ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It

[thx1164]

Here it says over 50% is not that bad and the attack is not worthwhile.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power

How is THIS:

"An attacker that controls more than 50% of the network's computing power can, for the time that he is in control, exclude and modify the ordering of transactions. This allows him to:

Reverse transactions that he sends while he's in control. This has the potential to double-spend transactions that previously had already been seen in the block chain.

Prevent some or all transactions from gaining any confirmations

Prevent some or all other miners from mining any valid blocks"

And THIS :

"if this attack is successfully executed, it will be difficult or impossible to "untangle" the mess created -- any changes the attacker makes might become permanent."

not that bad??? Are you from Bizarro World?

*edit: No offence implied.

[1713485056]

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[tkone]

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-security-of-transaction-block-chains

this seems that anyone with enough power to actually make such an attack, would be better of just mining and making money from btc or and together from transactions,

check out that video.


EDIT:
I CANT WAIT FOR THIS WEEKS DIVIDENDS TO INCLUDE SO MANY SALES THAT ASICMINER SHARE WILL GO UP UP UP!!!! CANT WAIT!!! MOAR DIVIDENDZZZZZZ!!!!!!

[philipma1957]

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-security-of-transaction-block-chains

this seems that anyone with enough power to actually make such an attack, would be better of just mining and making money from btc or and together from transactions,

check out that video.


EDIT:
I CANT WAIT FOR THIS WEEKS DIVIDENDS TO INCLUDE SO MANY SALES THAT ASICMINER SHARE WILL GO UP UP UP!!!! CANT WAIT!!! MOAR DIVIDENDZZZZZZ!!!!!!

Dividends sound good to me.  Last week stock price got close to 2.85 before the dividends posted. I wonder what they will do this week.

 Tat.AM got over .03  last week.

[iCEBREAKER]

If friedcat has a surplus of ASIC hardware that can not be deployed for bitcoin mining, then why not mine another sha256 altcoin (can can not be merge mined) like PPC?

The PPC proceeds can easily be converted into BTC on exchanges like BTC-e.

Look at the volumes on BTC-e. Then try to calculate the revenues, also take a look at the market cap of PPC on Dustoin (about 28.289 BTC right now). Then crunch these numbers, and see how unsustainable doing this would be. After 24 hours, expect PPC exchange rate to plummet on a 1:10 scale at best...

So, interesting idea, but not a sustainable one.

This is a great idea!  Getting a major source of steady hashpower like AM would provide a lot of security and validation (PR) to PPC. 

We must not treat the altcoins like delicate flowers.  Like their mother, they benefit from added exposure and network capacity.

Of course there would be some increased volatility as the market adjusts to the new situation, but that's hardly a reason to ignore this opportunity for expansion.

We've seen the price of every coin rise in proportion to difficulty, because the more secure they are the more actual and potential value their networks represent.

[kano]

I think you're missing something. The network hash rate doesn't "vary". It doesn't go up and down like that chart says. It's fairly constant (probably), growing slowly.

The chart you're seeing is an estimation of the network hash rate based on blocks found. This is what makes it vary, the fact that we're deducing hash rate from "number of hashes found below difficulty per unit of time".

You can't have a script running that makes sure ASICMiner doesn't have more than 50% of the total network hash rate at any point in time, because you don't know what total network hash rate is at some point in time. It can only be deduced, in retrospect, at a certainty that increases with the length of the period over which we average.

The spikes are really coming from luck because of found blocks? Interesting if true... till now i was under the impression that it spikes because of lowering or rising hashspeed... but it makes sense to calculate the speed from found blocks because thats the nearest you can get to hashrate. But i really thought the luck doesnt have such a variance over time. I mean the chart seems to show that it calculates only 3 times a day. I thought the average over such timeframe should prevent good enough to have spikes of 30%... but i didnt think it through really, youre right...

As sipa's graphs show, you really need to go up to a 3-day average, to get a somewhat stable graph: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

That being said, there is essentially no way to know whether people are continually turning their rigs on and off in a coordinated fashion, or getting lucky, just by looking at when blocks are found.

I'm not good with statistics, but I'm sure you can determine the probability of, for example, 7 blocks being found in an hour instead of 6, or 160 blocks being found in a day instead of 144, and I don't think it's small.

Remember that only around 144 blocks are found per day. It doesn't take more than 15 extra blocks to be found in a day for the 1-day average to increase by 10%.

No, the 3 day average is also extremely unreliable and extremely unstable. Look at the graph and you can clearly see that.
That is also why they have the 7 and 14 day estimates on that graph, but ...
Bitcoin's 14 day re-targeting is not set to 14 days to make in drag out for too long, it's set to 14 days due to the need for it to be.
It's not rare to see a pool fail to find a block until 5 times (or find within 1/5 of) the difficulty ...

[ffssixtynine]

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-security-of-transaction-block-chains

this seems that anyone with enough power to actually make such an attack, would be better of just mining and making money from btc or and together from transactions,

And you've missed the point. Anyone performing that attack is probably doing it for malicious purposes - ie to take down Bitcoin. Those purposes may vary but it certainly isn't going to be to make a few quid. It'd be to make a stonking amount before anyone noticed - very difficult AND they'd have to launder it back into fiat or an asset super-quickly as the value would tank once spotted, or most likely to disrupt the network.

It's not all about money and sane behaviour.

[Mausini]

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-security-of-transaction-block-chains

this seems that anyone with enough power to actually make such an attack, would be better of just mining and making money from btc or and together from transactions,

And you've missed the point. Anyone performing that attack is probably doing it for malicious purposes - ie to take down Bitcoin. Those purposes may vary but it certainly isn't going to be to make a few quid. It'd be to make a stonking amount before anyone noticed - very difficult AND they'd have to launder it back into fiat or an asset super-quickly as the value would tank once spotted, or most likely to disrupt the network.

It's not all about money and sane behaviour.

I don't get why this is discussed over and over again. Does everybody who just stumbled upon bitcoin have to publish his most recent learnings here? No offence, but please find the appropriate threads. Thank you

[hammurabi]

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-security-of-transaction-block-chains

this seems that anyone with enough power to actually make such an attack, would be better of just mining and making money from btc or and together from transactions,

And you've missed the point. Anyone performing that attack is probably doing it for malicious purposes - ie to take down Bitcoin. Those purposes may vary but it certainly isn't going to be to make a few quid. It'd be to make a stonking amount before anyone noticed - very difficult AND they'd have to launder it back into fiat or an asset super-quickly as the value would tank once spotted, or most likely to disrupt the network.

It's not all about money and sane behaviour.

I don't get why this is discussed over and over again. Does everybody who just stumbled upon bitcoin have to publish his most recent learnings here? No offence, but please find the appropriate threads. Thank you

I just realized... that...
If this thread contains more than 51% posts about the 51-attack-on-bitcoin it will go Ka-Booom and destroy planet Earth.

Fortunately we are still below 25% I believe

[matt4054]

If everyone (including me for this one) posting anything off-topic here would be charged a 0.1 BTC fee payable to AM, our dividends would probably go higher every week ;-)

[tkone]

ok so heres something on topic that i been thinking about,

few days ago there was news about china blocking sms about bitcoins, or something like that,
could that be a step by china to try to block bitcoins? what if they make more steps or something more major?

isnt asicminer in china? how will this affect the company? or even more affect us the share holders?

just something i been thinking about and watching the news for.

ELAZAR

[Mausini]

ok so heres something on topic that i been thinking about,

few days ago there was news about china blocking sms about bitcoins, or something like that,
could that be a step by china to try to block bitcoins? what if they make more steps or something more major?

isnt asicminer in china? how will this affect the company? or even more affect us the share holders?

just something i been thinking about and watching the news for.

ELAZAR

I dont know. I guess it was just some random misunderstanding at china telecom.

But here is something interesting: USB Eruptor crossing 1000 USD on ebay!!!

Ebay

What up!!??!!!

[matt4054]

ok so heres something on topic that i been thinking about,

few days ago there was news about china blocking sms about bitcoins, or something like that,
could that be a step by china to try to block bitcoins? what if they make more steps or something more major?

isnt asicminer in china? how will this affect the company? or even more affect us the share holders?

just something i been thinking about and watching the news for.

ELAZAR

Yes I would also like more information about this.

I think there are possible backup plans for AM, even if China were to forbid the use of Bitcoin. First, mining bitcoins or using them as a payment method are two different things. Second, if AM were to be affected by a BTC ban in China, manufacuring mining hardware and exporting it would probably not be covered by the ban.

A seizure of all the hardware at the datacenter is the only real threat that I could see here (but -- before someone tells me I'm FUDding here -- I don't think it will happen)

[matt4054]

But here is something interesting: USB Eruptor crossing 1000 USD on ebay!!!

Ebay

What up!!??!!!

I'm puzzled by the auction price breaking $1000, there are many open group buys here where you can get it at friedcat's price (1.99 BTC + GB fees). Oh well, supply and demand, I guess. But it's surprising, anyway.

[CMMPro]

This is a rehash of week old FUD. Not even worth talking about.

[CMMPro]

But here is something interesting: USB Eruptor crossing 1000 USD on ebay!!!

Ebay

What up!!??!!!

I'm puzzled by the auction price breaking $1000, there are many open group buys here where you can get it at friedcat's price (1.99 BTC + GB fees). Oh well, supply and demand, I guess. But it's surprising, anyway.

I have a feeling some stupid ebay bidders think they are getting 10 USB Erupters for that price...no one who knows anything about them would pay that much when you can get them for ~1/4 that price.

[Mausini]

But here is something interesting: USB Eruptor crossing 1000 USD on ebay!!!

Ebay

What up!!??!!!

I'm puzzled by the auction price breaking $1000, there are many open group buys here where you can get it at friedcat's price (1.99 BTC + GB fees). Oh well, supply and demand, I guess. But it's surprising, anyway.

I have a feeling some stupid ebay bidders think they are getting 10 USB Erupters for that price...no one who knows anything about them would pay that much when you can get them for ~1/4 that price.

And all of the other open auctions (>25) have bids north of 400 USD!! Seems like 1.99 BTC wasn't such a high price after all...
One reason could be that interested buyers might have problems to get BTC

[matt4054]

One reason could be that interested buyers might have problems to get BTC

Yes, I think you are right.

Just like others, I already thought about setting up a shop in USD with PayPal and resell AM hardware on it, but the risk you need to take stocking mining hardware WITHOUT mining with it is just too high IMO.

[bobboooiie]

@tkone Iam not even going to quote that... But boy did you save us with that topic !

[bitman442]

@tkone Iam not even going to quote that... But boy did you save us with that topic !

Yes, thank you. I've been checking this thread a few time a day only to find that it has advanced a couple pages each time rehashing the same old crap I've been reading about for 2 years. Sorry for adding more useless posts but I had to get that off my chest. No more 51% talk please!

[stripykitteh]

Just to change the subject (or maybe not  ), the estimated total AM hashrate is now 23.71THash (a record) and climbing. I presume this means that the power and LAN issues have been resolved?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkPdXsQFT-vIdHRVUjQ5Ql9BQWR6OENLMkhyUktUblE#gid=14

Network percentage is about 27.25% (has been as high as 29% before).

Happy hashing.