How to end Bitcoin with as little as 15% of hashpower efficiently

[waaat?]

Do you really think, professional miners would trash their expensive hardware, they can't use for anything else than mining, when the difficulty goes up? That would be pretty stupid from an economical POV.

no they don't of course. That's why the attack takes place at exact the time many miners close down due to being unprofitable anyways (on their own). But it says that in the OP aswell. Short: Anticipated natural decline of hash (due to being unprofitable) would be reinforced by the attacker.
The attacker uses an anticipated and predictable decline in hash (which would be happening without him doing anything) to his advantage.

[turvarya]

Title needs to be changed to, "How to slightly inconvenience bitcoin by throwing 70 million dollars away"

I wonder, what such an attack would actually cost. I think, even if you have the money to buy it, the market might not be able to provide the hardware instantly.
Try buying 10% of all iPhone 6.

[LeChatNoir]

The Bitcoin network is much stronger than that of his clones. You can't really compare them.
There are even people in the network, who still mine for the fun of it or just to support Bitcoin, not to make a profit.

Do you really think there is more then 0.000000001% of the hashrate provided by people who mine at loss just to support bitcoin?

POW fanatics you are so delusional.

[Flashman]

Title needs to be changed to, "How to slightly inconvenience bitcoin by throwing 70 million dollars away"

I wonder, what such an attack would actually cost. I think, even if you have the money to buy it, the market might not be able to provide the hardware instantly.
Try buying 10% of all iPhone 6.

Yah I think you'd have to buy up 3 or 4 months of Antminer production or something.

[rix5]

this attack dwarfs a 51% attack by several orders of magnitude. Does this attack have a name or wiki-page yet?

[Flashman]

Do you really think there is more then 0.000000001% of the hashrate provided by people who mine at loss just to support bitcoin?

Heh, hyperbole/math fail. I don't have to think, I know so. I have 0.00006% of the network running at a loss at the moment, wrong by a factor of 60,000 just for one guy running a few gh? You should be a politician. You're not even close to right if it was only one guy in the world still running a single AM USB miner.

[Flashman]

this attack dwarfs a 51% attack by several orders of magnitude. Does this attack have a name or wiki-page yet?

Wat? 15-20% is now "several orders of maginitude" different than 51%?


Can we get some numerically literate commentary PUHLEASE.

[waaat?]

this attack dwarfs a 51% attack by several orders of magnitude. Does this attack have a name or wiki-page yet?

not that i was aware of

Do you really think there is more then 0.000000001% of the hashrate provided by people who mine at loss just to support bitcoin?

Heh, hyperbole/math fail. I don't have to think, I know so. I have 0.00006% of the network running at a loss at the moment, wrong by a factor of 60,000 just for one guy running a few gh? You should be a politician. You're not even close to right if it was only one guy in the world still running a single AM USB miner.

mining doesn't make sense when you don't find blocks. You can mine all you want in that situation without finding blocks once it has gone down too far.

[rix5]

this attack dwarfs a 51% attack by several orders of magnitude. Does this attack have a name or wiki-page yet?

Wat? 15-20% is now "several orders of maginitude" different than 51%?


Can we get some numerically literate commentary PUHLEASE.

i was talking about the fatality of the attack which would be enorm compared to a little doublespend.
Do you even comprehend the topic or you just try to deny it without even looking at/understanding it?

What the guy means is total doomsday; and relatively cheap considered the possible successrate and impact.
To resolve this issue one would need to hardfork bitcoin and change difficulty retarget. It's a total vulnerability as it is now.

[Q7]

Well, although technically is possible but what if the fundamental on strong buying kicks in once you force the price down? Bitcoin will be too cheap which will attract buying and cause the price to go up again before the miners shuts off. Maybe we underestimated this factor.

[altcoin hitler]

OP, it's an outdated shitcoin, we know that. Why cry so much about it? Are you holding the bag or what?
It's a non-issue for every other coin. People telling you Bitcoin would be the only thing and can't fail obviously are detached from reality.
I think it's interesting but no big deal for crypto in general. It's a bitcoin-only issue.

Better diversify and stop crying. It's going down the drain one way or another.

[waaat?]

Well, although technically is possible but what if the fundamental on strong buying kicks in once you force the price down? Bitcoin will be too cheap which will attract buying and cause the price to go up again before the miners shuts off. Maybe we underestimated this factor.

people won't be buying when they can not transact it - they will sell instead.

If a transaction takes half a day you get huge overload on the chain too as everyone wants to transact. The thing once started is a chainreaction.
Slow blocks, long time to wait to get into a block with the tx, etc
The queue for transactions will be enorm with the slow blocks as all of a sudden more transactions need to be processed too. As was suggested spamming the network at the same moment with microtransactions makes sure it's imediately defunct and almost nobody will be able to transact. The very few who get lucky to get a their tx through will have to wait for hours.
And you know how it is: once the big selling is initiated it can go on for weeks - only making it all worse.

[altcoin hitler]

 

[Flashman]

What the guy means is total doomsday;

Ohhhh, like the millennium bug, I'm seeing what you're smoking now.

[rix5]

What the guy means is total doomsday;

Ohhhh, like the millennium bug, I'm seeing what you're smoking now.

just wait for it after that idiot posted it here. The enemy is reading it too. Last time in here some spam was suggested to attack the network and 3 weeks later it happened. Can't wait for this to be tried out. Will certainly be epic.

[razibuzouzou]

Title needs to be changed to, "How to slightly inconvenience bitcoin by throwing 70 million dollars away"

+1

[Flashman]

Summer 2011, hashrate dropped off 33%, bitcoin didn't die.
January 2013, hashrate dropped off 15%, bitcoin didn't die.

[waaat?]

Summer 2011, hashrate dropped off 33%, bitcoin didn't die.
January 2013, hashrate dropped off 15%, bitcoin didn't die.

of course. 40% to 60% would be problematic. But i see everyone is just busy denying without acknowledging it or looking for ways to resolve the issue. I think that's a dangerous notion too.
The constant denial by the fanboys of everything that threatens their ability to find the greater fool to sell to as fast as possible is another strong reason not to be invested in btc too much. Just too much denying of facts

This is what a solution does not look like:


the problem is not new and the solution is developed already. All i did was combining known vulnerabilities to a bigger picture showing some risks which many didn't even know were there.

[deine mudder]

if you would DDOS some larger pools at the same time and would be able to at least temporary take them down this could be a ride.
Getting better by the minute.  

Don't say it wouldn't be possible for a rich individual to turn the killswitch with an orchestrated attack because it is.

[elasticband]

if 1 block takes 10minutes to solve and the hashrate dropped 50%, this would mean a block would take, what 20 minutes to solve?

so lets just say that bitcoin network dropped 80% of it's hashrate, how long would it take the network to find a block and process transactions?

Still faster than WU or my bank for sending value to the other side of the world.

i do not see your apocalyptic scenario killing the bitcoin network