Topic: Bitcoin's 10000 TH network is extremely vulnerable (Read 5395 times)

Opinions on this forum are getting funnier and funnier.  You think that when the US government declares all aspects of something illegal with threat of severe jail time, that it stops it happening?  If that were true there would be no 'terrorism', no 'murder', no 'cocaine imports from south america'.
Get real man, all it does is drive the price up!

It will become even more of an issue when block rewards halve and mining becomed unprofitable if the price of btc doesn't rise. Miners will shutdown and drop the hashrate.

You'd think so, but that's not strictly true.

Banks regularly test the limits of what they are allowed to do to make money. When they go too far they are fined, they have all sorts of internal meetings and investigations, procedures are put in place and people will (and do) get pushed out.

Then they immediately start to test the limits of what they are allowed to do to make money.

I agree, the levels of fines and the lack of jail time/senior management heads rolling is unfortunate - signs of our weak/compomised law enforcement agencies and powerless shareholder boards.

Of course none of that means GS or any other megabank would go so far as to sit down and say, "let's spend $50m to break Bitcoin". That goes well beyond testing the limits of what they are allowed to do to make money.

As you rightly point out, it's even less likely now, given the insignificance of Bitcoin, relatively speaking. And when Bitcoin is big enough to cause real concern, squashing it will be next to impossible.

Far more likely, the banks will use their influence to pressure governments and central banks into acting against Bitcoin. Look at what happened in China. Now imagine the US government and Fed making similar declarations.

Just curious what you would rank as the top few to get into as a hedge.

JPM and other megabanks face lawsuits all the time. Didn't JPM recently pay a fine of $ 80 billion or something on that order of magnitude? It didn't hurt them one bit, since it's just the cost of doing business for them. They're expecting such fines anyway, so they make sure they have the cash to spend whenever the shit hits the fan.

And does it look like Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein cares about their reputation? Remember, these players are so well-connected in political and judicial circles that they're never going to jail anyway. At most their banks get some silly 100 billion dollar fine before continuing doing business as usual. It's nothing to them, and what reputation they do have isn't hurt the slightest by crushing something as small and insignificant as a cryptocurrency. And if it is hurt, they don't care anyway. (Arguably, their reputation (among the common man) has already gone down the drain for the last five years or so. Yet, they continue doing business as usual.)

I want Bitcoin to succeed. That's why I hope someone can address the OP's points.

Yes, it's a game of whack-a-mole, since a dozen other cryptocurrencies pop up if the banksters decide to destroy BTC. But can cryptocurrency as a concept ever truly succeed (i.e. achieve mainstream adoption) if it's just destroyed every time some serious financial player sees it as a threat?

Currently, BTC is tiny, so the megabanks lack incentive to destroy it. It's not a real threat to them yet.

But hey, I'm a newbie, so maybe I'm totally wrong. That'd be a relief for me.

You're nuts if you think a big bank would ever do this. Even if it is chump change to them, which it probably is, they simply would not do it.

Just like they don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to crush other competitors in this way. It would lead to criminal prosecutions, massive lawsuits and irrevocable damage to reputation.

A country maybe, but they'd have to really want to do it. Which means Bitcoin would have to be very significant. Which means many times its current size. Which means very significantly more difficult to bring down.

But $400 million (or a bit more) isn't a lot of money for players such as GS or JPM Chase. If such banks start seeing BTC as a threat somewhere down the line, I'm sure they'd be willing to spend a measly 400 m. to take it down. That's just the cost of doing business for them, just like paying $ 80 billion fines. It's a small sum for the megabanksters, and a sum they'd gladly spend if it meant they got rid of a serious competitor.

Spoken like someone who owns a lot of alt coins and hardly any BTC... 

I actually hope BTC fails so other more advanced alts can take its place.

Time for bitcoin to be retired imo. Its a prototype that's run its course. It's served us well, but its time to move on. There's much better altcoins around.

Difficulty is irrelevant. What is important is cost. Broadly speaking you would expect the cost to be proportionate to the price of btc, because the more btc is worth the more efforts will be put into mining and hence the greater the cost of a 51% attack.

Thus the real defence against such an attack is simply the continued growth and success of bitcoin.

There would very likely be liability for tortious conspiracy to injure and goodness knows what else. There is no way in a million years that the board of a large company would authorise such a scheme, with the horrendous associated legal exposure. Once you factor in punitive damages, loss of profit etc, even a company as large as GS would probably be ruined.  

Governments on the other hand are a different matter ....

This.

Bank spends $20 million, destroys Bitcoin. People change their code slightly, now using LiteCoin.

Bank spends $20 million, destroys Litecoin. People change their code slightly to PPC.

Same thing happens, by now the code change is just the click of a button, points to the next crypto-currency.

Meanwhile, bank is spending a lot of money on something that does not increase their revenue.

Change that from bank to government...after enough money spent, it takes a toll on their economy. If it is a government where the people have a say, there would be protests about their foolish spending to attack something that hurts nobody.

As if any powerful organisation is going to piss about in the bowels of the bitcoin network. They don't need to. The rich and the powerful all watch each other's backs. If you think about the banking crisis THEY caused, an how little happened to the people responsible ..they all protected each other to the extent that they didn't even stop bankers getting massive bonuses during the height of the crisis..although they made noises that they were going to.

IF they wanted it gone, a few connected people who all piss in the same pot get together, a few phone calls, "Hiya Barak, let's close bitcoin down mate, it's costing us profits?" "Really? OK , let's say a lot of terrorists use it shall we, ban it? I'll tell Cameron to do the same. " "Great mate, thanks!"

Game over. Hardly broke sweat. Old boy's networks run the financial establishments in the free world and the governments too, have done for centuries.

Yes and everybody knows about it. Keep in mind ghash is a collaborative effort. One miner with a very high network percentage would not appear overnight or otherwise go unnoticed.

So only Quarkcoin will survive?

Here's a game theory conclusion as to why logical entities wouldn't invest in 51% attack to do it.

Even if a 51% attack automatically "destroys" Bitcoin, people would just jump to a diverse group of cryptocurrencies. It would be a wackamole game for the attacker. Everytime an altcoin is taken down, the attacker loses some money, while the coinfolks are net neutral. The attacker, expecting this, would best not play that game in the first place.

Of course a successful attack on all crypto-coins is possible using more creative means.

Pfft. Forget financial institutions.

Any government that wants to kill Bitcoin... they have billion dollar signals intelligence budgets. They can perform attacks. Period.

They sent out a press release about hitting 51%.. https://ghash.io/ghashio_press_release.pdf  I'm pretty sure any large financial institution can replicate what ghash.io got and blow past 51% with a small slice of their IT spend.

Look at that link.. https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs Ghash.io is getting pretty close, 39%

they are not going to buy it from KNC or cointerra.....

jesus christ are some people really this..... i thought a minimum intelligence level is required to own bitcoins.