I started this a few weeks back and BCX's recent turnaround on Monero inspired me to finish it. I own around 100XMR so I keep an eye on it and wanted to see why one person appeared to be taken so seriously when countless other trolls are brushed off. People keep saying "he's killed many coins" as evidence of his crypto skills so I decided to take a look at his post history to see for myself what he's done. In brief, seems to be a lot of talking and not much doing.
BCX has been around the altcoin scene virtually since it started, and has been tirelessly promoting himself ever since. Often accused of trolling by
those in his targets, the truth seems more that he enjoys the notoriety of being "the shitcoin killer" and sees himself as the community appointed Sherriff of Cryptoland.
More cynical members may see him as an expert market manipulator who reworks several common themes in his threats in order to cause mass
selling. If he is able to borrow large amounts of his target coin in advance he can then benefit by "shorting", either way he is then able to pick up coins
at a discount price, then sell them later for a large profit when his threat disappears and the price recovers. Tracing BCX's history we can see how he
developed his technique:
BCX was an early BTC GPU miner, who then profited from the first wave of altcoins by mining and selling during their boom phase. In all fairness he probably
got legitimately interested in attack methods and unlike most people potentially had the hashpower to enact a fork attack. In fact BCX admitted to being
paid to test ArtForz's Sept 11th proof of concept attack on GeistGeld (
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/alert-bitcoinexpress-says-solidcoin-is-next-43754) and then within 24hrs announces the
following:
The NameCoin attack -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.519523Back in Sept 2011 BCX picked up on work by Artforz about the possibility of manipulating the difficulty calculation to enable a 51% attack with much less
hashpower. BCX seems to have deleted his initial post so unfortunately we can't see exactly what he was claiming.
The IOcoin attack -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.529358Funnily enough another missing first post, but the theme is the same.
NameCoin attack relaunched!
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoinexpress-relaunching-attack-on-namecoin-cause-he-got-butthurt-by-a-comment-45420BCX denies threatening another NameCoin attack (well the first one didnt actually happen) because somebody upset him
"Solidcoin 2.0 - Target acquired and eliminated"
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-47722Definitely a theme here, but deleting posts and titles doesnt hide everything. Interestingly Tacotime appears in this thread! Seems the launch was a bit of
a mess and plenty of odd happenings, but nothing really proving a BCX attack.
BCX goes fairly quiet for a while, perhaps diverted into other pursuits, but returns in the summer of 2013 when BTC hype increases again, however BCX seems
to be concentrating on mining altcoins. Funnily enough he pops up in Nov 2013 in a "WDC 51% attacked" thread, but only to refute the claim. By the end of
November he is mining Tagcoin, with some impressive hashpower -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3769972 but then he appears to
return to his old tricks shortly after losing a bunch of TAG thanks to a fork:
TAGcoin timewarp attack???
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3762232 - BCX claims to be timewarp attacking one chain and
promoting another to force a fork against Cryptsy.
GameCoin forked? jan 31st 2014 -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/a-user-here-threatened-to-multi-fork-gamecoin-within-24-hours-what-can-we-do-435921 - BCX says he "thumped" it for 30 minutes to prove
something
BCX seems to get back into the idea of 51% attacks at the end of Jan 2014, claiming he has developed a modified timewarp attack which is nearly 100%
effective with enough hashpower -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/psa-is-a-51-attack-really-all-that-bad-because-its-looming-440201Interesting bit of BCX history - he got into BTC with an early ArtForz miner -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoin-before-2011-how-did-you-get-involved-472120BCX the mother forker -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ddos-attacks-466601 - BCX says he has forked more coins than he can remember, guess
he must have kept quiet about most of them?
AuroraCoin gravity well timewarp -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-504103 - the famous attack, BCX starts by reminding everyone yet again that he
has forked more coins than he can remember, and now Aurora is in his sights...
AuroraScam? Whilst promoting his KGW exploit BCX also takes time to tell everyone what a scam Aurora is -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-505534 - certainly was a dodgy coin!
Whilst waiting for AUR block 5400 to launch his KGW exploit, BCX confirms he has attacked "two dozen coins, pools and several exchanges", not sure which
though?
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-504103March 19th 2014 BCX joins in on "OperationShitcoin Cleanup" -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/operation-shitcoin-cleanout-and-clean-up-has-begun-join-the-revolution-re-open-522235March 27th - ?BCX KGW exploits AuroraCoin? -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-538085 - As he had proclaimed many times it
appears some form of timewarp exploit screwed the difficulty causing the blockchain to freeze up....although he did keep saying that his KGW exploit was
coming at the block 5400 hard fork?
March 29th - BCX confirms what to expect from his KGW exploit -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-545475Someone beats BCX to the AUR attack -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-546338 - although it was the planned hard fork point it
seems things went haywire
April 1st - BCX says he had started his KGW exploit but then agrees to hold off to allow a fix after dev admits the risk is real -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/regarding-auroracoin-tw-exploit-fix-included-552895July - BCX has nothing against Monero, despite claiming he has found some major exploitable flaws in the CryptoNote code he thinks it has potential -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-709197Sept 14th - BCX has changed his position on Monero, now deciding it is a "scam coin piece of shit" -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/monero-is-a-hedge-to-bitcoin-782827Sept 20th - BCX still has no intention to attack Monero -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/delete-786201Sept 20th - Gets very confusing as BCX announces a 72hr countdown to Monero attack then appears to retract it. Price still down significantly compared to
previous week though -
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8907627So it seems that BCX has only actually completed one attack, and for all we know that was just renting his hashpower to other parties, so we'll have to wait and see whether his Monero exploit materializes.