Topic: The Chinese firewall and Bitcoin split - page 2. (Read 1373 times)
I'm not an expert on the Great Firewall of China, but if Bitcoin connections were entirely blocked, nodes and miners within China probably wouldn't even be able to connect to each other. They'd be completely out of the network. But let's assume Chineses miners would start running a fork of their own... Mining would probably come to a halt until they could connect through other means. A fork of their own would damage the integrity of the network and that's what miners rely on for profits, and profits cannot stop. Damaging Bitcoin would be a shot in their own feet...
Today I read some online article about dangers Bitcoin can encounter and this problem caught my eye:
The Chinese firewall or another Internet issue causes the global Bitcoin network to be split for a few days.
"The Chinese have a fantastically large firewall that they can use to block Internet traffic," says Hudson. If the firewall caused the Chinese miners to be disconnected from the global Bitcoin network for a few days, during that time, the Chinese miners would still continue to mine the transactions taking place within China, while the rest of the network would be mining a totally different set of transactions. “Realistically, that would look like a fairly irreconcilable fork,” says Hudson. “There’s no mechanism to bring them back together again short of one winning and the other losing completely.”
In general, the system only works well as long as the vast majority of the mining hardware is online and a large percentage of the miners follow the same set of rules. So basic Internet connectivity issues and “forks” that occur when different miners run different versions of the software could also cause a drop in the value of the currency.
More at:http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/12/28/should-you-invest-in-bitcoin-10-arguments-against-as-of-december-2015/
Is this real issue and problem?
The Chinese firewall or another Internet issue causes the global Bitcoin network to be split for a few days.
"The Chinese have a fantastically large firewall that they can use to block Internet traffic," says Hudson. If the firewall caused the Chinese miners to be disconnected from the global Bitcoin network for a few days, during that time, the Chinese miners would still continue to mine the transactions taking place within China, while the rest of the network would be mining a totally different set of transactions. “Realistically, that would look like a fairly irreconcilable fork,” says Hudson. “There’s no mechanism to bring them back together again short of one winning and the other losing completely.”
In general, the system only works well as long as the vast majority of the mining hardware is online and a large percentage of the miners follow the same set of rules. So basic Internet connectivity issues and “forks” that occur when different miners run different versions of the software could also cause a drop in the value of the currency.
More at:http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/12/28/should-you-invest-in-bitcoin-10-arguments-against-as-of-december-2015/
Is this real issue and problem?
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