Wonder who this solominer is? 88.6.216.9

[BadBear]

Yes I think most miners would still have a problem with it. Some of us have more money then other to invest in BTC but we are all on a level playing field. Would you still by a farm of GPU for mining when only 1 person has access to ASIC now and you never will?

Where do you get the idea you have a right to a level playing field?  Is it fair some people have $0.04 per kWh electrical rates and some have $0.30 per kWh.  If it fair some people need to build their farm one GPU at a time and other can drop $15K on a rigbox or LargeCoin?

Miners compete you have no right to any "fairness".  Adapt, overcome, and expand or die.  No different than any other private enterprise.

May sound harsh, but life really is unfair sometimes. There's always gonna be someone out there with more resources than you. If you can't compete, then he has done his job well.

[3phase]

Yes I think most miners would still have a problem with it. Some of us have more money then other to invest in BTC but we are all on a level playing field. Would you still by a farm of GPU for mining when only 1 person has access to ASIC now and you never will?

Well, all miners have already made a risky investment. The possibility that someone would come up with a massive ASIC farm before they manage to break even was there from the beginning. The possibility of a botnetfest was also there. Miners should have been aware of it when they were making their investment decision.

Those who did not consider these and other possibilities (such as BTCUSD drop in price or difficulty increase) are obviously having a nasty surprise, and they probably will have more in the future.

As D&T and BadBear said, this is not personal, this is business.

[pcexpress4less]

I'm in the USA and believe me I know how unfair life is to allot of people in different countries.I agree that there will always be people with better resources but this is not about the price of electric and I have no reason to catch a Federal case by running a botnet. I don't need to compete with him I just need to know that my financial and ethical decision are good. The money from minig is really just a bonus to me. I don't truly need it.I'm really here to just support the idea of BTC. I could care less about the blank blocks, transaction fess, or any other things he's doing. I just don't like the idea of BTC being tied to a giant botnet. Publicity like that will only make BTC look bad and I don't think anyone here would want that either. I'm late to the game already. The start up of BTC made early users a very health profit yet I entered in December 2011 with no complaints of unfairness and not looking to make a profit.It's one thing to be at a disadvantage it's entirely different to be partnered with someone doing criminal activates.That is the same reason I won't lease out my hashing power for 110% or 120%. I don't know what its being used for so 200% would not convince me either. Yes this is business for some but it is personal for me and right now I'm helping give him a reason to steal from other.I guess it just boils down to ethics for me as I see us as one big family.I guess every family has a black sheep huh. Damn I wish he was close so I could pound the shit out of him for all the Innocent moms and grandmas footing his bill.

[wogaut]

As D&T and BadBear said, this is not personal, this is business.

Not if it's a botnet, I take that quite personal.

If criminals got >51%, then we have to answer to them in our bitcoin enterprise.
And even if someone added a proof-of-stake (so hard for me not to write steak, hmmmm steak) algorithm, this would just slow them down but not eliminate the problem.

Then you can run your BIPs past your new bosses, and I do mind if they are criminals. That's way different from having them just make some money on honest miners' backs.

Yes, we don't know for sure yet if that's indeed a botnet, so we can't sentence the mystery miner yet, but otoh using that argument to disregard this possibility and not discuss possible courses of action would also be wrong.  

Maybe business, but this thread raises questions that are not business as usual.

[silverbox]

..Damn I wish he was close so I could pound the shit out of him..

GROSS, pervert!!

[pcexpress4less]

..Damn I wish he was close so I could pound the shit out of him..

GROSS, pervert!!

Well it takes a pussy to fuck over mom and grandma so I'd say he/she deserves to get pounded. Don't think he/she would enjoy it though.

[Cablez]

Because this iz the Internetz!!!!!     

[silverbox]

What kind of arms are we talkin bout??

[pcexpress4less]

Has there been any proof at all that this is a botnet? Why are people getting so "up in arms" without solid proof?

No I don't think there is any proof yet but it's hard to imagine any other way to have so much hashing power. Yes most are jumping the gun myself included. It's better to be aware and wrong then be blind sided. If we are wrong well I'll be the first to apologize to the unknown miner. Until then we need to work together to make sure BTC is always shown in good light with good company.

[3phase]

Has there been any proof at all that this is a botnet? Why are people getting so "up in arms" without solid proof?

Not really.

It could be that the CIO of HP (or IBM or Dell) found out about BTC and pushed a "management software" update to all the company's managed hosts, and all the customer managed hosts. The low profile required for such software would explain the lack of transaction processing.

It could be a drug cartel (some of these guys have more money than governments do) that wants to setup a competing site to crush the Silk Road and would definitely want to be able to manipulate BTC price. So they hire a few geeks, get them to sign a nice NDA punished by death, setup a huge distributed mining farm, and obviously don't give a shit about transaction processing. ArtForz comes to mind, he hasn't been around for a month and a half. 

If you haven't put your tinfoil hat on, please put it on now:

It might as well be a government, the IMF, the IIF or whatever else would justify a tinfoil hat.

[muyuu]

I doubt it's a botnet. To amass such hashing power with random computers you'd need the biggest botnet ever known.

It's probably someone with legit access to these machines and therefore doing nothing wrong at all.

[coretechs]

If it's a botnet, perhaps it could be using an unknown SETI@Home/BOINC exploit or trojan?

[JWU42]

Reminds me of our initial MM last year...

I think slush spoke to him IIRC...

[conspirosphere.tk]

I doubt it's a botnet. To amass such hashing power with random computers you'd need the biggest botnet ever known.

It could have easily targeted the gamers sharing some pirated games infested with trojans and whatever so to gain just the best hw.

[Littleshop]

I doubt it's a botnet. To amass such hashing power with random computers you'd need the biggest botnet ever known.

As I have posted before, unfortunatly that is not true.  I wish it was.  Botnets have reached over a million computers.  Secondly, why must they be random?  Botnet owners do inventory their systems, and can sell off (or rent) groups of computers.  This is a selected group.

It's probably someone with legit access to these machines and therefore doing nothing wrong at all.

That is much less likely.  Not unless large organizations are equipping fleets of machines with high end ATI video cards.  

[Littleshop]

If it's a botnet, perhaps it could be using an unknown SETI@Home/BOINC exploit or trojan?

Very clever. 

[cablepair]

weather its a botnet or not it really does not matter

the big problem here (for Bitcoin) is the fact that they are not accepting any transactions in their blocks. It does not really matter if its a zombie botnet or a group of former KGB members with a ASIC farm humming in the basement of the Kremlin.

We need to put pressure on these folks any way we can, at least until the Bitcoin developers come up with a either a way to enforce transactions (not sure if this is even possible) or come up with some way to get rogue miners like this to want to accept them. Its obvious they care nothing about the Bitcoin network but they certainly care about making money and thats where we need to hit them.

[molecular]

If it's a botnet, perhaps it could be using an unknown SETI@Home/BOINC exploit or trojan?

Very clever. 

maybe someone @AMD managed to sneak in some clever firmware that can talk to an ethernet controller

[P4man]

the big problem here (for Bitcoin) is the fact that they are not accepting any transactions in their blocks.

Even if this botnet would achieve 50% of the hashrate, not including transactions will only slow down transactions by 50%, so 10 extra minutes for single confirmations. Not a huge problem when compared to that other potential of a 50% botnet.

I will say, it does suck that honest miners have to compete with stolen computing resources, but thats life. I just hope it wont drive up difficulty to the point were honest miners are driven out of the market. That could be a real problem for bitcoin. At least we would need some competition between botnets to keep them "honest" lol.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Also since most transaction require 6 confirms even with 15% of blocks having no txs the average 6 confirm time only grows to 63 minutes vs 60 minutes.