BTW: when you branch off a new alt coin as in your scenario here everyone that has Bitcoins at that point also gets the same number of your new alt coins. We can cash them all in! We can cash them all in as fast as we can find some poor sucker that want to buy them (for real Bitcoins). We can increase our Bitcoin holdings as we crash your silly little alt coin and pound it into the dust.
Those poor saps that are left holding your new alt would be the real losers - hopefully your cartel.
Actually, as long as the format remains the same which the silly alt that attempted this did (I don't remember what it was called, maybe bitcoin2?), any transactions you make that are valid on either chain will propagate to both. Otherwise the alt would specifically have to create a new addressing/tx format incompatible with bitcoin1 and simply carry over the original tx out set.
If the shorter chain is propagating transactions from the longer chain, it is no longer ignoring it and thus giving it credibility.
Comparing this attack to some attack that did not have sufficient hash rate, staying power, and didn't attack when Bitcoin is widespread and valuable is not a credible retort.
Amazon's customers will still keep their balances onchain, and the Amazon "1-click" will simply deduct from the block chain with a normal block chain transaction.
What I
did claim is that it would require a big suspension of disbelief to think that this will be the norm. Of course, it's a requirement for your nonsensical attack.
Use of "nonsensical" is FUD. You have disproven nothing.
and also the attacker's excess hash rate applied to dropping transactions from the shorter chain. No solution can stop the attacker from putting his customers' transactions in those valid blocks on the shorter chain and delaying everyone else in the shorter chain.
And this is completely tertiary to your attack, and is a standard attack against bitcoin as I pointed out.
It is not tertiary, it adds to the motivation to join the longer chain.
