Was Bitcoin shut down for 8 hours? | Bitcointalksearch.org

tokeweed

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Quote from: coinableS on April 04, 2015, 08:49:06 PM

Quote from: tokeweed on April 04, 2015, 08:58:29 AM

What a nerd.

^ @patio11

More than likely a paid disinfo agent for western union or other place similar since he has 15K followers. A real nerd would not be as ignorant about how bitcoin actually works. I think he watched a 60 second special on Fox News and then came to his conclusions.

I would call that above in bold a smart guy. The patio11 character is just a plain nerd.

What a nerd.

fox19891989

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The title is misleading, bitcoin is decentralized thing, how can it be shut down? It's not a company or exchange, you could say bitstamp shut down for 8 hours, but btc is impossible to be shut down.

Do you refer to 51% attack shut down the blockchain running? I don't think so, btc won't be stuck for 8 hours.

Melbustus

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Quote from: Carlton Banks on April 04, 2015, 04:14:35 PM

Quote from: drawingthesun on April 04, 2015, 03:33:08 PM

As I recall, everyone was told not to make any transactions due to the fork in progress, so I guess it was a shut down of sorts.

I witnessed this pretty much as it happened, and I can tell you that the network carried on running (albeit in the forked state, so running but not really functioning). IIRC, an alert was posted with the emergency alert system in the actual Bitcoin Core client, but that probably wasn't the majority of users even back then. So some people carried on mining and transacting regardless, possibly unaware, possibly seeing whether they might be able to exploit the situation somehow .

Yeah, that was an interesting few hours. The technical scenario which led to the fork was basically bitcoin's consensus disaster scenario; such a version conflict (which is more or less what led to the fork) was theoretically possible, but unlikely and had never happened before. But it was the resolution to it which, in my opinion, contributed to the spring 2013 rally. The community came together and quickly and rationally resolved the problem through community consensus, thereby relieving the ecosystem of one of the more severe theoretical concerns.

In his tweetstorm, @patio11 seems to attack the method by which the fork was resolved. People running the big pools, Gavin and other devs, plus a bunch of industry ppl, etc, agreed that the best resolution for the integrity of the network would be if bitcoind v0.8 was not the majority version. Since BTCGuild has just upgraded to v0.8, Eleutheria agreed to downgrade to v0.7 so that the v0.7 fork would overtake v0.8. Problem solved, completely within the bounds of expected system behavior.

Nothing on the network level was "shut down"; @patio11 is being both careless and hyperbolic with his words.

iGotSpots

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That whole tweet string rant was pretty ridiculous. Lots of buzzwords without saying anything worth reading

coinableS

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Quote from: tokeweed on April 04, 2015, 08:58:29 AM

What a nerd.

^ @patio11

More than likely a paid disinfo agent for western union or other place similar since he has 15K followers. A real nerd would not be as ignorant about how bitcoin actually works. I think he watched a 60 second special on Fox News and then came to his conclusions.

XCASH

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Quote from: Carlton Banks on April 04, 2015, 04:14:35 PM

Quote from: drawingthesun on April 04, 2015, 03:33:08 PM

As I recall, everyone was told not to make any transactions due to the fork in progress, so I guess it was a shut down of sorts.

I witnessed this pretty much as it happened, and I can tell you that the network carried on running (albeit in the forked state, so running but not really functioning). IIRC, an alert was posted with the emergency alert system in the actual Bitcoin Core client, but that probably wasn't the majority of users even back then. So some people carried on mining and transacting regardless, possibly unaware, possibly seeing whether they might be able to exploit the situation somehow .

Most miners leave their hardware running 24/7 and have to sleep. The smaller miners asleep when the fork happened could have slept through the entire fork and carried on mining it. As you say, the network was not shut down, it was running but not really functioning. There were miners not immediately aware of the problem who kept the network alive.

Carlton Banks

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Quote from: drawingthesun on April 04, 2015, 03:33:08 PM

As I recall, everyone was told not to make any transactions due to the fork in progress, so I guess it was a shut down of sorts.

I witnessed this pretty much as it happened, and I can tell you that the network carried on running (albeit in the forked state, so running but not really functioning). IIRC, an alert was posted with the emergency alert system in the actual Bitcoin Core client, but that probably wasn't the majority of users even back then. So some people carried on mining and transacting regardless, possibly unaware, possibly seeing whether they might be able to exploit the situation somehow .

drawingthesun

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Quote from: dothebeats on April 04, 2015, 11:24:52 AM

Quote from: crazyivan on April 04, 2015, 11:06:17 AM

No, this is not possible and it did not take place. This is just another nerd searching for attention, twitter followers etc.

No. Theoretically, shutting down the Bitcoin network is possible. It's just that he got confused between bitcointalk.org (which was down for 10 hours, at least for me) and the whole Bitcoin network.

I actually wonder if Patio11 is talking about the March 2013 fork? This lasted 6 hours and the fix was coordinated via IRC.
I remember this fork, but don't remember it as Bitcoin being shut down.

As I recall, everyone was told not to make any transactions due to the fork in progress, so I guess it was a shut down of sorts.

Amph

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Quote from: Blazr on April 04, 2015, 09:45:15 AM

Quote from: Amph on April 04, 2015, 09:42:06 AM

51% isn't shutting down, it's just a cintrol over the network, if you stop the attack the network will return alive

let me rephrase it, it's impossible to shutdown bitcoin permanently

With a 51% attack you can prevent people from spending coins by not confirming their transactions. If you can't spend your Bitcoin I don't see how you can say the Bitcoin network is up.

Yes you are correct, you cannot shut down the network permanently unless you kill every Bitcoiner and destroy all Bitcoin clients and any evidence of bitcoin ever existing, probably would also be a good idea to outlaw all forms of electronic communication, encryption and privacy to prevent anyone from building something similar to Bitcoin. Anything less than that can be recovered from with enough time and resources. One copy of the Blockchain would be needed to preserve balances, we have atleast 7000.

But the Bitcoin network CAN be down and has been down in the past, it isn't magic, it is vulnerable to attack just like everything else in the world.

the network is still up, but just for the dude who is attaccking it, this isn't shutting down, it taking under control like ai said above, if he can double spend then it mean that the network is up(for him only, but still up)

i think people are not following what i'm saying

gentlemand

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Quote from: Blazr on April 04, 2015, 07:34:28 AM

You are both wrong:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork/

It is posts like these that I don't particularly like, people stating facts about Bitcoin that seem true, others see them and also believe them, yet they are furthest from the truth and the answer was already posted in the thread. This is the reason that people like patio11 exist.

I wasn't referring to anything other than his supposition about it happening this time around. It didn't. I'm sure there are clever ways to do it but I'll leave that to experts or three letter agencies.

Hazir

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Quote from: Blazr on April 04, 2015, 08:59:38 AM

Quote from: Mellnik on April 04, 2015, 08:58:34 AM

It appears that OP has no common sense. Everybody knows that a P2P network with 7000 connected peers can not simply be shutdown.

It appears you are the one without sense as you haven't even read the thread.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/3668/bitcoin-network-shaken-by-blockchain-fork/

Anyone remember Napster?

Napster was nothing alike blockchain. Napster was p2p network with CENTRALIZED core service. It is easy for US government to kill services like that. Just unplug server and whole p2p network is dead.

dothebeats

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Quote from: crazyivan on April 04, 2015, 11:06:17 AM

No, this is not possible and it did not take place. This is just another nerd searching for attention, twitter followers etc.

No. Theoretically, shutting down the Bitcoin network is possible. It's just that he got confused between bitcointalk.org (which was down for 10 hours, at least for me) and the whole Bitcoin network.

crazyivan

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No, this is not possible and it did not take place. This is just another nerd searching for attention, twitter followers etc.

xDan

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Mitchell

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Quote from: gentlemand on April 04, 2015, 07:08:43 AM

Read the rest of the little tit's tweets. It's one long line of bitterness and FUD. And don't you think you would've heard something about it in a rather loud manner on every single thread on every single bitcoin forum and news source if it were true?

That's exactly what I thought. I mean, this tweet should say enough about that person: "4/ Bitcoin presently costs on the order of $6.5k per megabyte of data added to the block chain" or "5/ The entire market cap of Bitcoin as of 4/1/2015 is a fee paid to someone for work already done between 2009 and 4/1/2015". Dafuck does 5 even mean? Is he trying to say that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, that we are redoing work?

That guy clearly has no idea what Bitcoin is and how it works. I have no idea how someone like that could be "generally well respected" like OP said.

juju

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I call this FUD

The OP, and the person posting to twitter need to invest more time researching the Network. I doubt they have spent hundreds of hours reading material, watching videos, and writing computer code to interact with the Network in any shape or form, to develop original abstract thoughts on the technology and how it can play out in our society. However they are certainly quick to inform others on their baseless uninformed opinion. I have always wondered why people are so quick to accept the given 'truth'. Sounds like someone who likes watching television and blindly accepts what they hear as factual.

Bitcoin's fundamental solution is going nowhere, it will only be improved and matured as we have seen over the past 5 years. FUD Roll Eyes

dothebeats

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Quote from: Carlton Banks on April 04, 2015, 09:22:06 AM

Quote from: Blazr on April 04, 2015, 09:01:31 AM

If you want to forcibly shutdown the bitcoin network temporarily, you can do so with a 51% attack, a Sybil, or exploiting bugs/exploits in Bitcoin Core (which is arguably what the March 2013 issue was, someone could've exploited the situation to double spend coins, IIRC OKPay had a transaction double spent). It is incredibly difficult to do, but it is POSSIBLE, and those who say otherwise are misinformed.

So, we're establishing facts here.

It's incredibly difficult/highly resource intensive to do, and only temporary. Whereas, when everyone is convinced to co-operate, the network can be shut down very effectively.

"Impossible to shut down" makes it sound like some kind of perpetual motion runaway train, and that's clearly absurd.

So, in summary, the network is exceptionally resilient in practical terms, but also not so unwieldy that it can't be stopped when the actors agree to do so. And also that absurd comparisons are absurd.

What other users don't know about is the fact that hacking or compromising bitcoin's security is theoretically possible. But to be able to achieve such a feat, one must have a very powerful machine or machines to aid them in computing the necessary prerequisites before you can disrupt the whole network. I doubt it is achievable within a span of 10 years, but who knows? With the technological advancements mankind had within the last century, everything is possible.

WhatTheGox

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Quote from: vrm86 on April 04, 2015, 06:06:39 AM

Is this even possible to shut down whole system by anybody?

Its possible if everybody decide but doesnt seem possible from a single entity or worth the hassle.

RealMalatesta

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Okay kids, now that the truth is out, I will show you how easy it is to switch off Bitcoin:

Here's how it's done: http://tinyurl.com/ik7r

Blazr

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Quote from: Amph on April 04, 2015, 09:42:06 AM

51% isn't shutting down, it's just a cintrol over the network, if you stop the attack the network will return alive

let me rephrase it, it's impossible to shutdown bitcoin permanently

With a 51% attack you can prevent people from spending coins by not confirming their transactions. If you can't spend your Bitcoin I don't see how you can say the Bitcoin network is up.

Yes you are correct, you cannot shut down the network permanently unless you kill every Bitcoiner and destroy all Bitcoin clients and any evidence of bitcoin ever existing, probably would also be a good idea to outlaw all forms of electronic communication, encryption and privacy to prevent anyone from building something similar to Bitcoin. Anything less than that can be recovered from with enough time and resources. One copy of the Blockchain would be needed to preserve balances, we have atleast 7000.

But the Bitcoin network CAN be down and has been down in the past, it isn't magic, it is vulnerable to attack just like everything else in the world.

Topic: Was Bitcoin shut down for 8 hours? (Read 2573 times)