z - page 2. | Bitcointalksearch.org

Valen

newbie

Activity: 13

Merit: 0

Quote from: andes on July 01, 2011, 04:43:05 PM

Quote from: Valen on July 01, 2011, 04:09:11 PM

obviously it would take a lot of effort/money that probably only a government could pull off.

Right now you dont need a government, only a couple of tens of millions of dollars.

To put that in perspective, only in the USA right now, there are 1 million people that have a net worth of more than 10 million dollars. If a handfull of those wanted to harm bitcoin, they could.

Also the supercomputer argument is a known fallacy. Its a catchy phrase but does not make bitcoin less vulnerable to brute hashing attacks for the moment. The supercomputer argument is debunked in the thread above.

right, i should have said either a government or a person/corporation with substantial funds could do it

andes

jr. member

Activity: 42

Merit: 2

Quote from: Valen on July 01, 2011, 04:09:11 PM

obviously it would take a lot of effort/money that probably only a government could pull off.

Right now you dont need a government, only a couple of tens of millions of dollars.

To put that in perspective, only in the USA right now, there are 1 million people that have a net worth of more than 10 million dollars. If a handfull of those wanted to harm bitcoin, they could.

Also the supercomputer argument is a known fallacy. Its a catchy phrase but does not make bitcoin less vulnerable to brute hashing attacks for the moment. The supercomputer argument is debunked in the thread above.

Valen

newbie

Activity: 13

Merit: 0

Quote from: andes on July 01, 2011, 04:39:12 PM

Already discussed here:

Bitcoin's kryptonite: The 51% attack
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12435.0

And 50% is not a magical number, hashing is a probability issue. For an effective sustained attack, you would need a high percentage of hashing power though.

thanks, i'll start reading it

andes

jr. member

Activity: 42

Merit: 2

Already discussed here:

Bitcoin's kryptonite: The 51% attack
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12435.0

And 50% is not a magical number, hashing is a probability issue. For an effective sustained attack, you would need a high percentage of hashing power though.

Valen

newbie

Activity: 13

Merit: 0

Quote from: Serge on July 01, 2011, 04:16:41 PM

As far as we know there is no super-computer exists today that can play this game anymore.
I don't want to give false sense of security though. The risk exists. For any private entity who can beat network's hashing capacity it would be more profitable to mine instead of trying to corrupt the blockchain. Any pool close to or over 50% poses risk of being hacked for instance and screwing the system. Don't know what to say about authorities - would they want to screw with it in such a way instead of simply trying to outlaw it if they deem to do so.

outlawing it would have no effect. they would have to destroy it to stop it.

for an example of what i mean, look how effective outlawing drugs has been.

Valen

newbie

Activity: 13

Merit: 0

you don't need a super computer

the power to do this can be purchased and set up. probably costing several million dollars but this amount is a joke to a government.

Serge

legendary

Activity: 1050

Merit: 1000

As far as we know there is no super-computer exists today that can play this game anymore.
I don't want to give false sense of security though. The risk exists. For any private entity who can beat network's hashing capacity it would be more profitable to mine instead of trying to corrupt the blockchain. Any pool close to or over 50% poses risk of being hacked for instance and screwing the system. Don't know what to say about authorities - would they want to screw with it in such a way instead of simply trying to outlaw it if they deem to do so.

Valen

newbie

Activity: 13

Merit: 0

i have read that if someone has more than 50% of all the hashing power on the network they could essentially start screwing with the system and destroy it. if this is true i don't understand why smart people who know a lot about security such as steve gibson don't acknowledge or talk about this?

obviously it would take a lot of effort/money that probably only a government could pull off. but isn't it possible and if it is possible why don't people talk about it more as it seem to be the only real threat to bitcoin.

Timo Y

legendary

Activity: 938

Merit: 1001

bitcoin - the aerogel of money

Quote from: phillipsjk on July 01, 2011, 10:41:47 AM

None of the above.

Two of my expected bitcoin failure modes are listed, but not the one I think is most likely: we will learn how insecure the average computer really is. Until now, they was no direct way to steal money from somebody's equipment.

People are already working on a client that splits the private key between a secure server and your computer.
Other people are working on secure liveCDs.

This won't be an issue long term. Hardly anyone is going to store a wallet.dat file on their windows machine 1 year from now.

Jaagu

member

Activity: 62

Merit: 10

Wrong paradigm. Instead of assuming the death of bitcoin (in one or another form) one should ask of how fast and furious shall bitcoin’s success be. Look at those charts: total number of nodes, total number of google searches, total network hashing rate.
Now extrapolate them to the future. It is encouraging, isn’t?

Litt

sr. member

Activity: 350

Merit: 250

Disinformation. Because we let the current media outlets do the talking for us when we have the power of the internet.

giszmo

legendary

Activity: 1862

Merit: 1114

WalletScrutiny.com

network take over ...

yeah sorry I know most people here think that is impossible but I'm pretty sure that with 2M$ at hands, I could do that.

Tasty Champa

member

Activity: 84

Merit: 10

Journalists that keep wanting to buy in, using their pull to disrupt the prices by making things up so the price goes down. They see it as wallstreet 2.0 and the only sure way they know how to fuck with it is through disturbing things.

It's like we have to just stop everything for a few days just to let them numbskulls in.

Rassah

legendary

Activity: 1680

Merit: 1035

Quote from: BkkCoins on July 01, 2011, 12:34:34 PM

Quote from: Rassah on July 01, 2011, 10:07:45 AM

Quote from: BkkCoins on July 01, 2011, 08:17:51 AM

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

Hmm, not a lot of merchant support for gold, silver, or stock certificates...

That's right - no one runs around buying/selling stuff with those either today.

Though I wouldn't call gold, silver, or stock a "failure"

cunicula

legendary

Activity: 1050

Merit: 1003

People are apparently most worried about bitcoin a) being perceived as useless b) being overtaken by a competitor.

Interesting that exploits are less of a concern. Given the user composition of this forum vis-a-vis
the likely composition of people who may adopt bitcoin soon, I would expect the exploits categories to be over-represented
and the useless/competition categories to be underrepresented.

Perhaps uselessness and competition are the big issues.

BkkCoins

hero member

Activity: 784

Merit: 1009

firstbits:1MinerQ

Quote from: Rassah on July 01, 2011, 10:07:45 AM

Quote from: BkkCoins on July 01, 2011, 08:17:51 AM

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

Hmm, not a lot of merchant support for gold, silver, or stock certificates...

That's right - no one runs around buying/selling stuff with those either today.

bitplane

sr. member

Activity: 321

Merit: 250

Firstbits: 1gyzhw

Someone with loads of coins continually cashes out and keeps the BTC worth pennies until long after everyone has lost interest in the project.

phillipsjk

legendary

Activity: 1008

Merit: 1001

Let the chips fall where they may.

None of the above.

Two of my expected bitcoin failure modes are listed, but not the one I think is most likely: we will learn how insecure the average computer really is. Until now, they was no direct way to steal money from somebody's equipment.

Aside: I have noticed that over the past few years, the big computer companies don't sell computers anymore: they sell "solutions". "Computer" has become synonymous with "machine running Ms Windows" with all of the extra hardware that implies.

Rassah

legendary

Activity: 1680

Merit: 1035

Quote from: BkkCoins on July 01, 2011, 08:17:51 AM

Why don't you have the most obvious one: lack of merchant support. If people can't use it to buy and sell stuff they care about from vendors they want to deal with then it's not going to get where it needs to go.

Hmm, not a lot of merchant support for gold, silver, or stock certificates...

Trader Steve

hero member

Activity: 836

Merit: 1007

"How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time..."

Bitcoin could fail if governments stop interfering with mutually voluntary transactions:

http://economicsandliberty.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/bitcoin-a-new-commodity-created-to-serve-market-demand/

Not likely to happen though...

Topic: z - page 2. (Read 6671 times)