@jbreher: I read about CSW's wallet-cracking attempts here at the WO thread. You are assuming that Satoshi has used a cryptographically strong passphrase to secure his keys. It's a valid assumption which I also share and have mentioned in the discussion, but it appears you are reading only parts of my posts... Note, however, that, at the time those wallets were created, Bitcoin was nearly worthless. I'm pretty sure many users at the time had completely unsecured wallets in their PCs, they just didn't care much about security. That's what CSW is allegedly attempting to exploit.
I get all that, and largely agree. I however counter with 'I read ON THE INNERWEBZ...' (i.e., so it
must be true).
IOW, I question whether there is any truth to this story at all. I don't doubt you have read such. I have read such as well. But never from any credible source, and never with any source attribution.
OK, I think we agree on this. I was never meant to say it was true. I just found it interesting and mentioned it, in relation to CSW's comment that Bitcoin will somehow die in 2019. I saw/heard this comment being spoken by CSW himself in a YouTube video. Found it, link below (just press Play, I've positioned it at the exact time he says it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXMCzhwm554&feature=youtu.be&t=1205I watched it again and it seems unrelated to the wallet cracking rumour, but still quite interesting IMHO. I must say that I felt a little scared when I first heard that comment. I really thought he knows or is able to do/cause something very big that could result in a total collapse of Bitcoin. Most likely just CSW spreading fear...
Yes, I have heard CSW state similar things before as well. Of course, that noes not necessarily provide any credence to the story that he is trying to brute force a wallet formerly held by satoshi, that Craig has somehow gotten ahold of. For just one hole in the story, how on earth would he have come into possession of satoshi's wallet? Seems improbable.
Perhaps equally probable (note I
did say perhaps) is the rather unlikely notion that Craig is indeed satoshi, and therefore has always legitimately owned the early mined coins in question. I think the current story - that the private keys therein are held in a trust guarded by multisig, and that he will not have access to the other components of the multisig until 2020 as per terms of the trust creation, is at least plausible. Note that I think he has consistently held to this story. For years.
In your video, Krawicz seems to give tacit confirmation of Craig's statement that BTC contains a fatal flaw that could be so exploited. Though his retort -- 'I'll find out and let you know' -- belies more a blind faith than any rational analysis. From other statements, it seems clear that Krawicz has complete faith in the Satoshi/CSW claim, and I have never heard him say anything convincing about his reasons for so believing.
AAR, if indeed CSW does have control of the 980K or 1.1M BTC or whatever, he does have a pretty big tool at his disposal. I doubt however that merely dumping them at market price would have a lasting devastating effect upon BTC, no matter how much pain it causes in the short term.
Shelby has been advancing the proposition that Craig has access to enough currently dark mining power to couple the potential dumping attack with another attack of miners reverting to the original protocol (still possible under the so-called 'soft' fork), claiming all funds in SegWit addresses (which are of course pay-to-anyone under the previous rules, which are still valid as there was never a hard fork). This would force Core to either accept the loss of all such funds, or hard fork off to a parallel chain, where the protocol fully invalidates this earlier ruleset. Indeed, Shelby thinks this attack (irrespective of whether or not CSW has anything to do with it) to be an inevitability at some point.
I'm not so sure that scenario is so certain. Though I should point out that I have been publicly musing about such a scenario almost from the time the soft fork approach to 'solving malleability' was first posited. Indeed, the forces towards such an attack only grow with BTC price appreciation and more germanely with use of SegWit addresses.
IF CSW has access to 1.1M BTC and
IF CSW and/or allied miners deign to mount such an attack, then that may be devastating to BTC. Seems a lot of coin tosses would have to land on edge for such to be the case, but...
Heck, I wouldn't even think such an action unethical. It's just part of the game theory. It's not as if these ideas have not been hashed and rehashed publicly since years. Anyone astonished by these ideas either has not been paying attention or is in active denial.
