Topic: Questions I have about Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 877 times)

No it's not. If you consider bitcoin as a spendable then you'll always be bother by its price and you'll always be at loss whenever the bitcoin goes high which is not right for me. The fact that bitcoin is volatile, don't think about you could spend it like a fiat currency coz you'll literally spending its future value, you might regret at the end. Best to do when buying online is to have a digital payment processor like paypal or bitpay coz it will costs you less than getting it done with bitcoin, just add the fact that there are massive transactions with bitcoin right now that drives higher fees.

Should it at some point be possible to use a quantum computer for mining and assuming it would solve hashing significantly faster, the difficulty would skyrocket after 2016 blocks (at the next diff adjustment).
After that, one would only be able to mine with this quantum computer - No ASIC would find a block anymore.
Similar as if you would want to mine with a GPU now.

I think this is too protective of Bitcoin. Any fiat allows buying something cheap as well as something expensive. Bitcoin also allows buying something cheap, but it can cost A LOT. And it seems to me that the majority of daily transactions are small. When I go to the supermarket, I spend $10-$30 but very rarely more than that. And paying about 7% in transaction fees in this situation is just ridiculous. I hope there will be a solution allowing to avoid high fees because otherwise Bitcoin will have quite a narrow use case as money, not something to buy groceries.

Thank you for correcting me. That is the field that I am yet to explore. Still, if quantum computers are strong enough to decode hashes, it will be urgent to implement some other hashing algorithm strong enough for succesfully resist against quantum attacks. I guess, this also applies to the possibility of deriving private keys from public keys. I am wondering what will happen to mining industry if there are quantum computers able to easily calculate the correct number i.e they will be doing proof of work much faster than other miners.

Precisely. Hence why we had a good amount of FUD that month, with heavily misinformed people thinking and saying that a big name such as CZ could roll-back the chain if he wanted to. One thing's for sure, the PoS(piece of s proof of stake) aficionados were euphoric LMAO.

If a terrorist attack needs to happen and bomb all mining facilities then those attacks would need to happen all over the world and maybe sparkle a WWIII.
In this case, if Bitcoin is going to be shut, fiat currencies are going to be over inflated.
In conclusion, there is no way that Bitcoin is going to be harmed and not fiat currencies as well, the opposite cannot happen though.

he did want a rollback and he did try so hard to make it happen and he did fail.
he even contacted a lot of mining pools and miners trying to convince/bribe them into rolling back the blocks and reversing his embarrassment but he never succeeded. it is impossible to perform such a thing but his lack of success was not just because of impossibility but also because all those miners are also protecting their investment and are well aware that a rollback is practically end of bitcoin's immutability, not to mention the death of that mining pool since all miners would stop using it right away.
then he tried to save face by saying he "changed his mind" instead of saying "i failed miserably". that is why i refer to him as a clown

Quantum computers exist. Quantum computers just hasn't reached the level to pose a threat to encryption standards in the current day. Hypothetically, quantum computers can break ECDSA (and other asymmetrical algorithms) with Shor's algorithm. Quantum computer can theoretically weaken SHA256 (and symmetrical algorithms) but to a point whereby it's still very very hard to break it.

I did not understand what problem could be with Bitcoin's security. But be sure that it is extremely secure. Moreover, you are completely free to join the network and mining on this security. This is one of the main reasons for the high reliability of the network.
But if we are talking about wallet security here, then the situation is different. Each wallet holder must secure his own wallet. We could not be expected to rely on a wallet already protected by another person. These issues have been discussed both in this forum and in all other channels for years. There are people who have a lot of technical knowledge working on it. So I don't think there's anything to worry about.

I have (like the others here) also no clue what you mean by 'password security'. 
The Bitcoin protocol uses two different algorithms: ECDSA for signing and SHA256 to create the public address and calculate a block hash.

Theoretically it would be possible to break ECDSA and calculate the private key from the public key (Shor's algorithm).
So if you had a wallet without a single outgoing transaction, there would also be no public key for the quantum computer.

Should it ever be possible to break SHA256, we would have much worse problems, because SHA256 is also used for all SSL certificates.

Not sure what you specifically mean by Bitcoin's "password security", but potentially yes. Tell you what though, we're going to potentially have BIGGER problems if Bitcoin's encryption can be cracked.

It definitely will. Hypothetically, quantum computers are powerful enough to break sha-256 encryption. The problem is there is no quantum computers yet. If they were exist today, that would be a problem for the bitcoin protocol, it would be already dead. The main advantage of bitcoin, however, is the fact that Bitcoin is open source software, which means everyone can contribute in it and develop some solutions for better quantum resistance of bitcoin. I assume it is going to be easier to do than inventing of powerful enough quantum computer. I don't know if it is possible to mine bitcoin using quantum computer, but it would also require some changes in the protocol to avoid possible centralization of mining or 51% attack.

Will the emergence of quantum computers affect Bitcoin's password security?

That right there is a huge misconception.

Even if CZ wanted to do a rollback, he would've failed anyway. It's not that CZ changed his mind to save Bitcoin's reputation, it's just that it wasn't going to be possible in his case.

Also, you're probably referring to huge enterprise miners not "people who are good with programing and codings".

the purpose of creating bitcoin has never been to replace fiat and let people use it for all their day-to-day purchases like a "bag of potato chips". the purpose is to create a decentralized currency and give people the financial sovereignty that they can never have while using centralized fiat while relying on corrupted banks.
that doesn't mean huge fees are acceptable though.

if anything the CZ clowning proved that bitcoin mining is decentralized and bitcoin is the most immutable currency that has ever existed. idiots like CZ will always try to make money from bitcoin and when their stupidity leads to losses (shitty platform getting hacked) they look to bitcoin to bail them out but it won't.

With the help of lighting Network we should be rest assure for micro payment on Bitcoin. This network is fast in terms of micro payment, also remember that, this doesn't need block confirmation but instantaneous in operation. Though, this technology is still be working upon for the betterment of the bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin is Still at the early stage of development and when time come everything needed for the micro payment will be activated.

bitcoin is no longer considered a digital cash for the unbanked.
(tx fee's are more then a days labour for some 3rd world countries)
now its become deemed as the digital gold for custodian/bank vaults. while other networks let you use their pegged tokens(banknotes pretending to be gold value) so that other networks offer the 'digital cash'

..
as for the viability of the peer-to-peer. thats becoming more centralised to business-to business
if developers keep pushing people to use these alt networks in their ploy to make bitcoin the vaulted digital gold reserve business model. then independent users wont be even using bitcoins network daily so wont see any advantage to be full nodes for it.
instead they will just want to check the vault(the locked real btc) once a month or 2. and they will do this via their alt network custodian wallet provider.

..
transaction fee's have been coded to increase. there were many ways to code fee's better to remain low. but those methods were ignored because it went against the business model of shifting users to alt networks

luckily im an early adopter and have enough coins to not worry about fee's compared to the coinage i have so im sticking with bitcoin to hoard my value. but bitcoin has totally lost and continues to lose its electronic peer-to-peer electronic cash status for average joe that just wants to buy things with bitcoin

(pre-empt all the LN fangirls adverting their alt-network. pretending it is btc(its not))
note LN is not a unique feature for btc. other coins can do it. so if another coin like LTC has cheaper onchain fees and less block confirm time. LN wont make btc any better but instead make people want to use LN with LTC.. thus LN wont help btc

Well, a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network would cost the attacker ~$290,000 per hour.
By comparison, a 51% attack on BCash for 1 hour costs only $8,502 and on Bitcoin Scam Vision it is just $5,626 /hour
You can checkout https://www.crypto51.app/ to look at the theoretical costs of a 51% attack on different chains.

I strongly believe that for someone who controls that much bitcoin hashing power it would be more profitable to mine properly than to make a double spend.

I dont think so. For sure not main branch Bitcoin itself.
There must be developed second layer solutions like we have already btw Lighting Network because fees will be much lower, transactions will be much faster etc
Bitcoin is best as global store of value, digital gold that is better than gold in many ways.

about 51% attack Andreas Antonopolous made great video explaining this, in short this is not viable attack in many terms, mostly money and things you can actually achieve by this attack (not much)
so this is least of my worries in terms of Bitcoin security