Topic: Should miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government? - page 10. (Read 12881 times)

You've got most of your understanding pretty good, but the number and size of the transactions in the block don't matter.

You'd just have to go back 1008 blocks and start creating new blocks (you could even have only the coinbase transaction in each block), then you'd have to catch up with the rest of the network and produce one block more than them.  If you had exactly 51% it would take you on average about 50,000 blocks (348 days) to catch up with the rest of the network if you start with a 1008 block deficit, so somewhere around a year from now you'd roll back the entire year.

Is it still in their 

The only thing miners can do is choose which transactions get confirmed.  This is true regardless of whether they are attempting to attack the network with overwhelming hash power (A.K.A. 51% attack) or are performing honest mining services.  The difference is that, with enough mining power, it is possible to do 2 things:

• Keep any other miners from solving any blocks
• Choose to unconfirm transactions that occurred in the past by re-mining past blocks (and all blocks after that) after removing the transactions

Note, that doing those two things still fits within the rules of what I said miners are capable of doing (choose which transactions get confirmed).

Now, if you have that power and you send a transaction, you can wait for the transaction to get however many confirmations the receiver demands.  Then you can unconfirm the transaction, and re-send to some other address the same bitcoins that you already sent. Then you can confirm the new transaction in place of the old (now unconfirmed) one.  You can repeat this process as many times as you want, re-spending your bitcoins over and over.

At no time can you create a signature spending someone else's bitcoins unless you have their private key.

Now, what you potentially could do would be to unconfirm the transaction that sent the bitcoins to the government.  Of course, all this would do would be to put the bitcoins back in DPR wallets (and since he's in custody and the government has his private keys, that wouldn't accomplish much).

I suppose you could then unconfirm all transactions that contain unspent outputs to the DPR wallets, essentially putting the bitcoins back in the wallets of the people who sent the bitcoins to DPR, but you'd risk rolling back other outputs as well since a transaction can have more than one output.

That's the basics of it.  To rewind the blockchain to last week you would have to pick a point back then, fork the chain and the produce 1008 blocks of a longer length(more and bigger transactions, i.e. proof of work).

And then, once you have done that (with your "unimaginable powerful bitcoin cluster 1,000,000 x faster then the current bitcoin network) you would have to hack Silk Road, steal the private keys of the accounts about to be emptied and transfer them into another bitcoin address.

Tell you what, give me a Delorean, get me up to 88 miles an hour and I will fix it for you (it will be easier that way).

Neil

P.S., even then I would not fix it for you though just in-case you do get a time machine.  Dodgy people got caught out while doing dodgy stuff, I am not that upset about it.

51% attack allows you to double spend your own coins (by rewriting the blockchain where you sent coins originally (to a merchant for example))

So last week you me 100 bitcoin, today you 51% attack and resend those 100 bitcoins from last week to another address. Now those 100 bitcoins I got from you last week are double spent / invalid and you got whatever product I sent you for free.

I think this is somewhat what happens. Also a 51% attack allows you to deny anyone else transactions, so you can stall the network.

Hmm probably not a great idea.

Could you explain it two ways (in both detail and layman's terms)? I thought a 51% attack would be able to do this. If it can't, what can a 51% attack do?

It isn't possible

There is nothing miners can do to send the bitcoins from that address to anywhere else without first getting EVERY single person using a bitcoin wallet to agree to run a modified wallet that allows the spending of bitcoins without a proper signature.  Nobody with bitcoins and half a brain is going to be dumb enough to run such software since it would put their own bitcoins at risk.

Miners don't have some special magical power that allows them to force nodes to accept invalid blocks into the blockchain no matter how many of them collude.

All of you who are talking about whether or not it *should* be done, need to realize that it can't be done.

This would only manage to set a shady precedent and possibly lead to situations where it is decided that someone is "wrong" so we confiscate all their money

Also I am sure if the miners do this the Bitcoin nodes will reject the block making a hardfork. I might be wrong about this though.

If this ever happens, Bitcoin dies that day.

Its really that simple, not sure why people think this could be done with no repercussions.

Bitcoin works because of its trustless nature, Satoshi himself made a big point about that. However if we allow the movement of funds without knowing the private key then Bitcoin becomes a trusted system, we now have to trust the miners not to move funds and now Bitcoin is the absolute opposite of what Satoshi intended.

So if this happens, the trustless foundation is no more and people will lose faith and the value of a Bitcoin will become less than a dollar.

I think the harder question would be, WHO would get the redirected funds?

Me?

You?

I think it's all in cold storage by now. I saw some lame-o Forbes article about what the Feds have in mind for the confiscated BTC.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-road-bitcoin-seizure

Besides, letting the government get comfortable with Bitcoin and maybe get a sizeable stash will just help the cause. Government becoming a stakeholder in Bitcoin, particularly if the price rises a few more orders of magnitude as this case runs its course over several years, could be the best thing to ever happen to Bitcoin.

We have to decide once and for all, Is Bitcoin as good as gold? If it is, we have to take the bitter with the sweet. Consistency is a bedrock principal of sound money. Start getting cute with it and it'll all crumble to the ground.

People who voted "Yes," think about this a little more. If the Bitcoin community was going to pull such a stunt, it would have to save it for a cataclysmic situation. If the feds somehow seized half of all bitcoins in existence, then it might be time to have a careful debate about this...and probably still not do it. But for this little bit of money?

It would destroy Bitcoin's reputation as impartial, unimpeachable, immutable money. Not only would it turn governments against us, it would also show people that money they receive could be taken from them if they lose in the court of public opinion. It would be like a giant billboard saying BITCOIN: YOUR MONEY AT THE WHIMS OF THE MASSES.

And some people say there's a clean line we can draw in the case of the feds. How about legitimately seized bitcoins, from real criminals? How about those of the big banks? How about large companies like Apple and Walmart, that have close ties with the government just by virtue of their size? How about pirateat40's stash? Why not anyone with a Scammer tag on bitcointalk? Heck, why not annul the bitcoins of all taxpayers, since they feed the government by not resisting?

This is the most dangerous idea to come about in a long time. Please, please, please think this through.

COULD miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government?

NO

Really?  You think miner should collude to wind the blockchain back to a week ago and then what? 

of course but we should use big magnets like in breaking bad

Let's say this happens. Bigger than the SR story would be the story that "a few million dollars has been stolen from the government."

Do you think that would help or hurt Bitcoin?

Do you think the average person is going to feel safe buying Bitcoins when not even the FBI could keep their Bitcoins safe?

Agreed.



Edit: To the people whining below that it can't be done and therefore anyone answering whether it should be done is an idiot... the question is whether it should be done. Nowhere in the OP does it ask if it can be done, or how difficult or unlikely it would be.