51% attack hypothesis - Prove me wrong

[mooncake]

Below is a hypothesis. Please prove me wrong.

Suppose there are the following entities:

• An anti-BTC entity A who has $10M;
• Mining pool B who holds $1M in assets (including btc and mining hardware) and controlling 25.5% of the total mining power;
• Mining pool C who similarly holds $1M in assets and controlling 25.5% of the total mining power.

Suppose A has the intent to destroy BTC by for instance causing panic among BTC users.
A offers B and C $2M each to take over their mining pools. Since this is more than their assets value, B and C accept the offer.

With 51% of the mining power, A then launches the 51% attack.

Panic started in the exchanges. Price drops drastically. You know the rest.

Can the above scenario happen?

[1713572204]

1713572204

[1713572204]

1713572204

[1713572204]

1713572204

[justusranvier]

Below is a hypothesis. Please prove me wrong.

• You aren't really clear on how a mining pool actually works.
• You're not sure what a "51% attack" is, or what launching one involves.

[Gabi]

Doable but people will then quickly flee from the pools.

[Dr Bloggood]

Below is a hypothesis. Please prove me wrong.

• You aren't really clear on how a mining pool actually works.
• You're not sure what a "51% attack" is, or what launching one involves.

And I'm not 100% clear on that either.

But what I do know is that a 51% attack would be a hell of a lot more expensive than $14M.

[mooncake]

Doable but people will then quickly flee from the pools.

People will not know.

People will think that B and C exist independently. People will not know that A has bought over B and C.

[mooncake]

But what I do know is that a 51% attack would be a hell of a lot more expensive than $14M.

To most of us, cost is an issue. To a few of the potential anti-btc entities, it may not be.

[Coin_Master]

Below is a hypothesis. Please prove me wrong.

• You aren't really clear on how a mining pool actually works.
• You're not sure what a "51% attack" is, or what launching one involves.

I have been trying all day to prove your hypothesis wrong justusranvier.  I just cannot find fault with it

[qfdev]

Doable but people will then quickly flee from the pools.

This is what I would have assumed but what I don't know (maybe somebody could enlighten me here?) is what percentage of the big pools mining activity are carried out by their own proprietary hardware?

[Dr Bloggood]

But what I do know is that a 51% attack would be a hell of a lot more expensive than $14M.

To most of us, cost is an issue. To a few of the potential anti-btc entities, it may not be.

True, there is some very high amount of money, for which it's quite easily possible to destroy BTC.

The point is, that amount is so high, that very few entities would be able to do it (maybe only governments? I haven't calculated). However, as they totally exhaust themselves financially to do that, there will probably just the next cryptocurrency be taking over.

It just doesn't make sense for anybody to pay that amount of money to do it.

And the more BTC grows, the more expensive it will become.

[Coin_Master]

Doable but people will then quickly flee from the pools.

This is what I would have assumed but what I don't know (maybe somebody could enlighten me here?) is what percentage of the big pools mining activity are carried out by their own proprietary hardware?

BTC Guild (one of the big pools) currently have 22411 independent miners utilizing one server cluster, and 7428 mining the other.  The amount of hardware 'owned by the pool operator' being utilized for mining, would be little to none.
Here are the stats: https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=pool_stats
Pools are in the business of providing a service, not mining themselves.  It would not be a pool if they owned all the hardware and were solo mining.

[mooncake]

Doable but people will then quickly flee from the pools.

This is what I would have assumed but what I don't know (maybe somebody could enlighten me here?) is what percentage of the big pools mining activity are carried out by their own proprietary hardware?

BTC Guild (one of the big pools) currently have 22411 independent miners utilizing one server cluster, and 7428 mining the other.  The amount of hardware 'owned by the pool operator' being utilized for mining, would be little to none.
Here are the stats: https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=pool_stats
Pools are in the business of providing a service, not mining themselves.  It would not be a pool if they owned all the hardware and were solo mining.

I may be missing something. You are saying miners mine independently although they share server clusters. Granted.
But if owning a combined mining pool which gives you 51% of the mining power does not allow you to launch a 51% attack, then why the recent hyper discussion about Ghash.io?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=407843.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408560.0

[justusranvier]

then why the recent hyper discussion about Ghash.io?

The problem isn't ghash.io - it's cex.io

They aren't a pool - they are a single organization that physically controls a huge percentage of the network hashing power, at least until a few of their competitors come online.

[Coin_Master]

I may be missing something. You are saying miners mine independently although they share server clusters. Granted.

You are definitely missing something
BTC Guild pool servers send work out to the miners.  The actual processing of the Bitcoin block is done all over the world in private homes/offices/buildings.  Perhaps you should read some information on how to mine.

[mooncake]

They aren't a pool - they are a single organization that physically controls a huge percentage of the network hashing power, at least until a few of their competitors come online.

What if B and C are not mining pools but single miners?

[Coin_Master]

They aren't a pool - they are a single organization that physically controls a huge percentage of the network hashing power, at least until a few of their competitors come online.

What if A and B are not mining pools but single miners?

Where are you going to get mining hardware that fast?
The Bitcoin network is faster than the top 500 supercomputers in the whole world combined.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-bitcoin-computing-power-now-256-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined/
It is becoming clear that you have absolutely no idea how much independent/distributed processing power exists.
Does this mean I proved you wrong?

[mooncake]

Where are you going to get mining hardware that fast?
The Bitcoin network is faster than the top 500 supercomputers in the whole world combined.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2013/11/28/global-bitcoin-computing-power-now-256-times-faster-than-top-500-supercomputers-combined/
It is becoming clear that you have absolutely no idea how much independent/distributed processing power exists.
Does this mean I proved you wrong?

Mining hardware is just a function of money.

Anyway, even if theoretically possible, I just hope that the BTC network now has grown so huge that controlling 51% mining power is practically impossible.

[justusranvier]

What if B and C are not mining pools but single miners?

How about instead of using some hypothetical situation that has nothing to do with reality, why not instead figure out how things actually work now and go from there?

[mooncake]

How about instead of using some hypothetical situation that has nothing to do with reality, why not instead figure out how things actually work now and go from there?

The reality is that there are anti-BTC entities. There are also big miners. At the right price, big miners may sell their mining hardware to anti-btc entities.

You had mentioned an entity that owns lots of mining hardware. I agree that is a problem.
Suppose there are multiple such entities now, BTC will be in trouble.

[justusranvier]

It's a temporary problem - an artifact of the supply chain for ASICs still maturing.

Right now CEX.io can grab almost a quarter of the network hashing power because its competitors aren't online yet.

It won't be quite as bad when a "big miner" can only grab a single digit percentage of the network.

[JohnsonRobinson]

How about instead of using some hypothetical situation that has nothing to do with reality, why not instead figure out how things actually work now and go from there?

The reality is that there are anti-BTC entities. There are also big miners. At the right price, big miners may sell their mining hardware to anti-btc entities.

You had mentioned an entity that owns lots of mining hardware. I agree that is a problem.
Suppose there are multiple such entities now, BTC will be in trouble.

This is a key issue.  Mines amounting to >>51% could be sold, without public knowledge, to the same anti-bitcoin entity with deep pockets and that's it 60, 70 +? %.

This problem has now surfaced for real and will continue to be a drag on upward Bitcoin prices unless something more substantive than an untrustworthy mega pool making an announcement saying that we should trust them is made.
or
The whole point of Bitcoin/Cryptos is that trust is enforced by the protocol/network/system...this is currently not the case.  This problem needs to be solved in some way at the protocol level or upward price movement will falter as people lose trust / get nervous.

[Coin_Master]

How about instead of using some hypothetical situation that has nothing to do with reality, why not instead figure out how things actually work now and go from there?

The reality is that there are anti-BTC entities. There are also big miners. At the right price, big miners may sell their mining hardware to anti-btc entities.

You had mentioned an entity that owns lots of mining hardware. I agree that is a problem.
Suppose there are multiple such entities now, BTC will be in trouble.

Bitcoin will not be in trouble.  That is the silliest thing I have ever heard.  Suppose there was a 51% attack, all that would happen is the network would hard fork and the transactions would be deleted.  The attack would cause nothing more than a temporary disruption.  There has already been an attack on the Bitcoin network in August 2010 where 184 billion coins were generated.

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin
"the vulnerability was exploited; over 184 billion bitcoins were generated in a transaction"
"Within hours, the transaction was spotted and erased from the transaction log after the bug was fixed and the network forked"

Here is something I found amusing, there was even a time when anyone could spend other peoples coins.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152470.msg1620493#msg1620493
"When Bitcoin was first released, it contained two completely fatal bugs that made the entire system worthless."
"The first bug was that scripts were concatenated before being run instead of just using a shared stack. This meant that anyone could write a scriptSig that always evaluated to true and claim anyone elses coins."

So as you can see, when there is a critical attack or a fatal bug, all that happens is the network adapts, things get fixed.
There is no 'panic among BTC users'.  No 'drastic price drops'.  Most people would not even know anything happened.  Did you know about the things I just mentioned? Didn't think so!
You cannot 'destroy Bitcoin' (as you put it).  Bitcoin is an idea.
Now I have completely 'proved you wrong' on every point