Bitcoin Crashing Again....

[CryptoCarmen]

Don't think Bitcoin is crashing.  It actually looks like it's in a holding pattern of sorts:

"don't think bitcoin is crashing" - that made me LOL

It used to be $1200..

it never was $1200, $1200 was just a peak, an all-time high. It was never stable at $1200

It was $120 or so a year ago for crying out loud.

If you only look at the highest value it has ever been compared to the current price, of course it's never going to be higher.

Like the €3400/coin

Yep lol the real ATH is 3400 euro, and considering its at <340 euro today, bitcoin is officially dead you guys!!

yes it actually fall for 10 times in just a month.

[oda.krell]

It's not so much an inflation, but an expense as result of PoW mining, everyday $1.5M is transferred from the Bitcoin eco-system, into the pockets of ASIC hardware vendors and electricity companies.

I disagree: mining difficulty follows the price, not the other way around. If miners start to find it unprofitable, the hash-rate will drop. Less efficient miners drop first.

POW is important because it requires an attacker to expend scarce resources: something POS based currencies do not. The problem with POW is that we still do not know for certain it will work in the long-term. Bitcoin is still very much an experiment.

Wrong, it's extremely easy and cheap to attack PoW network, tons of PoW altcoin has been attacked to death.

Zero successful 51% attack on any PoS altcoin so far.

Because:
1. it's extremely expensive to acquire 51% stake
2. once you acquire 51% stake, why would you attack anymore? YOU are the majority stake holder, you want to attack yourself? and destroy the reputation and value of the coin you hold 51% stake in? why would you destroy your own wealth? it won't make any sense.

Quite a bit of twisting of facts.

It's as "easy and cheap" to attack a PoW network as the cost of specialized hardware and electricity that goes into securing it. For alts, that's a real problem, agreed. For Bitcoin, this risk is becoming more and more hypothetical.

There are numerous reasons to prefer PoW over PoS, but I'm going to guess it'll be pointless to have this argument now. Preferring one or the other is a major point of divergent opinions, as far as I can tell.

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

Now if Bitcoin is proof of stake, you need to buy 51% of all Bitcoin available. It's not going to cost you 10%, nor 100%, but more like 1000% or more of Bitcoin marketcap to purchase 51% of all Bitcoin available.

So how can you argue that compared to PoS, PoW is not cheap and easy to attack?

There's no real difference between Bitcoin and PoW altcoins, other than Bitcoin is far bigger. But still, if the attacker has large enough resources, he could attack Bitcoin. Just like current miners find it real cheap and easy to attack a smaller PoW altcoin. It's at least 100X more difficult to attack Bitcoin if Bitcoin was PoS, just like no one could attack even a tiny PoS altcoin, due to cost.

Alright, since you're not giving up, here's the rebuttal, in shorthand:

1) 51% attack against Bitcoin is infeasible, both by prohibitively high cost for any but the largest entities, lack of economic incentive (cost of attack > profit resulting from attack, because market value would drop as an effect of the attack), and the near-impossibility to secure and put online, in complete secrecy, the specialized hardware (regardless of the USD cost of the hardware). Don't care about PoW vs. PoS in alts.

2) PoS is inferior to PoW in three key regards: New coin distribution according to work is vastly preferred over distribution according to stake. Can't argue with human nature. Consensus forming in the case of competing chains is trivial for PoW, and bordering on impossible for PoS. The economic backing of PoW in the form of energy exerted provides a useful base valuation, because it provides the network with a well-grounded "bootstrap" value.

Questions?

[Odalv]

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

[kokojie]

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

Why does their need to be a economic incentive to attack? if it is cheap and easy enough, someone will do it and just to say "I did it" or because they don't like Bitcoin, the cost is not very big for a determined and very well funded attacker, such as nation governments and large banks. On the other hand, if Bitcoin was PoS, the cost is pretty much astronomical, and success is not guaranteed even after spending  astronomical amount of resources, since not all coins are for sale for ideological reasons, they wouldn't even want to attempt it.

[kokojie]

Alright, since you're not giving up, here's the rebuttal, in shorthand:

1) 51% attack against Bitcoin is infeasible, both by prohibitively high cost for any but the largest entities, lack of economic incentive (cost of attack > profit resulting from attack, because market value would drop as an effect of the attack), and the near-impossibility to secure and put online, in complete secrecy, the specialized hardware (regardless of the USD cost of the hardware). Don't care about PoW vs. PoS in alts.

2) PoS is inferior to PoW in three key regards: New coin distribution according to work is vastly preferred over distribution according to stake. Can't argue with human nature. Consensus forming in the case of competing chains is trivial for PoW, and bordering on impossible for PoS. The economic backing of PoW in the form of energy exerted provides a useful base valuation, because it provides the network with a well-grounded "bootstrap" value.

Questions?

Where's your rebuttal? I don't see anything disputing the fact that PoS is much more expensive to attack against. You just keep saying Bitcoin is expensive to attack, that's your opinion, I don't believe $500m is expensive for a well funded and determined attacker, such as nation government or big banks.

Regarding your PoS is inferior 3 points:
1. PoW is a valid distribution method if you can't figure out a fair distribution with PoS, for example Peercoin started with PoW distribution and now majority of Peercoin blocks produced by PoS, how does this make PoS inferior if PoW is temporary(for distribution phase only) and PoS is the permanent solution?
2. Consensus, I don't see how it is "impossible" for PoS to form consensus, all the PoS altcoins can form consensus just fine, and does it better than any PoW altcoin that are easily 51% attacked, there goes your "trivial PoW consensus" argument.
3. PoW cost is NOT a value or backing, since you can't trade back and forth with it. It's an ongoing EXPENSE, it does not provide any "bootstrap" value, it sucks value out of the eco-system, and enriches the hardware vendors/electric companies. The reality has shown that PoS eco-system can have large amount of value without the need of a PoW mining network.

[Odalv]

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

Why does their need to be a economic incentive to attack? if it is cheap and easy enough, someone will do it and just to say "I did it" or because they don't like Bitcoin, the cost is not very big for a determined and very well funded attacker, such as nation governments and large banks. On the other hand, if Bitcoin was PoS, the cost is pretty much astronomical, and success is not guaranteed even after spending  astronomical amount of resources, since not all coins are for sale for ideological reasons, they wouldn't even want to attempt it.

If you even invest 10 times more ($5B) then your attack is still almost worthless. You will have 90% of hash power and still you will not able to spend 1 of my satoshi. You will be able to double spend your money .. but who will trade with you ?

[ssmc2]

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

Why does their need to be a economic incentive to attack? if it is cheap and easy enough, someone will do it and just to say "I did it" or because they don't like Bitcoin, the cost is not very big for a determined and very well funded attacker, such as nation governments and large banks. On the other hand, if Bitcoin was PoS, the cost is pretty much astronomical, and success is not guaranteed even after spending  astronomical amount of resources, since not all coins are for sale for ideological reasons, they wouldn't even want to attempt it.

If you even invest 10 times more ($5B) then your attack is still almost worthless. You will have 90% of hash power and still you will not able to spend 1 of my satoshi. You will be able to double spend your money .. but who will trade with you ?

Exactly. Not only that, but his failed double spend would only be good for that one block. So yeah, pointless.

[Odalv]

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

Why does their need to be a economic incentive to attack? if it is cheap and easy enough, someone will do it and just to say "I did it" or because they don't like Bitcoin, the cost is not very big for a determined and very well funded attacker, such as nation governments and large banks. On the other hand, if Bitcoin was PoS, the cost is pretty much astronomical, and success is not guaranteed even after spending  astronomical amount of resources, since not all coins are for sale for ideological reasons, they wouldn't even want to attempt it.

If you even invest 10 times more ($5B) then your attack is still almost worthless. You will have 90% of hash power and still you will not able to spend 1 of my satoshi. You will be able to double spend your money .. but who will trade with you ?

Exactly. Not only that, but his failed double spend would only be good for that one block. So yeah, pointless.

Yes, I will only accept bitcoins with 12 * 6 = 72 confirmation (12 hour ... "old" money)  so DOUBLE SPEND will NOT be possible with only 90% of hash power.

[Chris_Sabian]

Yes, bitcoin is dead (again). 

This is probably the 100th time that bitcoin had been declared dead since it started in 2009.  Look at 2011 - 2013 for the long decline followed by the boom in March 2013. 

[kokojie]

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

Why does their need to be a economic incentive to attack? if it is cheap and easy enough, someone will do it and just to say "I did it" or because they don't like Bitcoin, the cost is not very big for a determined and very well funded attacker, such as nation governments and large banks. On the other hand, if Bitcoin was PoS, the cost is pretty much astronomical, and success is not guaranteed even after spending  astronomical amount of resources, since not all coins are for sale for ideological reasons, they wouldn't even want to attempt it.

If you even invest 10 times more ($5B) then your attack is still almost worthless. You will have 90% of hash power and still you will not able to spend 1 of my satoshi. You will be able to double spend your money .. but who will trade with you ?

Are you kidding me? being able to prevent ANYONE from spending ANY Bitcoin, basically making the entire Bitcoin network useless, is worthless? They don't need to spend your money, they just want to make your Bitcoin worthless. Once it's publicly shown that Bitcoin PoW can be easily attacked, then Bitcoin is DONE, no there are no second chances, no the world will not wait for Bitcoin to implement PoS. A superior, secure, and mature PoS network will simply take over Bitcoin's position.

[foggyb]

Stay calm.

[ahmedshawezi]

Yes stay calm. Price was around here in April. No biggie.

[maker88]

Don't think Bitcoin is crashing.  It actually looks like it's in a holding pattern of sorts:

"don't think bitcoin is crashing" - that made me LOL

It used to be $1200..

it never was $1200, $1200 was just a peak, an all-time high. It was never stable at $1200

It was $120 or so a year ago for crying out loud.

If you only look at the highest value it has ever been compared to the current price, of course it's never going to be higher.

Like the €3400/coin

Yep lol the real ATH is 3400 euro, and considering its at <340 euro today, bitcoin is officially dead you guys!!

yes it actually fall for 10 times in just a month.

a month? more like 15-20 seconds. it was a flash crash up on btc-e a week or two ago. some bot repeatedly bought up coins for thousands of euro for a few minutes then regained its composure.

[phillipsjk]

Where's your rebuttal? I don't see anything disputing the fact that PoS is much more expensive to attack against. You just keep saying Bitcoin is expensive to attack, that's your opinion, I don't believe $500m is expensive for a well funded and determined attacker, such as nation government or big banks.

How many zero-day vulnerabilities and network nodes do you think you can find with $500 million?

With PoW nodes, they have no reason to be storing a "hot wallet". With PoS nodes, every node has a "hot wallet" in order to prove "stake".

The implication is that a determined attacker may be able to control more than 50% of the "stake" for a lot less than $500Million. As a bonus, they would be using less than 1MW of power while attacking the network (assuming thousands of machines to get good connectivity/node isolation).

Yes, I will only accept bitcoins with 12 * 6 = 72 confirmation (12 hour ... "old" money)  so DOUBLE SPEND will NOT be possible with only 90% of hash power.

With >51% of the hash-power, an attacker can roll back transactions. With 90% of the hash-power, they can roll back 8 hours every hour (in secret until they release their fork).

[PenAndPaper]

"don't think bitcoin is crashing" - that made me LOL

It used to be $1200..

The price was above $1000 for 1 week in 5 years... You can't really say that "it used to be" 1200...
It used to be 10$ and then 100$...

[piramida]

A superior, secure, and mature PoS network will simply take over Bitcoin's position.

You guys do realize that until you come up with a better term than PoS no investor would take you seriously? "Yes I invested millions in some new PoS".

Seriously though, there is no pos currency with even 1% of bitcoin track record, and I don't see how one could emerge. No actual volume, no interest, means they are all very amateurish still, and at the first sign of actual interest or actual money going their way they will be hacked shitless, immediately.

[Odalv]

Where's your rebuttal? I don't see anything disputing the fact that PoS is much more expensive to attack against. You just keep saying Bitcoin is expensive to attack, that's your opinion, I don't believe $500m is expensive for a well funded and determined attacker, such as nation government or big banks.

How many zero-day vulnerabilities and network nodes do you think you can find with $500 million?

With PoW nodes, they have no reason to be storing a "hot wallet". With PoS nodes, every node has a "hot wallet" in order to prove "stake".

The implication is that a determined attacker may be able to control more than 50% of the "stake" for a lot less than $500Million. As a bonus, they would be using less than 1MW of power while attacking the network (assuming thousands of machines to get good connectivity/node isolation).

Yes, I will only accept bitcoins with 12 * 6 = 72 confirmation (12 hour ... "old" money)  so DOUBLE SPEND will NOT be possible with only 90% of hash power.

With >51% of the hash-power, an attacker can roll back transactions. With 90% of the hash-power, they can roll back 8 hours every hour (in secret until they release their fork).

http://gavintech.blogspot.ch/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html

[CryptoCarmen]

Yes stay calm. Price was around here in April. No biggie.

But that was spring not autumn.

[xcapator]

I wish I was in btc a bit earlier, probably wouldnt have made such mistakes last year. just to learn how the highs never stay high for long. I am doing better now with selling on spikes.

[Mervyn_Pumpkinhead]

The biggest problem for bitcoin is that it is old news. There aren't practically any people left who haven't heard about bitcoin and everyone has already made up their mind on what to think of it. It means that the market is exhausted and there aren't many new people left who could potentially enter the market. The old enthusiasts are playing with each other, while money is slowly dripping out of the market.
You have to offer the masses something new to get excited about, if you want to stimulate the crypto market. No one will get excited about old news..