it as a secret: all other pools will notice it!

[CMMPro]

It's actually not 20 articles...it's one article being stupidly repeated over and over in different ways.

No matter how hard they try to push this garbage down our throats it doesn't make this fantasy story any more plausible.

[oakpacific]

According to what I have collected, the article seems to be based on an assumption of Satoshi's assumption, while the assumed assumption is actually Satoshi's conclusion, that the network is safe as long as there are more honest miners than dishonest ones, yet this is not something assumed to be known to a miner in Satoshi's paper, which is the case in this article.

[goxed]

I don't claim to know the technical details of why the article in the OP doesn't work, although I've seen lots of people talking about that in the past.

Can somebody shed some light? Why won't that "selfish miner" strategy work?

I haven't looked in detail, but the idea seems to just be a 51% attack that you do in secret -- not very likely. The very premise of "don't communicate your bitcoin find to other miners" makes no sense, as your bitcoins are only bitcoins (and are only redeemable) if they are in the public blockchain.

the point of the article is that they release their valid nonce with a delay, so they have a head start for the next block, so they have a larger chance of finding the next block and so one...

But indeed, it is almost impossible to keep it as a secret: all other pools will notice it!

I think it will work to the benefit of a small pool during a  very good streak of luck since they can put some extra effort immediately after the streak ends, by keeping the chain private for sometime.
Anyways selfish miners employ pool-hopping already I read the paper cursorily and it looks like an academic exercise because it's difficult to model luck and variation.

[redwraith]

Yes, if you are at all familiar with market psychology, you would know that very often supposed bad news causes the market to react in exactly the opposite of what you would expect.  You saw that most recently with the Silk Road bust and your seeing it now with the supposed "bitcoin is broken" theme.  In fact, many people in the stock markets of the world measure market sentiment and try to buy when people are most pessimistic and sell when optimism is high.  Buy when blood is flowing in the streets, in other words.

[im3w1l]

The most important point I think is the sybil attack. The selfish miners create a shitload of dummy miners. If the selfish miners have found one block, and then someone else finds another block, the selfish use their enormous amounts of dummy miners to ensure that their chain propagates faster, and becomes the most popular, even though it is released (just slightly) after the other block. Without this attack that means they win even though they "should" lose the race, the attack doesn't work.

[freequant]

This time's rally is driven by Chinese, and whoever spread the FUD this time was a bit too western centric and it didn't manage to spread the FUD in China. FUD fail. FUDster can now watch the price keep going up and bite his cheeks for selling everything.

[ronaldlee0917]

This time's rally is driven by Chinese, and whoever spread the FUD this time was a bit too western centric and it didn't manage to spread the FUD in China. FUD fail. FUDster can now watch the price keep going up and bite his cheeks for selling everything.

Agreed.
If the news somehow hit CCTV, no one could imagine what would happen....

[goxed]

This time's rally is driven by Chinese, and whoever spread the FUD this time was a bit too western centric and it didn't manage to spread the FUD in China. FUD fail. FUDster can now watch the price keep going up and bite his cheeks for selling everything.

Hmm, so one theory could be this guy who published the article, was paid for by someone with deep pockets to buy in.

[BitcoinAshley]

This time's rally is driven by Chinese, and whoever spread the FUD this time was a bit too western centric and it didn't manage to spread the FUD in China. FUD fail. FUDster can now watch the price keep going up and bite his cheeks for selling everything.

Hmm, so one theory could be this guy who published the article, was paid for by someone with deep pockets to buy in.

Chances are that it was just a sterile academic trying to make a name for himself.

If there's one thing I've learned - it's that paid shills do exist on the internet and in academic circles, and in significant number, as has been proven by multiple FOIA requests and leaked documents. But on the other hand, the supply of "useful idiots" is unimaginably greater! So the chances that these academics were actually paid to spread FUD is incredibly small. They were just like "Hey let's write about this attack on Bitcoin" without realizing that it has already been discussed and dismissed, 3 years ago, and even with its infeasibility, changes are continually being considered for future releases (and for miners themselves) that even further diminish its feasibility.

But really, it's amazing how many people read the article, believed it at face value without any further research, and are now quoting the article's introductory paragraph on ZH comments as if it is gospel and an eternal "debunk" of all things bitcoin. I would think these people should have learned their "Don't believe everything you read on the internet" lesson the first time they fell for an Onion article...

[Le Happy Merchant]

The reason the price hasn't dropped is because after ~4.5 this scenario has not yet developed even though it would have been intensely profitable.

If it was going to happen, it should have already. Also, the price will react accordingly if/when this actually starts to occur.

[darkmule]

Chances are that it was just a sterile academic trying to make a name for himself.

Well, if you can easily see that the contents of the media articles are at best shallow and at worst utter bullshit, you shouldn't be so quick to accept their characterizations of the researchers themselves at face value.  Even some people here are working on implementing and testing how such an attack would work and (presumably) how to respond to it if it did.

The reason this isn't a huge problem (and why it hasn't affected price) isn't that it doesn't exist, but that if anyone did try to do it they'd a) be caught pretty quickly and b) there would be a rapid response.  Part of why there'd be a rapid response is that people are poking at it looking for potential attacks and (one hopes) having countermeasures already in place if they're ever used.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Dumb economists ignore human action and incentives. Just want to model everything. You have to look at social effects, too, because Bitcoin is a community. Even if the selfish miner attack did somehow work, people would just boycott it and/or move to a new fork. Social behavior isn't in this man-child's model.

[DoomDumas]

Media FUD.  
The point is this is known an not worth a worry for now..

Medias, having no more SR fud to spread about Bitcoin, they just jumped in on something else that can make a show, as they are all in the business for making money selling pub, so they try to spread spectacular news, to bring reader to their pub.. Most of them, most of the time have facts wrong, errors in numbers/quantities, and true journalistic news a quite rare today.. not so much research, verification.  

IMO, the price rise is just the begining of a long long run up, as more peoples understand how much Bitcoin is a revolution, comparable to many other technological revolution, and imo it's an understatement.

[DoomDumas]

Yes, if you are at all familiar with market psychology, you would know that very often supposed bad news causes the market to react in exactly the opposite of what you would expect.  You saw that most recently with the Silk Road bust and your seeing it now with the supposed "bitcoin is broken" theme.  In fact, many people in the stock markets of the world measure market sentiment and try to buy when people are most pessimistic and sell when optimism is high.  Buy when blood is flowing in the streets, in other words.

True market tends to react the opposite of what would be expected about news.. But for the SR bust, I think it was a good thing for Bitcoin, as media now cant associate Bitcoin to drug in direct relation.  This SR bust just prove Bitcoin are way cleaner than it was described by so many article.