Self-Regulating Obsolete Currencies through Targeted 51% Attacks

[buuhh99]

I have been in the BTC /LTC game for about a year now. I still run a GPU miner and also own some cloud hashing contracts. I find the idea of bitcoin fascinating and the cash flow very intriguing. I am an oil and gas professional and the cash flow of bitcoin matches fantastically to what I see every day. High commodity volatility, high upfront capital, dry hole (Ponzi) risk, fast initial payouts with a decline, etc. I could take my type curve models and apply them to BTC directly. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

So one of the things I have been thinking about is how there has been a propagation of what I would call junk coins. They don’t really serve a purpose except to generate some initial profits for the creators, some volatility and trade benefit. Their mining hash rate is so low they are susceptible to attack, forks, lack of development etc.

In the O&G space, we try to self regulate so that the regulators (public & government) don’t hate us, and really to just keep a safe and clean operation. I see the propagation of these junk coins to really tarnish the image of crypto currency, and provide no value to the idea of a currency.

I believe the currencies that are viable are the ones that have enough hash power that they cannot be attacked directly and are not susceptible to minor (1 BTC) trade volumes. I also really like new crypto currencies that have different algorithms, creating real diversity in the space, not just a new name on the same tech.

I like how feathercoin took a strategic switch to neoscrypt; thats innovation or at least an attempt to be relevant.

I have been pondering buying more hash power for the specific purpose of 51% attacking junk coins and perverting their block chains out of existence. I want to clean up the street a bit. I want those coins to die. I want them to die because I think it muddies the waters of what crypto is and what it can be used for long term. Obviously, the ones that would survive are the ones that have market share, as they are viable and could easily survive my hashrate. The point isnt to kill crypto, the point is to make it better through regulating junk that some programmer just threw on the market.

I would like to see programmers develop new algorithms, not new coins. I would like to see more competition between coins etc. I think fostering a space of quality over quantity will help us tremendously. Coin developers would have to move to create new algorithms, new features, not rebadging junk for a scam or a premine.

I am up for starting a coalition or something where we start to self-regulate junk coins that come on the market or have been on the market. Maybe donate hash rate at specific times to shutdown some bad coins. I am thinking for scrypt anything under a couple of gigahash/s total network rate  needs to go away. It would be cool if we could integrate with pool horsepower to really clean these things up quick.

I would like to hear your thoughts on self-regulation and on the above mentioned ideas. If you think it is terrible; tell me. This is an open forum.

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[MaxDZ8]

While I sympathize with the idea and I agree on the reasoning it seems not much people wants to contribute to the cause. I've seen at least two posts like yours. Not only the clearly useless coins stay there, they don't stop new ones from surfacing.

Sadly, interesting coins seem to be getting the short end of the stick. In any case, unless all the threads get erased from this forum... and from the internet, those coins will continue to disperse newcomers.

I hope the current situation of alts will at least dissuade somebody from new launches... but those living in India or China can sure pull some big bucks even in this situation and they can go further than legit devs.

There's more than blockchains... albeit I agree that would be a great start!

[buuhh99]

What we need is a short market. Then their would be financial incentive to short a coin then hack and kill it.

[djm34]

What we need is a short market. Then their would be financial incentive to short a coin then hack and kill it.

I don't think this could be done...
The 51% attack would require large hashing power, which would be very difficult on many coin (scrypt and x11) so basically that would work only on coin which aren't popular and are not a danger to altcoin.
The real danger comes from all the IPO/pyramidal schemes which are now launched on a daily basis and most of the time and there isn't much which can be done as the btc are "invested" prior to the launch of the coin.

Considering incentive to short a coin, good but who would pay for it ?
And who would decide if a coin is good or not ?
And what would prevent generalization of attack between coins, blackmail, corruption, etc...

The main problem at the moment is that many of the new comers don't care at all, it wasn't like that when I started (and it was less than a year ago...) when people didn't like the crap some dev was putting, they were complaining and moving on. Now absolutely everything has became acceptable.
I already spent too much time on some obvious scams, telling people it was an obvious scam, nobody gives a shit...
while they are likely to loose their money... That's pathetic.  

The problem is also some big players which are clearly organizing (or actively participating in) those scam and without their agreement any regulation won't be impossible.
Trying to ask the Mafia to regulate the crime market would be easier...