Transactions Withholding Attack

[MoonShadow]

Honestly, no one really gives a shit, Anonymint.

I do.

I judge AnonyMints intellect not by the above post because as they say talk is cheep but by the quality of his work. His economic writings are profound. (See my post titled Economic Devastation)

There is no denying he is one smart dude.

I don't deny that he is smart, but he is still out of his depth here.  Really, no one cares what his credentials might be, true or false, only his arguments matter here.  So far, I find his arguments sorely lacking in substance or merit.  His economic writings are bullshit.

[1714794996]

1714794996

[1714794996]

1714794996

[1714794996]

1714794996

[CoinCube]

I don't deny that he is smart, but he is still out of his depth here.  Really, no one cares what his credentials might be, true or false, only his arguments matter here.  So far, I find his arguments sorely lacking in substance or merit.  His economic writings are bullshit.

Why do you think they are bullshit? I read them multiple times and I came to the opposite conclusion.

Seems to me that he is not out of his league at all in fact I think he is holding his own rather well.

[Rassah]

I know of at least one 160 IQ person and he is smarter than me. You don't even demonstrate Mensa 132 level, which I am above.

doesnt actually prove you have a high IQ, it just proves that you are a racist with a possible eugenist streak.

Again you demonstrate very low comprehension skills. You didn't discern that in the linked post I was presenting links from James A Donald, not my own views.

Not your own views? And I quote,

Alex is often over dramatic and sensationalizes everything, as well he is often too loose on the facts.

Nevertheless, he is very much correct in what he said in this video, in terms of the USA being dumbed down, with low IQ races, violent races, eugenics, and feminism then mind programmed into zombie society of feminine "males" and asexual females.

How can you say that the views that some races have low IQ and are predisposed to violence are views you agree with, but which at the same time are not yours? You either agree and hold the same views, or disagree and hold opposite ones.

And FYI, if you like logicky computery stuff, I started programming as soon as I got my first computer (BASIC on Tandy 1000), then on TI graphing calculators, then in school classes, where my final project surpassed my teacher's level of understanding. I then got a job doing software development and debugging in Java, C++, and PHP as soon as I turned 18. My last programming position was as the IT manager and project developer of McDonald's Corporation's east coast region, until the dot com bubble burst, my job was outsourced, and, seeing the looming threat of India, I switched to finance. I never really stopped programming though, mostly doing it in Second Life through my finance degree, and Perl for some personal projects more recently. Besides programming I also own a MAGLEV "company" that owns a few linear motor and magnetic levitation patents, which I am still improving with mechanical and electrical engineering skills. I don't have an affinity for language arts. It's just something I do along with my other hobbies, which even include flying planes and practicing Kendo and Iaido (Japanese sword based martial arts; hoping finally for black belt on the test this January).
By the way, I don't remember what I got on my SATs. It was something between 1,200 and 1,400, but I didn't care because it was a somewhat dark time of my life and I didn't plan on going to college then anyway. But I did nearly max out my GMAT scores, and got the highest score possible on the composition and writing comprehension section. In this case, knowing so many languages, and thus the roots, meanings, and alternatives to many words, did help. GMAT, if you don't know, is a Master's level SAT. And don't let the M for Management fool you, the math in it gets ridiculously difficult.

And, despite all this, I really don't care if you think I am a moron, a liar, or whatever else you might think of me. You are not that important. All my history is not that important, either. Frankly, I never told this to anyone, since I'm not one to brag (but since you started it, I figured it might be fun). Because, unlike you, I don't think who I am, or what I did or do, is anywhere as important on an anonymous forum as what you actually say, what you contribute, and how cordial you are when you are doing it. Reputation is everything, and your shit-brown Ignore button doesn't bode well for you.

[Rassah]

Why do you think they are bullshit? I read them multiple times and I came to the opposite conclusion.

I can't speak for MoonShadow, but for me they seemed like a combination of "difficult to digest" with "mediocre conclusions." Once I managed to process what his words were trying to say, the thing he was actually saying wasn't all that impressive, which only made it all that much more disappointing. Plus he still made some claims I find questionable. This is about his economic writings though.

Seems to me that he is not out of his league at all in fact I think he is holding his own rather well.

He may not be out of his league in economics, but you can't become and expert in economics, and then just claim that you are an expert in Bitcoin. The technology, and the way bitcoin actually works, is clearly out of his league. But instead of recognizing that, taking other's information into consideration, and actually learning about it, he seems convinced that, because he is so smart and is an expert in one field, that he is an expert in Bitcoin and understands it better after two weeks than the people who have discussed it for over two years. Note, this is the same mistake that a lot of economists have been making when they were writing news articles bashing Bitcoin.

[CoinCube]

Why do you think they are bullshit? I read them multiple times and I came to the opposite conclusion.

I can't speak for MoonShadow, but for me they seemed like a combination of "difficult to digest" with "mediocre conclusions." Once I managed to process what his words were trying to say, the thing he was actually saying wasn't all that impressive.

I would advise reading it again (the posts on economics) since we are talking about IQ in this thread I was a Mensa member for 3 years before letting my membership expire. Despite that I think I had to read them both four or five times. I absolutely agree that they are very Difficult to digest.

I think much of the anger directed at AnonyMint is because he is challenging something people cherish Bitcoin.
Honestly, however, nothing any of us say or do in this forum will change what happens with bitcoin. Bitcoin will succeed or fail based on its merits.

The only impact this forum has is to help us few individuals who bother to read it make wise choices.

[AnonyMint]

Perhaps it is because none of you took a real IQ test:

http://unheresy.com/Essence%20of%20Genius.html

http://www.sigmasociety.com/sigma_teste/sigma_teste_eng.asp

Many IQ tests only test for example how fast your brain can process some limited pattern matching algorithms. E.g. raven's matrices. I won't be the fastest at any particular prewired algorithm (although I am fast enough to make it to Mensa level), yet what I am very good at is new algorithms. The above test is going to measure my IQ more accurately.

As demonstrated in this thread, on creativity and algorithms my IQ may even exceed the 160 IQ genius I am thinking of: Eric S Raymond. He is clearly superior to me in the language arts. That is not hard to do, I never tried to develop my language arts and even mostly ignored it by choice.

My language processing engine can not keep up with my "visual mathematics" (creativity, logic, and algorithms) brain which is why you will dropped words, numerous typos, and grammatical errors. I simply don't want to slow down for that linear output stream. Boring.

"People who boast about their IQ's are losers" - Stephen Hawking

I wasn't boasting. You quoted me out-of-context. Rassah first boasted that he had 160 IQ and then that spawned a discussion about what 160 IQ would really entail.

The lack of reading comprehension here is stifling.

Even further upthread I corrected someone who said I claimed to have 160 IQ and said I never claimed that and that my IQ was probably some where between 125 and 150 and that IQ measurements don't capture all aspect of intelligence.

So you have just proven that either you didn't read the thread entirely or that you are not capable to always remember everything you read.

[AnonyMint]

I know of at least one 160 IQ person and he is smarter than me. You don't even demonstrate Mensa 132 level, which I am above.

doesnt actually prove you have a high IQ, it just proves that you are a racist with a possible eugenist streak.

Again you demonstrate very low comprehension skills. You didn't discern that in the linked post I was presenting links from James A Donald, not my own views.

Not your own views? And I quote,

Alex is often over dramatic and sensationalizes everything, as well he is often too loose on the facts.

Nevertheless, he is very much correct in what he said in this video, in terms of the USA being dumbed down, with low IQ races, violent races, eugenics, and feminism then mind programmed into zombie society of feminine "males" and asexual females.

How can you say that the views that some races have low IQ and are predisposed to violence are views you agree with, but which at the same time are not yours? You either agree and hold the same views, or disagree and hold opposite ones.

The average IQ of blacks and American natives (other than those who migrated from Europe, e.g. the 5% Cherokee of which I am) is in fact lower than whites.

Also they commit more violence.

That is undeniable fact. It doesn't mean I agree with James' racism. Note the difference between discriminating illogically on race and forming logical decisions about race based in fact.

I would not assume every black man is not intelligent. I would look at each person individually. Yet it is a fact, that if you want to drive socialism, then filling up the country with lower IQ races is a reasonable strategy.

In fact, I grew up in inner-city Baton Rouge and New Orleans and was in schools where my sister and I were the only white kids, and my hair was always oily because every student wanted to feel my fine hair as they had never touched a white person before. I watched my cousin get her ear lopped off by a black attacker on the porch of my grandmother's house, and I couldn't get outside to help because I was looking through the bedroom window. So to accuse me of being rascist is ludicrous. I have had innumerable friends of all races.

So my view is much more nuanced than James' and is closer to Eric S Raymond's views on racism.

How you conflate my objectivism and not conflating issues that most people conflate, to eugenics is another example of dumb or insolent people conflating everything.

I wrote an email to the guy who claims to have the highest IQ ever measured and told him that sterilizing the low IQ as he was proposing would be a disaster, for numerous reasons including but not limited to:

1. knowledge is not exclusively generated by those who inherit from high IQ parents
2. IQ is not a sole determinant of how mankind remains resilient.
3. Knowledge anneals from accretive processes which are path dependent and chaotic, i.e. non-deterministic and serendipity
4. Lopping off the lower half of the IQ bell curve would create a new bell curve in the upper half and shift the same conceptual issues to it.
5. IQ is not the sole determinant of intelligence, which is a more diverse phenomenon than 'g'.
6. IQ is not the only way humans adapt to challenges.

And FYI, if you like logicky computery stuff, I started programming as soon as I got my first computer (BASIC on Tandy 1000), then on TI graphing calculators, then in school classes, where my final project surpassed my teacher's level of understanding. I then got a job doing software development and debugging in Java, C++, and PHP as soon as I turned 18. My last programming position was as the IT manager and project developer of McDonald's Corporation's east coast region, until the dot com bubble burst, my job was outsourced, and, seeing the looming threat of India, I switched to finance. I never really stopped programming though, mostly doing it in Second Life through my finance degree, and Perl for some personal projects more recently.

It is difficult to discern from that short description your level of expertise. Please I don't want to turn this thread into a discussion that is way off-topic.

Besides programming I also own a MAGLEV "company" that owns a few linear motor and magnetic levitation patents, which I am still improving with mechanical and electrical engineering skills. I don't have an affinity for language arts. It's just something I do along with my other hobbies, which even include flying planes and practicing Kendo and Iaido (Japanese sword based martial arts; hoping finally for black belt on the test this January).
By the way, I don't remember what I got on my SATs. It was something between 1,200 and 1,400, but I didn't care because it was a somewhat dark time of my life and I didn't plan on going to college then anyway. But I did nearly max out my GMAT scores, and got the highest score possible on the composition and writing comprehension section. In this case, knowing so many languages, and thus the roots, meanings, and alternatives to many words, did help. GMAT, if you don't know, is a Master's level SAT. And don't let the M for Management fool you, the math in it gets ridiculously difficult.

Of course there is so much material out there to learn, perhaps only a polymath can really consume any where close to a majority of it.

And, despite all this, I really don't care if you think I am a moron, a liar, or whatever else you might think of me. You are not that important. All my history is not that important, either. Frankly, I never told this to anyone, since I'm not one to brag (but since you started it, I figured it might be fun). Because, unlike you, I don't think who I am, or what I did or do, is anywhere as important on an anonymous forum as what you actually say, what you contribute, and how cordial you are when you are doing it. Reputation is everything, and your shit-brown Ignore button doesn't bode well for you.

I still can't correlate your description of your abilities to your entire lack of comprehension of this thread.

However, there is a very plausible explanation. Your feeling of animosity towards me (or anyone who challenges Bitcoin your God) shut down your desire to read and consider it carefully. You were predisposed to flying off the handle and prejudging it, because you've encountered so many crackpots over the years in various forums, etc.

It could also my slacker style of communication where I don't carefully construct my prose and OP to make it more comprehensible in small morsels.

[Buffer Overflow]

So you have just proven that either you didn't read the thread entirely or that you are not capable to always remember everything you read.

That's because my IQ is only a low 63.

Even that low I understand how the blockchain works. You don't.

[AnonyMint]

Why do you think they are bullshit? I read them multiple times and I came to the opposite conclusion.

I can't speak for MoonShadow, but for me they seemed like a combination of "difficult to digest" with "mediocre conclusions." Once I managed to process what his words were trying to say, the thing he was actually saying wasn't all that impressive, which only made it all that much more disappointing. Plus he still made some claims I find questionable. This is about his economic writings though.

Economics is inherently difficult to falsify thus contention can reign.

His economic writings are bullshit.

Economists can say what ever they want, because it is very difficult to prove them wrong in a way that shuts them up. They will always find believers for their snake oil.

Yet Bitcoin is different...

Seems to me that he is not out of his league at all in fact I think he is holding his own rather well.

He may not be out of his league in economics, but you can't become and expert in economics, and then just claim that you are an expert in Bitcoin. The technology, and the way bitcoin actually works, is clearly out of his league. But instead of recognizing that, taking other's information into consideration, and actually learning about it, he seems convinced that, because he is so smart and is an expert in one field, that he is an expert in Bitcoin and understands it better after two weeks than the people who have discussed it for over two years. Note, this is the same mistake that a lot of economists have been making when they were writing news articles bashing Bitcoin.

Two weeks? Six months at least.

And it doesn't matter what you think. The proof will be clear soon.

[AnonyMint]

Sorry for the delay in replying to this sincere post. I got inundated with noise as you can surely see above.

I haven't gone through the entire thread but here's my provisional view on it anyway:

The kind of attack described seems plausible, but only if there's no mechanism for checking if the blocks being propagated over the network actually confirm transaction requests that were previously propagated over the distributed memory pool. Anonymint, your theory seems to assume that there are unsafe levels of trust between nodes. This is my impression of how it goes:


-a node has transaction requests X, Y, and Z waiting in its copy of the queue.
-It then asynchronously receives a block with X and Y on it, but not Z (maybe the fee was a bit low for that one). Everything seems OK according to the node, so it accepts the block and helps propagate it by sending it to any connected peers that might not already have a copy.
-the node then asynchronously receives more transaction requests: U, V and W, which it adds to its local copy of the memory queue.
-the node then receives an "Amazon block" which claims to confirm some strange transactions: Q, R, S, T, in addition to the known ones: U, V, and W. Depending on the exact set of rules that the node is following, maybe it will provisionally accept the block if it forms part of the longest known chain, but it's deemed suspicious so the node doesn't forward it onwards to its peers. This lack of forwarding should mean that strange blocks tend to get orphaned, and this protects against man-in-the-middle attacks. On average, blocks that play by the majority's rules are able to propagate further and faster throughout the network, enabling a longer chain to build on each.

Nice try, but this is technically incorrect.

The orphan rate only affects a very tiny % of the blocks found by necessity otherwise the network would diverge into forks.

If you are arguing that Amazon doesn't have the connectivity to propagate its blocks to pools where the hash rate is concentrated, I think not many would agree with you.

Thus most of the time Amazon's (the cartel's) blocks will propagate.

If you said Bitcoin would alter the protocol to refuse to process Amazon's customers payments by refusing Amazon's blocks (any block where they hadn't seen already many or most of the transactions in the block), I think it would harm Bitcoin immensely. The crypto-currency needs to be all inclusive otherwise the potential for strong competitors and forking arise. The protection against this attack is simple! Zero transaction fees and perpetual coin rewards. So simple.

Who wouldn't love a zero transaction fee coin! The main use of Bitcoin other than speculation is money transfers.

The rest of what you wrote thus doesn't apply.

See this is yet another example of why people think I don't understand, when in fact their technical knowledge is too limited to realize that I understand and they have missed something that causes them to be overconfident in their analysis.

The proof in the real world will come soon. Enough of this talk!

[murraypaul]

It is not amazing this low IQ idiot continues to miss the points that were made upthread.

Indeed it is
I'm guessing you won't see the humour in that, though

[AnonyMint]

Sorry for the delay in replying to this sincere post. I got inundated with noise as you can surely see above.

I haven't gone through the entire thread but here's my provisional view on it anyway:

The kind of attack described seems plausible, but only if there's no mechanism for checking if the blocks being propagated over the network actually confirm transaction requests that were previously propagated over the distributed memory pool. Anonymint, your theory seems to assume that there are unsafe levels of trust between nodes. This is my impression of how it goes:


-a node has transaction requests X, Y, and Z waiting in its copy of the queue.
-It then asynchronously receives a block with X and Y on it, but not Z (maybe the fee was a bit low for that one). Everything seems OK according to the node, so it accepts the block and helps propagate it by sending it to any connected peers that might not already have a copy.
-the node then asynchronously receives more transaction requests: U, V and W, which it adds to its local copy of the memory queue.
-the node then receives an "Amazon block" which claims to confirm some strange transactions: Q, R, S, T, in addition to the known ones: U, V, and W. Depending on the exact set of rules that the node is following, maybe it will provisionally accept the block if it forms part of the longest known chain, but it's deemed suspicious so the node doesn't forward it onwards to its peers. This lack of forwarding should mean that strange blocks tend to get orphaned, and this protects against man-in-the-middle attacks. On average, blocks that play by the majority's rules are able to propagate further and faster throughout the network, enabling a longer chain to build on each.

Nice try, but this is technically incorrect.

The orphan rate only affects a very tiny % of the blocks found by necessity otherwise the network would diverge into forks.

If you are arguing that Amazon doesn't have the connectivity to propagate its blocks to pools where the hash rate is concentrated, I think not many would agree with you.

Thus most of the time Amazon's (the cartel's) blocks will propagate.

If you said Bitcoin would alter the protocol to refuse to process Amazon's customers payments by refusing Amazon's blocks (any block where they hadn't seen already many or most of the transactions in the block), I think it would harm Bitcoin immensely. The crypto-currency needs to be all inclusive otherwise the potential for strong competitors and forking arise. The protection against this attack is simple! Zero transaction fees and perpetual coin rewards. So simple.

Who wouldn't love a zero transaction fee coin! The main use of Bitcoin other than speculation is money transfers.

The rest of what you wrote thus doesn't apply.

See this is yet another example of why people think I don't understand, when in fact their technical knowledge is too limited to realize that I understand and they have missed something that causes them to be overconfident in their analysis.

The proof in the real world will come soon. Enough of this talk!

I expounded on this:

3. You claim to defeat my Transactions Withholding Attack, by blacklisting those who send blocks with transactions that were not recently seen by all miners. I retorted against this recently. This centralizes the network (all for one and one for all outcome) by requiring every miner to be responsible for the incoming network connectivity of other miners. And it centralizes the network in other ways, such it can't tolerate a temporary partitioning of the network due to connectivity outages.

[MoonShadow]

Why do you think they are bullshit? I read them multiple times and I came to the opposite conclusion.

I can't speak for MoonShadow, but for me they seemed like a combination of "difficult to digest" with "mediocre conclusions." Once I managed to process what his words were trying to say, the thing he was actually saying wasn't all that impressive, which only made it all that much more disappointing. Plus he still made some claims I find questionable. This is about his economic writings though.

Seems to me that he is not out of his league at all in fact I think he is holding his own rather well.

He may not be out of his league in economics, but you can't become and expert in economics, and then just claim that you are an expert in Bitcoin. The technology, and the way bitcoin actually works, is clearly out of his league. But instead of recognizing that, taking other's information into consideration, and actually learning about it, he seems convinced that, because he is so smart and is an expert in one field, that he is an expert in Bitcoin and understands it better after two weeks than the people who have discussed it for over two years. Note, this is the same mistake that a lot of economists have been making when they were writing news articles bashing Bitcoin.

AnonyMint is not out of his league in economics.  That is to say, that he is obviously capable of understanding, and seems to have some kind of professional education in the topic.  However, he spends a great deal of time restating commonly held economic myths in a somewhat novel way.  It seems to me that he is either self-taught and young, or his professional education in Economics is incomplete.  He understands it like a promising student. 

That said, I agree with Rassah on his overall assessment.  Even mastery of Economics (which AnonyMint has not acheived, imo) is not enough to understand Bitcoin.  It's not even close.  I had to learn a great deal about subjects that I was little better than a layman; including but not limited to, cryptography and other high math, psychology and programming.  I am far from a master of these topics even now, but I am far better than a layman in each; and at a minimum understand the roles they play in Bitcoin.  Also, I was here when Satoshi was still posting.  I know some other things that aren't even mentioned in the white paper regarding security, some that are already in the main client, others that are not; that complicate (although don't render impossible) the execution of several general methods of attacking the blockchain or the network.  I know, personally, that Satoshi foresaw much more than most of us understood.  Bitcoin's elegant design was not luck.  Personally, I came to the conclusion that the Satoshi on this forum was only a front man for a team of pros; because even thought a true polymath could do this, he often had some rather large delays between the asking of hard questions and their associated responses, implying to me that he was consulting someone out of view.  Redardless, Satoshi (& company) did not expect that mining nodes would remain fair and trustworthy with one another.  He/She/They fully expected that some major nodes would try to game the system to their own advantage, and that they can be expected some measure of success; but since these activities can be detected over time, that those nodes would be retaliated against in various ways.  This is one reason that I, personally, have real doubts that Proof of Stake has any real future in cryptocurrency, since staking by it's nature assumes that nodes with high stakes won't turn malicious, and thus there is some level of trust placed on those 'supernodes'.  Bitcoin does not have supernodes.

And it's in the retaliation aspect, not his analysis of (limited in scope) economic incentives that his attack vector collapses.  He makes too many assumptions about how other nodes will respond.  He assumes that all (non-negligible) nodes will react in what he considers to be the highest profit seeking manner; thus completely ignoring the fact that many nodes have economic incentives to resist the formation of a cartel, that many nodes have economic incentives to try to outcompete and otherwise undermine the primary cartel membership (in this case Amazon, and because Amazon has real competitors, just not direct ones) and that many nodes have no significant economic incentive in either case, but do have a vested interest in the network's 'status quo'.  While he can present his attack, he doesn't respond to objections to his attack with any arguments, only insults and implications that he has already addressed such objections earlier.  I've read the thread, he's done no such thing; at least not in a rational and non-hostile manner.  Many of us have grown tired of his childish trolling masked as a somewhat intellectual debate.

[AnonyMint]

Also, I was here when Satoshi was still posting.  I know some other things that aren't even mentioned in the white paper regarding security, some that are already in the main client, others that are not; that complicate (although don't render impossible) the execution of several general methods of attacking the blockchain or the network.  I know, personally, that Satoshi foresaw much more than most of us understood.  Bitcoin's elegant design was not luck.  Personally, I came to the conclusion that the Satoshi on this forum was only a front man for a team of pros; because even thought a true polymath could do this, he often had some rather large delays between the asking of hard questions and their associated responses, implying to me that he was consulting someone out of view.

I am glad you noticed he was delaying replies. That was also one of the factors I used to determine he was not likely one person.

He makes too many assumptions about how other nodes will respond.

Exactly the opposite. I make far fewer assumptions about the choices of nodes. See the Cracking the Code thread in the Bitcoin discussion subforum where they assume that 100% of the nodes will run a centralized designed client software. And where they assume that the convergence of nodes will be to the attacked chain. I make no assumptions. I call it a risk.

Since when did 100% become more likely than a range of possibilities? That defies a fundamental comprehension of entropy, chaos and nature.

He assumes that all (non-negligible) nodes will react in what he considers to be the highest profit seeking manner; thus completely ignoring the fact that many nodes have economic incentives to resist the formation of a cartel,

Rather I assume that miners can't continue if their electricity costs more than the income they receive. That seems to be a basic accepted economic fact.

And he will again I am sure try to argue the same non-point he made upthread, which I refuted already upthread. Not every miner is running cheaper electricity (i.e. getting it for lower cost by extracting heat, etc), and those who aren't will be first to go bankrupt. Then later when only those with the cheapest electricity are still mining, then ditto them. Don't assume that Amazon can't run the same efficiencies. And then my point applies which is they drive the difficulty higher, but they parasite their % of the transactions.

MoonShadow continues to miss the point that if the cartel can withhold its share of the transactions for the mining, while factoring this into its profit on mining, then the rest of the miners have to compete with a higher difficulty yet they don't receive the extra income for doing so. Thus assuming Amazon can run their mining at the same efficiency as other miners, those other miners will be mining at a return-on-investment loss w.r.t. to their hardware and electricity costs. MoonShadow assumes that some miners can leverage clever means to obtain net lower cost energy that Amazon (the cartel) would not be able to. The only way this could be true is if that energy was obtained in low economy-of-scale that would be too small for Amazon to pursue, e.g. searching out small streams for micro-hydropower. So by definition, these small economies-of-scale wouldn't comprise most of the mining. If anything, ASICs are raising the economies-of-scale.

He still won't understand that basic math. So he will repeat his same non-point.

that many nodes have economic incentives to try to outcompete and otherwise undermine the primary cartel membership (in this case Amazon, and because Amazon has real competitors, just not direct ones) and that many nodes have no significant economic incentive in either case, but do have a vested interest in the network's 'status quo'.

Noise sounds good. But is completely devoid of relevant information content. I will not explain.

I don't deny that he is smart, but he is still out of his depth here.  Really, no one cares what his credentials might be, true or false, only his arguments matter here.  So far, I find his arguments sorely lacking in substance or merit.  His economic writings are bullshit.

Why do you think they are bullshit? I read them multiple times and I came to the opposite conclusion.

Seems to me that he is not out of his league at all in fact I think he is holding his own rather well.

What sources did you use to evaluate the correctness of his assertions? Are you yourself an expert in the field?

He seems to me to be a very intelligent crackpot (although a very intelligent troll is also a possibility). When challenged he reverts to attacking the person challenging him personally and/or saying that he's already addressed the issue even though he hasn't (often along with linking to long diatribes he has written in the past which don't address the issue which he is being challenged on).

If I am so out-of-my league then how come I keep dissecting the technical analysis within minutes of reading a white paper:

Here I identified the flaws in BitShares proof-of-stake proposal within 5 minutes:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=354573.msg3805394#msg3805394

Here I showed the P2Pool is vulnerable to a share withholding attack:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339902.msg3715641#msg3715641

Here I solved the selfish-mining problem that has been plastered all over the news lately:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2013/11/09/no-you-dint/#comment-1136318528

CoinCube my suggestion is shut up. Because if they can't turn you against me, I expect they will then try to discredit you.

The reason I don't repeat what is written already upthread is because fact is that most people can't process a complex model in their mind. So they try to section off parts of the model and address it piecemeal. This is what the continued postings have been about. And that is why they can't understand the model.

And it doesn't matter how much of my time they waste, they will never get the model until they are ready to.

I WILL NOT ALLOW THEM TO FILIBUSTER MY PROGRAMMING TIME ANY MORE.

THERE WILL BE NO MORE REPLIES FROM ME IN THIS THREAD.

It is time to kick ass. Enough talk.

Edit: anth0ny, is this you acting like an inane fool over at hackingdistributed?

http://hackingdistributed.com/2013/11/25/block-propagation-speeds/#comment-1140084768

...

P.S. Please refrain from changing your user identity or posting multiple times under different names. The post above, which is currently shown as coming from "Guest", was posted under the name "Anthony."

But but but, the Amazon Cartel is going to deploy a yottaflop mining core to capture a percentage of txn fees! REFUTED REFUTED REFUTED!

And we will continue to have idiots who don't understand the profit model of a cartel, which was clearly explained in the thread.

[Rassah]

I think much of the anger directed at AnonyMint is because he is challenging something people cherish Bitcoin.

A lot of people do that. None of their Ignore buttons are so dark. No, the reason for so much anger is because Anonymint rehashes the old stuff that was discussed, debated, and settles two+ years ago, then when people point out to him that this stuff is no longer an issue, or that he doesn't understand something and that his claims are false, he resorts to telling people how he is so very smart and that everyone should listen to him, and that anyone who points out the flaws in his claims is stupid. Then it just gets worse, when any new fault that people find in his claims are just replied to with links that don't really lead anywhere or say anything othen than the original claim being disputed.

In short, AnonyMint is an uninformed egotistical douchebag. That's why the hate.

And FYI,

I wasn't boasting. You quoted me out-of-context. Rassah first boasted that he had 160 IQ and then that spawned a discussion about what 160 IQ would really entail.

The ONLY reason I even mentioned my IQ to begin with was because when AnonyMint first started posting, and then first started to get counterarguments explaining to him that he may be wrong, he was the one who brought up the whole "I am so smart, and I know people with high IQ, and I am so smart, and you are wrong" shtick. The first time I mentioned anything about IQ was in a reply to him, saying, "btw, you're not the only one with a high IQ here, *hint-hint*  "

[Rassah]

However, there is a very plausible explanation. Your feeling of animosity towards me (or anyone who challenges Bitcoin your God) shut down your desire to read and consider it carefully. You were predisposed to flying off the handle and prejudging it, because you've encountered so many crackpots over the years in various forums, etc.

Or it could simply be because your claims were flawed, I, knowing the ins and outs of bitcoin, understood that you're wrong, but every time I try to come up with examples to demonstrate why you are wrong, you shut them down with either claims that what I point out has already been discussed (it wasn't), links to other posts that repeat the same thing I'm claiming is wrong, or just outright adhominem attacks. And I'm not the only one, either.

[MoonShadow]

Cutting out noise to address a particular point.

He makes too many assumptions about how other nodes will respond.

Exactly the opposite. I make far fewer assumptions about the choices of nodes. See the Cracking the Code thread in the Bitcoin discussion subforum where they assume that 100% of the nodes will run a centralized designed client software. And where they assume that the convergence of nodes will be to the attacked chain. I make no assumptions. I call it a risk.

Since when did 100% become more likely than a range of possibilities? That defies a fundamental comprehension of entropy, chaos and nature.

He assumes that all (non-negligible) nodes will react in what he considers to be the highest profit seeking manner; thus completely ignoring the fact that many nodes have economic incentives to resist the formation of a cartel,

Rather I assume that miners can't continue if their electricity costs more than the income they receive. That seems to be a basic accepted economic fact.

Except that I demostrated several reasons why that is not an economic fact; and that it's long been understood that there will be institutions willing to mine zero margin or less for other economic reasons.  One of which I actually do, wchich is use the heat for zone heating in winter (roughly 15% of the network hash power is "other unknown" which I would be part of) another being the competing cartels (Walmart&McDonalds versus Target & Burger King) mining for major players in competing industries, for which finance is not tehir primary business, but is already a cost center.

that many nodes have economic incentives to try to outcompete and otherwise undermine the primary cartel membership (in this case Amazon, and because Amazon has real competitors, just not direct ones) and that many nodes have no significant economic incentive in either case, but do have a vested interest in the network's 'status quo'.

Noise sounds good. But is completely devoid of relevant information content. I will not explain.

And that is the point Rassah & I have been making.  You don't respond to critisisms of your theory.  If you can't manage my objections to your theory, then you don't have a theory.

[Rassah]

Except that I demostrated several reasons why that is not an economic fact; and that it's long been understood that there will be institutions willing to mine zero margin or less for other economic reasons.  One of which I actually do, wchich is use the heat for zone heating in winter (roughly 15% of the network hash power is "other unknown" which I would be part of) another being the competing cartels (Walmart&McDonalds versus Target & Burger King) mining for major players in competing industries, for which finance is not tehir primary business, but is already a cost center.

Ignoring Mr. Mint's concerns for a bit, I woonder, do you, or others, believe that part of the mining sincentive will also be for wealthy establishments to simply secure their wealth? E.G. if I am rich without Bitcoin, I pay large fees to my bank and security to keep my money, gold, and other wealth safe. If I am rich with bitcoin (or even if I am a wealthy corporation that has a lot of bitcoin) and want to hedge against mining attacks and help maintain the status quo, I pay to run my own mining hardware, even if it is a small portion of the whole network, and even if I have to do it at a loss.

I'm sure we discussed this point two+ years ago, and likely every year this discussion has come up since, but what are people's opinions on this, now that mining has moved from complex GPU rigs, to simple and compact ASIC appliances?

[ltc_foundry]

When AnonyMint isn't churning out god-tier code, acing trigonometry tests because the principal likes him, winning Pulitzer prizes for his groundbreaking blogspam or deigning to speak to us, does he spray his Fortress of Solitude with solid gold Casacius coins he spontaneously shit into existence from the sheer inertia of his own magnificence?

But but but, the Amazon Cartel is going to deploy a yottaflop mining core to capture a percentage of txn fees! REFUTED REFUTED REFUTED!

[MoonShadow]

Except that I demostrated several reasons why that is not an economic fact; and that it's long been understood that there will be institutions willing to mine zero margin or less for other economic reasons.  One of which I actually do, wchich is use the heat for zone heating in winter (roughly 15% of the network hash power is "other unknown" which I would be part of) another being the competing cartels (Walmart&McDonalds versus Target & Burger King) mining for major players in competing industries, for which finance is not tehir primary business, but is already a cost center.

Ignoring Mr. Mint's concerns for a bit, I woonder, do you, or others, believe that part of the mining sincentive will also be for wealthy establishments to simply secure their wealth? E.G. if I am rich without Bitcoin, I pay large fees to my bank and security to keep my money, gold, and other wealth safe. If I am rich with bitcoin (or even if I am a wealthy corporation that has a lot of bitcoin) and want to hedge against mining attacks and help maintain the status quo, I pay to run my own mining hardware, even if it is a small portion of the whole network, and even if I have to do it at a loss.

I'm sure we discussed this point two+ years ago, and likely every year this discussion has come up since, but what are people's opinions on this, now that mining has moved from complex GPU rigs, to simple and compact ASIC appliances?

Actually, we did discuss this exact thing in detail about two years ago, RAssah.  My short answer is, of course any very well heeled individual and/or bitcoin based finance institution is going to go to great lengths to secure their own miing operations.  For comparision, most consumer bank branches have very large, very expensive valut systems; even though in our modern digital age such an expense is no longer neccessary for their primary business.  Bitcoin 'banking' institutions are going to compete in many different ways, and touting their hashing capacity is as much a psycological benefit for an online bitcoin bank as a time-lock safety deposit box safe is for a brick & mortor institution.  Also, I expect such banks to compete by advertising their ability to offer free transactions.  One might be able to offer those free transactions because the bank itself has recepriprocity agreements with major retailers such as Walmart, or they might just e able to do so by sponoring some significant mining operations of their own, similar to my Walmart example.  While Walmart would do it to process their own "free" transactions at their own meatspace counters in a timely manner, actual bitcoin based financial institutions would do it as a benefit to their membership.  While free transactions can be sent by anyone, only a bank with their own mining under contract can promise that those same transactions will be processed for "free" within any time frame.  It thus becomes a comparative advantage over a bank that just offered basic bitcoin banking services, and didn't sponsor their own mining gear.

Bitcoin banks offering free transactions, for their own reasons, would by itself undermine AnonyMint's transactions withholding attack theory.  If numerous institutions are offering free transactions within their own limited scopes, then no cartel can develop with the premise that free transactions processing is an advantage that only a cartel member would have access to.