What timeframe would you give for the >50%attack to occur from this point in time?
When the coin rewards decline to near 0 roughly 2040ish, then my discovery is that the transaction fees rewards can not scale as a percentage of the commerce, because the transaction fee in comparative dollars would be much higher than fiat alternatives. Thus mining will be underfunded relative to the value of the Bitcoin economy to be gained by attacking it.
Even if transaction fees were scaled up (ignoring fiat alternatives or if I am mistaken about fee structure of fiat alternatives), if miners are funded significantly from transaction fees (and no longer primarily from coin rewards), then Bitcoin is subject to takeover by cartels due to the Transactions Withholding Attack (search the forum for it).
Thus the target date for Bitcoin to be taken over technically is 2040ish, perhaps 2033 earliest.
Realize it could be taken over much sooner than that by governments, since Bitcoin is not anonymous, they can attack the users with taxes, treble penalties, etc.. Rogue governments can do anything in crazy economic implosions, e.g. communist Wiemar Germany followed by Nazis, Stalin, China's purge of 57 million people, etc.. I believe such an economic implosion is coming globally after 2015. But I think the government has a more clever plan for takeover.
I believe Bitcoin will fail much sooner than that being a ponzi-pyramid-variant-bubble (no exact name for the scheme Bitcoin is, but it has NO INTRINSIC VALUE because transactions can't scale due to the concentration of ownership of the coin and the fact that the rich can't spend, they must cash out). This is covered in great detail in my posts, so if you want to dig into that, click my name and read posts in November. Basically I see the world government (G20 + IMF + World Bank + UN, etc) moving in after the ponzi collapse to clawback all the gains to provide justice to all the old ladies who were destroyed by Bitcoin's collapse.
Do you believe there is an altcoin that does not have these concerns or could one be developed?
As far as I know there is not one now without any major concerns, except I am aware of Freicoin but apparently demurrage is negative to some or most but I am not saying they should be and I haven't studied Freicoin closely nor have I monitored its price and adoption.
I believe one is being developed.
Lastly, although u seem to have a high number of ignores, I do prefer to listen to those that can backup their arguments, and although the conversations can somewhat deteriorate at times, it seems to be more so than frustration than inability to understand other points of view.
Yes they are frustrated with me and I am frustrated with them.
I don't know if novices can follow the upthread debate. I doubt it.
Basically what it has boiled down to is if the > 50% attacker modifies the protocol then the rest of the network has to choose which protocol rule it keeps:
a. longest (i.e. faster) chain wins
b. other protocol priority (e.g. coin rewards schedule) wins
My antagonists claim they control 100% of the non-mining clients and force them to do #b. I am saying they are insane if they think they control anything 100% that is open source and/or involves a billion actors.
Once the miners disagree (#a or #b), then the clients are free to do what ever fits each one of them best. Are they likely to converge to a consensus (#a or #b) or diverge into a Tragedy of the Commons (incompatible double-spend mess mix of #a and #b)? It would behoove those who are large and have control over many clients to push it in the direction that is most advantageous for the most customers, thus likely to converge rather than diverge.
The danger is that some large outfit such as Amazon would seize that opportunity have faster transactions (i.e. choose #a) than its competition since it will likely control the client its customers employ (integrated into the Amazon website).
The competition would then need to react else lose customers. So #a is going to win and #b is fantasy of those geeks who think they control something that they don't. They fundamentally don't understand free markets.
personally commend you for providing not only various probable weaknesses within the bitcoin DNA but also back that up with what seems to be competent evidence with merit.
I'm sure mr satoshi when completing his white paper did not allow for human greed and power!
When contemplating whether you are full of shit or have valid argument, one only has to understand that to be the minnow on one side of the battle is honourees in itself, win or lose, so should be given credence.
Appreciate your efforts and personally enjoy your posts, although with your obvious strength in economics and also coding, it is certainly at time hard to understand the various Swazi language, but guess we all have our s and w.
It is difficult to be the minnow. If I am wrong, let them present an argument. I will admit when I am wrong. Thus far they either just don't see my point (some of them) or they will disagree with the unlikelihood that they can exert 100% top-down control.
I hope I didn't embarrass you in any way by answering your post late, after the landscape of the debate had changed. My antagonists made some strong rebuttals, but they didn't expect that I am more knowledgeable than they thought. Some of them still don't get my point, and of course an idiot views a genius as being an idiot.
If you think it is difficult for you to follow the debate, imagine that even some of them who are reasonably expert on the block chain can't quite get my point.
This is far above the pay grade of most Bitcoiners.
