Topic: 3 Bitcoin Doomsday Scenarios I can't find much discussion on... (Read 6177 times)

The only bad thing I could see if someone comes in and takes control over the whole network and starts cashing in on all the coins.

@OP
imho you points stated arent very likely to be a doomsday scenario for bitcoin.

Here is my list ordered after likeliness:

1. Nuclear war
2. Global killer asteroid
3. GRB that hits earth

Oh i forgot something:

4. Illuminati and co.

It takes a lot time before people get convinced to give Bitcoin a chance. A lot people at the very beginning when they hear about Bitcoin they are quite skeptical and think in a negative way. If you explain everything to them in an easy manner, then they surely will let their skeptical way of thinking vanish and turn that into a positive when they see Bitcoin has a real purpose and will benefit us all.

So... I've reached some greater insights over the past few months...

Globally, wars are declining. And should a global war scenario break out, it will not be *that* global... ie. the internet will survive.

Individuals using Bitcoin don't have to worry about forks and such as most hashing power is in the hands of a bunch of groups - who know the hand that's feeding them, and who won't compromise their own network by getting greedy and trying to slip backdoors- or a way to gain control over each others' networks, into their codebases.

  Oh my... private blockchains or competing p2p nets?! Well... there's still a risk - the total amount of venture capital that has gone into Bitcoin is still less than half of the US Black Ops budget. Technically, the banks of the world could still get together and launch a concerted effort against Bitcoin, in favor of something similar, over which they have more control and which is run by p2p nets that favor them more...

But: 1) That window of opportunity is shrinking, fast ... and
2) There are already so many finance people into Bitcoin, and many of these already stink in the same ways that banks do. All the scammers and exploiters of the world are already here... so...

I think Bitcoin it is...

Still, there is intelligence about Bitcoin that is only tracked by individual companies - and it would be to Bitcoins benefit if this was in the public domain. Because information asymmetry creates opportunity for disruption, and a disruption to Bitcoin will destroy a lot of economic value that has been built up...

So Kudo's to people like Blockchain.info, who make as much information public as possible. That's the real spirit of the internet, p2p and Bitcoin: Openness.

(Not to be confused with transparency or the be juxtaposed against privacy - these is a difference between knowing how something works, and having access and being able to learn about it and understand it, and knowing about the people involved, their desires, motives and private lives, and bad ideas <- It's up to the Openness to show them better ideas, but ultimately they still have to discover those for themselves.)

And why the hell wouldn't they follow? If they own Bitcoins and they want the best for Bitcoin they will do follow. Its better than doing it once Bitcoin is popular.

I don't think, forking is a problem. Most people don't care, the rest has to follow or they will be pretty much alone in their fork.

There are a lot of big problems concerning Bitcoin now, mainly the fork problem which needs to be addressed due future blockchain bloat, the exchanges being hacked, and the mainstream public still not being able to understand Bitcoin let alone use it, which translates on a shitty price.

Time will prove us right tho.

how about the current doomsday?

I have several... but a DOS offline wallet would be required to make them useful.... and it might take hours to form a tx on the 386.

http://www.coldpi.com/

and here is also a picture of a unicorn

Show me a PC like that, and I'll show you a unicorn!

Enigma machine was not so much a mathematically sound encryption device, as a devious mechanical obfuscater.

I'm not talking about a crypto backdoor here but a backdoor in the implementation. For instance, in CheckSig (interpreter.cpp),
Of course, this one is super obvious and won't fool anyone but let's say that something similar has been slipped in voluntarily or not. If enough of the network is running the same code base (and the reference client dominates at the moment), one could create a big fork.
On the other hand, this part of the code is very sensitive and lots of people have looked at it. It would have to be quite subtle.
Once they use the backdoor, it will be noticed and patched very quickly. The coins should return to their real owner then.

Not all mathematicians would have to be involved. Again, the Enigma machine is an interesting historical precedent. Besides, it's enough to have an evil genius who cracks it. It's unlikely to happen because when the community gets close to a solution, the method is deemed unsafe and replaced like SHA-256 replaced SHA-1. You would have to crack various cryptography functions too.

It's not a secret wireless transmitter but cleverly leveraging the hardware you already possess. Systems get more and more integrated to reduce cost. You end up with beefy configurations when in the past you would have to buy parts by parts. At then end, your machine could have wifi on chip. Also, they are not completely off if power is provided. It's possible to have something running in low power mode, though I agree it's difficult. The upside is that if they steal your coins this way, no one is going to believe you.

*hyperventilate* *hyperventilate* *hyperventilate*

Can't you see he's right, if someone today rebuilt Bletchley Park's codebreaking machine Colossus out of modern parts it would be a complete and unmitigated disaster, they'd be able to break 4 character brainwallets in mere months!

ad 1.
That is not how Bitcoin/cryptography works. You can't sign transaction with some kind of master key

ad 2.
On a mathematical level cryptography is safe, unless it is a conspiracy that involves all mathematics and they just lied to us for decades.

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For offline signing you would need some secret wireless transmitter, that does send the key. That would be some real hard core conspiracy.

1. The software is compromised. Worst case scenario, every node runs software that has an intentional backdoor. For example, it accepts a special signature which by passes ECDSA verification. Any coin can be transferred by using the backdoor.

Result: The blockchain is bogus - it will have to be reverted once the backdoor is detected. Massive disruption. I don't see how to undo the damages. Will have to refund a lot of people I guess.

How likely? The code is open source but not too many people review it. More over, the vast majority of the network is running the reference client in some version. So if the change was well hidden, it could happen. Similar to shellshock or heartbleed, etc.

2. Crypto is broken secretly. Like when the allies broke Enigma but never disclosed it. Very hard because several unrelated crypto algorithms are involved. They would have to be all broken for this to work (SHA, RIPEMD, ECDSA).

Result: Can steal anyone's coin but unlike 1. it cannot be easily proven. You become instantly rich.

How likely? Much much harder than 1.

3. A hidden hardware circuit transmits everything to a hidden organization.

Result: They can steal your keys because at one point or another the key has to be in memory of a computer.

How likely? Even if it's done, the sheer amount of data would make this quite impracticable. Considering how long it takes to take down terrorist cells with all the intelligence resources put to it, I doubt that anyone is capable of sifting through that much data.
One could reduce the difficulty by targeting PC Windows XP or what not, but then savvy users should be able to avoid this threat.
 

If it is a PC that was never connected to the internet, it is not. Unless you want to use magic again, which is unfair.
Furthermore, I just wanted to show, that you can not really predict how private keys are generated. You can't even predict, when a private key/public address was generated, since I can generate one today and use it in 10 years and you wouldn't know.

This is a very valid point...

I have not sifted through the developer lists at fear of getting sucked in and never coming back out. Instead I'm just looking to see what vital statistics I can find. It seems the door is still wide open for someone to publish some more, and stake a claim...

It also makes my point more valid: It's a lucrative target and information about its possible exploitations should be out in the open. I'm saying: let's calculate the lower and upper bounds of the potential cost for all the possible large-scale attacks, even if they are side-channel attacks, social engineering attacks, etc.

Perhaps calculating and/or tracking those metrics will reveal more insight into its price fluctuations...

What are you on about? What part of: IF YOU DID IT ON YOUR PC IT IS PROBABLY COMPROMISED don't you understand?!

So, how do you calculate the amount of private keys from people who role dices to make them. How do you count the people who let their cat run over their keyboard to generate it? There are a lot of possibilities to create private keys, without even software.
Your last point is just stupid: Used Bitcoin addresses and generated private keys are just not the same thing.
So, yes you can collect some data, and make a guess, but it wouldn't be a good one.