PSA: Get your Bitcoin off any exchange supporting "BSV" (due to insolvency risk)

[o_e_l_e_o]

And it's still on going (according to Blockchair). Honestly i don't know benefit of doing this other than proving they have full control over the network or reducing cost of running node.

Definitely some weird stuff going on. Blockchair and some other explorers are showing no blocks for ~5 hours, while other explorers are showing 50 blocks beyond that, but with dozens more empty blocks. Seems to me that CSW and co are trying to re-org out all these empty blocks?

Whoever this unknown miner is, they control a majority of the hashrate and are finding somewhere between 70-80% of BSV blocks. We always knew BSV was a centralized scam coin, but currently instead of it being centralized under CSW's control it is centralized under the control of this unknown miner.

Wonder if they'll start using the new protocol to simply assign every BSV in existence to themselves?

[DaveF]

And now they are showing no blocks for 16 hours, last one as of this post was Oct 15, 2022, 8:26 PM UTC.
Since it was mentioned earlier in the thread that only 9 nodes at the tip, it could be that a bunch of places were all puling data from the same place that shit the bed.

Or it could be someone trying to force a re-org and others fighting it and due to the massive chain bloat severs are just spinning themselves into oblivion, or it could be bad coding caused an issue. Fun to speculate but until the people running the public block explorers tell us, it's just conjecture.

Either way, it's interesting to watch.

-Dave

[o_e_l_e_o]

Or it could be someone trying to force a re-org

They are using the cutting edge Proof of Tweet algorithm: https://nitter.it/Arthur_van_Pelt/status/1581464913591291904#m

The entire BSV network has collapsed. Blockchair shows no blocks for a day. https://explorer.viawallet.com/bsv and https://whatsonchain.com/blocks both show recent blocks, but different recent blocks. If you look through the past 24 hours worth of blocks, this unknown miner is mining between 70-80% of them, completely empty. At any point, this miner could decide to just ignore all blocks other than their own, completely halting all transactions and activity on BSV.

The amount of copium on Twitter is hilarious. Everything from "There is no attack" to "This is good because it means fees will be pushed higher than the subsidy" to "This is just someone trying to load up their bags with block rewards before we moon" (seriously). People are unable to make transactions, and there are frequent reorgs dozens of blocks deep.

Any word on exchanges starting to implement freezes on BSV withdrawals/deposits? Even if someone does manage to get a deposit confirmed on the network, I can't imagine the exchange will be too happy when a reorg makes that deposit disappear 100 blocks later. Given I can only imagine the majority of BSV bagholders will be keen to dump their bags for real bitcoin as soon as possible, any exchange which continues to accept BSV deposits is at a huge risk of loss, even without CSW's new software allowing him to arbitrarily seize any coins he likes. So back to the original point of this thread: Get your bitcoin in to your own wallets as soon as possible.

[gmaxwell]

Better get your popcorn popping: https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/y62pth/bitcoin_association_freezing_funds_miner_without/

[NotATether]

Better get your popcorn popping: https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/y62pth/bitcoin_association_freezing_funds_miner_without/

First nail in the coffin, waiting for Blockchain association to hammer the rest of the nails into BSV. Good work driving their user base away.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if some crank forks BSV in a situation similar to Bitcoin Cash ABC vs SV.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Better get your popcorn popping: https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/y62pth/bitcoin_association_freezing_funds_miner_without/

Wait, what? Did they miss the part where this miner has the majority hashrate on the chain and is finding ~80% of all blocks? The only way the could "freeze" their block rewards is to convince literally every person and every service which still uses BSV to not accept these coins. They can't actually prevent the miner from moving their coins since they can just mine their own transactions with their majority hashrate. Or maybe they are planning to fork to a new algorithm which only accepts blocks from Taal? BSV is so centralized already then such a fork would literally make no difference, lol. Just fork to an Excel spreadsheet on CSW's personal laptop at this point.

I'm also laughing at the fact that when Taal does manage to find a block, since it is 4 GB, in the time it takes to propagate across the network to the unknown miner, the unknown miner has often just found their own block in the meantime and orphans the 4 GB block. But tell me again about how big blocks don't cause any problems.

[gmaxwell]

Better get your popcorn popping: https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/y62pth/bitcoin_association_freezing_funds_miner_without/

Wait, what? Did they miss the part where this miner has the majority hashrate on the chain and is finding ~80% of all blocks? The only way the could "freeze" their block rewards is to convince literally every person and every service which still uses BSV to not accept these coins.

See also your earlier post about PoT. ... they have the most hashpower but who has the greater follower count?!

I'm also laughing at the fact that when Taal does manage to find a block, since it is 4 GB, in the time it takes to propagate across the network to the unknown miner, the unknown miner has often just found their own block in the meantime and orphans the 4 GB block. But tell me again about how big blocks don't cause any problems.

I'm really sad that BSV is such a top-to-bottom scam.  I think they're demonstrating the *inevitable* consequences of their lack of resource constraints:  Essentially zero fee income, users insecure against seizure due to the possibility of arbitrary rule changes, massive centralization in *all* parts of the ecosystem, amplifications of hashpower centralization (anyone making big blocks causes the largest miners to get more than their fair share). But someone could argue that these are really just the effects of a blockchain created and run by con-men, and not their technical and economic decisions.

[NotATether]

I'm really sad that BSV is such a top-to-bottom scam.  I think they're demonstrating the *inevitable* consequences of their lack of resource constraints:  Essentially zero fee income, users insecure against seizure due to the possibility of arbitrary rule changes, massive centralization in *all* parts of the ecosystem, amplifications of hashpower centralization (anyone making big blocks causes the largest miners to get more than their fair share). But someone could argue that these are really just the effects of a blockchain created and run by con-men, and not their technical and economic decisions.

I'm of the opinion that the general incompetence of Bitcoin Association to run a public blockchain, and CSW running around calling himself Satoshi, are not connected events or at least not cause-and-effect. CSW's too busy fighting legal lawsuits to get his hands dirty with most of the decisions they make

[gmaxwell]

I'm of the opinion that the general incompetence of Bitcoin Association to run a public blockchain, and CSW running around calling himself Satoshi, are not connected events or at least not cause-and-effect. CSW's too busy fighting legal lawsuits to get his hands dirty with most of the decisions they make

Devil's advocate:  The scammyness of Craig and Calvin scares off everyone competent.

They do directly operate as his command, e.g. they said nothing about these empty blocks until Wright started railing about them. They take down any post he complains about (e.g. when they referred to BSV as a cryptocurrency), etc.

[n0nce]

Better get your popcorn popping: https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/y62pth/bitcoin_association_freezing_funds_miner_without/

First nail in the coffin, waiting for Blockchain association to hammer the rest of the nails into BSV. Good work driving their user base away.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if some crank forks BSV in a situation similar to Bitcoin Cash ABC vs SV.

Honestly if I was running an exchange, I'd immediately delist BSV now if I hadn't done so much earlier. It's a way too large risk, getting deposits in BSV which are then reorged out of your wallet using 'Proof of Tweet'. No amount of trade volume can counteract this huge risk, in my opinion. Basically, CSW and his friends (potentially even regular users) could leverage it to completely dry out exchanges.

[ABCbits]

The entire BSV network has collapsed. Blockchair shows no blocks for a day. https://explorer.viawallet.com/bsv and https://whatsonchain.com/blocks both show recent blocks, but different recent blocks. If you look through the past 24 hours worth of blocks, this unknown miner is mining between 70-80% of them, completely empty. At any point, this miner could decide to just ignore all blocks other than their own, completely halting all transactions and activity on BSV.

Difference on each block explorer made me curious, so i did quick research about top block height on each BSV block explorer. Here's the result,

Link	Top block height
https://bchsvexplorer.com/	761976
https://explorer.viawallet.com/bsv	761988
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-sv	761833
https://whatsonchain.com/blocks	761991
https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/assets/bsv	761834

I skipped block explorer/website which no longer update their data (indicated by last block was mined on few weeks/years ago), but none of them show same number.

And it's still on going (according to Blockchair). Honestly i don't know benefit of doing this other than proving they have full control over the network or reducing cost of running node.

Definitely some weird stuff going on. Blockchair and some other explorers are showing no blocks for ~5 hours, while other explorers are showing 50 blocks beyond that, but with dozens more empty blocks. Seems to me that CSW and co are trying to re-org out all these empty blocks?

I spend a minute on r/bsv and found post showing OP_RETURN on transaction (included on empty block) which say "Pay enough fee. Not 0.05 sat/B spam. Money has value.".

https://www.reddit.com/r/bsv/comments/y71d5l/empty_block_miner_showing_his_cards_pay_enough_fee/

[o_e_l_e_o]

Five explorers, five different block heights. Lol.

Looking again at the two I quoted before (which are the two which seem closest to the chain tip), they are again showing different blocks. Taking block 761,998, viawallet has an almost empty block from the unknown miner with a hash of 00000000000000000988466f0965faa0ad16c5208a6053ba4868c8ef17b3cde4, while whatsonchain has a qdlnk 4GB block with a hash of 000000000000000007765478946ed0cfeda56343ab956699bb39d1b9b44696d3.

This seems to be the case every time I check. Just endless conflicting blocks and stale chains. Reorgs within reorgs.

[NotATether]

Five explorers, five different block heights. Lol.

Looking again at the two I quoted before (which are the two which seem closest to the chain tip), they are again showing different blocks. Taking block 761,998, viawallet has an almost empty block from the unknown miner with a hash of 00000000000000000988466f0965faa0ad16c5208a6053ba4868c8ef17b3cde4, while whatsonchain has a qdlnk 4GB block with a hash of 000000000000000007765478946ed0cfeda56343ab956699bb39d1b9b44696d3.

This seems to be the case every time I check. Just endless conflicting blocks and stale chains. Reorgs within reorgs.

Sounds like the beginning of the end for BSV. Now all that's left to happen is a black swan event to cause the mass delisting & exodus to other chains and possibly even a hardfork (by someone other than nChain bros).

[DaveF]

Since it's still trading at close to $50 a coin I took a look at CoinEx which is the only exchange I have an account in that trades it they have a 10 block confirm for trading and 30 blocks to withdraw. Either they know something we don't or have a lot more confidence that there will not be a massive reorg. Does anyone else with an account at an exchange that still trades see anything different?

I don't see the point in taking the risk at the moment, but I guess you can say that about any coin that has low to mid hashrate with an abundance of ASICs out there.

-Dave

[n0nce]

I'm running a search for the word 'Chancellor' now, just out of curiosity.

Code:

bitcoin@localhost:~/.bitcoin/blocks> grep -aPo '\x43\x68\x61\x6e\x63\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f\x72' *.dat
blk00000.dat:Chancellor

Off-topic, but for anyone interested: It finished after a while, with the following results. 'Chancellor' appears 8 more times on the blockchain.

Code:

bitcoin@localhost:~/.bitcoin/blocks> grep -aPo '\x43\x68\x61\x6e\x63\x65\x6c\x6c\x6f\x72' *.dat
blk00000.dat:Chancellor
blk00280.dat:Chancellor
blk00281.dat:Chancellor
blk00315.dat:Chancellor
blk01005.dat:Chancellor
blk01241.dat:Chancellor
blk01679.dat:Chancellor
blk02741.dat:Chancellor
blk03078.dat:Chancellor

For example, in blk00280.dat, we have a copy of part of the actual message from the genesis block:

Code:

bitcoin@localhost:~/.bitcoin/blocks> hexdump -C blk00280.dat | grep -C 10 Chancellor
067af060  70 49 ea 5a 2f 12 8e 3e  b8 0f 1c 40 1b 25 30 00  |pI.Z/..>...@.%0.|
067af070  00 00 00 6a 47 30 44 02  20 61 9f 56 b8 3c f4 47  |...jG0D. a.V.<.G|
067af080  6d a7 51 ff 1b 02 1c 46  75 59 64 ee 60 72 de 50  |m.Q....FuYd.`r.P|
067af090  0e cd b5 6c 7d 81 62 58  05 02 20 70 69 1e 15 29  |...l}.bX.. pi..)|
067af0a0  e8 9c 1a 32 d5 91 f9 80  d9 ce df 96 ca 6d d0 54  |...2.........m.T|
067af0b0  30 53 25 d6 b8 e8 6e 7a  88 de 26 01 21 03 07 94  |0S%...nz..&.!...|
067af0c0  ea 0d e0 18 68 85 21 57  89 70 87 6f 3a 14 b7 db  |....h.!W.p.o:...|
067af0d0  e1 c5 5e 5a fd 01 71 9e  d8 e2 13 2e e4 ce ff ff  |..^Z..q.........|
067af0e0  ff ff 02 01 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 28 6a 26 54 68  |...........(j&Th|
067af0f0  65 20 54 69 6d 65 73 20  30 33 2f 4a 61 6e 2f 32  |e Times 03/Jan/2|
067af100  30 30 39 20 43 68 61 6e  63 65 6c 6c 6f 72 20 6f  |009 Chancellor o|
067af110  6e 2e 2e 2e 24 82 1e 00  00 00 00 00 19 76 a9 14  |n...$........v..|
067af120  89 44 a5 66 b5 b6 fe 71  ae fb 22 89 e5 af cf 7b  |.D.f...q.."....{|
067af130  40 17 c4 55 88 ac 00 00  00 00 01 00 00 00 02 3d  |@..U...........=|
067af140  52 a6 8b 79 89 e8 0a 98  f7 32 d2 42 3a 55 12 98  |R..y.....2.B:U..|
067af150  0c 0f 90 97 3f bb db c0  9e 3e 9a ac bd a2 9e 01  |....?....>......|
067af160  00 00 00 da 00 48 30 45  02 21 00 b7 32 8c 22 4b  |.....H0E.!..2."K|
067af170  50 4d 26 b8 15 a4 cb d6  38 33 7d 7c 4b a0 c9 5b  |PM&.....83}|K..[|
067af180  b4 e6 c3 60 92 8b b4 63  c7 6c d8 02 20 76 c1 0c  |...`...c.l.. v..|
067af190  55 8f fe 63 a1 01 63 76  16 05 b4 79 c9 36 b1 8d  |U..c..cv...y.6..|
067af1a0  52 0f 5b 2d 0e 3e 18 aa  53 b5 fa 09 dd 01 47 30  |R.[-.>..S.....G0|

Similar in blk00281.dat:

Code:

04438c70  13 e7 d8 5d 06 ff ff ff  ff 02 58 02 00 00 00 00  |...]......X.....|
04438c80  00 00 29 6a 54 68 65 20  54 69 6d 65 73 20 30 33  |..)jThe Times 03|
04438c90  2f 4a 61 6e 2f 32 30 30  39 20 43 68 61 6e 63 65  |/Jan/2009 Chance|
04438ca0  6c 6c 6f 72 20 6f 6e 20  62 2e 2e 2e 31 02 70 00  |llor on b...1.p.|
04438cb0  00 00 00 00 19 76 a9 14  77 bf 6e 7f f6 2b da d5  |.....v..w.n..+..|
04438cc0  23 7e c8 a1 da 91 f5 2b  16 28 18 63 88 ac 00 00  |#~.....+.(.c....|

Does anyone know or have a suspicion why people used / still do copy these bytes into blocks every now and then?
Maybe some miners that don't know what to put in scriptSig?

[DaveF]

Probably not going to matter much but as @gmaxwell mentioned in another thread hodlonaut won his case https://twitter.com/hodlonaut/status/1583086284792205312
So it might not make a difference OR faketoshi might start a scorched earth campaign and attack everyone he can. In the end it probably does not matter anyway. There will always be people who believe him and it's probably not worth anyone's time to change their opinion on that. We can just make sure that the number of people who do believe him is as small as possible.

-Dave

[n0nce]

Probably not going to matter much but as @gmaxwell mentioned in another thread hodlonaut won his case https://twitter.com/hodlonaut/status/1583086284792205312
So it might not make a difference OR faketoshi might start a scorched earth campaign and attack everyone he can. In the end it probably does not matter anyway. There will always be people who believe him and it's probably not worth anyone's time to change their opinion on that. We can just make sure that the number of people who do believe him is as small as possible.

-Dave

The American-style happy ending now would be:

• BSV attacks don't stop, all exchanges delist it (too risky)
• People panic sell, price goes to 0
• CSW loses next court case(s) based on hodlonaut precedent
• Ayre goes to jail for suspicious materials on his PC; i.e. no more cash flow for CSW

We would never hear from him again..

[gmaxwell]

BSV attacks don't stop

The high-fee miner seems to mine when BSV is more profitable, so we should see them oscillating on and off now unless the BSV price crashes a fair bit-- $40 might be enough to make them stop but it's a pain to calculate how much gain they're getting from gaming the difficulty update algorithm so they might keep going with prices even lower than that.

Ayre goes to jail for suspicious materials on his PC; i.e. no more cash flow for CSW

I assume you've seen his commentary on the advantages of living in Antigua, so that's not likely!

He seems to have learned to stop posting so many images of his questionably young looking entertainment in public.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Not an exchange, but it looks like Blockchair will stop supporting BSV (and EOS) in about 2 weeks. You are shown a banner at the top of the page whenever you try to use the BSV explorer with the following text:

Please note that on November 7th, 2022 we'll be limiting full public support for the following blockchains: EOS, Bitcoin SV. We recommend switching to alternative explorers.

Can't say I blame them when on any given day there are about 5 different chain tips to try to pick from until Proof of Tweet kicks back in and the BSV gods dictate which chain is the One True Chain^TM.

Also, looks like CoinGeek might know something we don't and are running preemptive damage control. https://coingeek.com/bsv-doesnt-need-exchanges/
Next up: BSV doesn't need a blockchain.

[DaveF]

Not an exchange, but it looks like Blockchair will stop supporting BSV (and EOS) in about 2 weeks. You are shown a banner at the top of the page whenever you try to use the BSV explorer with the following text:

Please note that on November 7th, 2022 we'll be limiting full public support for the following blockchains: EOS, Bitcoin SV. We recommend switching to alternative explorers.

Can't say I blame them when on any given day there are about 5 different chain tips to try to pick from until Proof of Tweet kicks back in and the BSV gods dictate which chain is the One True Chain^TM.

I'm guessing that since they make their money from selling API access and other services that the cost of keeping the BSV chain up and running and on the correct fork is now costing them more then it's generating.
As I said a few posts up, as soon as a business is no longer making money with a coin it's gone if there is a cost to keeping it up and running.

Also, looks like CoinGeek might know something we don't and are running preemptive damage control. https://coingeek.com/bsv-doesnt-need-exchanges/
Next up: BSV doesn't need a blockchain.

If they know which, if any, exchanges are not using their own node(s) but puling from Blockchair then they could know that as of November 7th they are going to have to stop supporting BSV.

-Dave