Bitcoin Forum
May 21, 2024, 11:10:05 AM *
News: Latest Bitcoin Core release: 27.0 [Torrent]
 
   Home   Help Search Login Register More  
Pages: « 1 [2]  All
  Print  
Author Topic: Thought experiment: Own the bitcoin network by paying off node operators  (Read 2438 times)
RodeoX
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 3066
Merit: 1147


The revolution will be monetized!


View Profile
July 15, 2014, 07:35:34 PM
 #21

What would stop me from taking your money then switching my mine back on? Now "all ur bitcoin R belonging to me!" Oh and some of your cash.

What did you get? A huge bill.  Wink

The gospel according to Satoshi - https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Free bitcoin in ? - Stay tuned for this years Bitcoin hunt!
cypherblock (OP)
Jr. Member
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 43
Merit: 1


View Profile
July 16, 2014, 03:06:58 PM
 #22

What would stop me from taking your money then switching my mine back on? Now "all ur bitcoin R belonging to me!" Oh and some of your cash.

Say what?? How would you do that?
RodeoX
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 3066
Merit: 1147


The revolution will be monetized!


View Profile
July 16, 2014, 03:29:18 PM
 #23

What would stop me from taking your money then switching my mine back on? Now "all ur bitcoin R belonging to me!" Oh and some of your cash.

Say what?? How would you do that?
If I understand the idea correctly. Miners would be paid to run alternate software. Assuming a majority of the worlds miners participate, this mystery code is really a way to fork the chain. At that point the mystery software takes over the network.
There are a million problems with this idea. Here are a few.

1. I would NEVER run a closed source program involving bitcoin. That would be insane.
2. The attacker has absolutely zero ability to keep miners from taking his money then not running his software. If they did then difficulty would be lower and the attacker is now back to competing for the same block rewards. Except he has paid money to do so.
3. If all went perfectly somehow and the attacker took control of a majority of hashing power then forked the chain... He looses. Why. All he owns is another stupid alt coin that he paid millions of dollars to get. I assume I am like most here and would not even consider using this new fork. Therefore his "fork coins" are basically valueless. The rest of us would still be using the original bitcoin.

The gospel according to Satoshi - https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
Free bitcoin in ? - Stay tuned for this years Bitcoin hunt!
cypherblock (OP)
Jr. Member
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 43
Merit: 1


View Profile
July 18, 2014, 11:55:28 AM
 #24

What would stop me from taking your money then switching my mine back on? Now "all ur bitcoin R belonging to me!" Oh and some of your cash.

Say what?? How would you do that?
If I understand the idea correctly. Miners would be paid to run alternate software. ...

Actually the idea was to own the majority of 'non-mining' bitcoin nodes. What damage can be done without controlling huge amounts of hash power?

Maybe something more subtle than forking the chain.
Pages: « 1 [2]  All
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!